Tag Archives: Opera

Knit your own opera

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Downstairs in the basement rehearsal room, sumptuous Wagnerian sounds are drifting into the hallway. Bergen National Opera is rehearsing a new The Flying Dutchman production. Senta is staring enraptured at the Dutchman´s portrait. Daland is greedily fingering a sack of jewels. Director John Ramster, glasses deep in his spiky hair, is brooding over the score. And almost everyone has a cold.

One floor up, tubas and trombones crowd the corridors, shiny-buttoned uniforms abound and band-masters are talking importantly into mobile phones about flugelhorn solos and how the band from Odda had just robbed them of third place in the mid-junior league. February, don´t forget, means the NMS National Championships, when Bergen swells with chest-busting brassy pride and the streets around Grieghallen bristle with the curious self-importance of navy suits and peaked caps.

But on the third floor, a gentle rhythmic clicking floats from the doors as though some dreamy animal is tapping its teeth. Outside on a long rail, hang dresses for the Dutchman chorus – the sort of between-the-wars rather fetching tea dresses with nipped-in waists, covered buttons over the bosom and swirly skirts. Such dresses need cardigans, and the BNO staff knitters are busy. They seem to be everywhere. In the wardrobe room, our costume chief is pulling a fluff of blue wool from a satchel. In Artistic Administration, there´s a shawl in process. I go, a little bewildered, into the communications office, to enquire… and Ida Marie, temporary assistant, whips a half-jumper from her bag. BNO, it must be said, has a staff team with initiative… and a chorus who now won´t catch a chill.

Dutchman´s designer, Bridget Kimak, has been committed to rooting Wagner´s version of the story in its Norwegian setting – Sandvika, on the southern coast. The set is an abstract marvel of stark coastline and a ‘ship’ which looks as commanding as a Richard Serra sculpture. On stage, the chorus ladies will knit for their menfolk, rather than sew. First we´ll see the start of jumpers, and as the opera progresses, the garments will grow. The yarn is local – beautiful oiled wool from Hillesvåg Ullvarefabrikk*, a fourth generation family business begun in the late 20th century – from fierce Norwegian sheep grazing close by. There are no fancy patterns here – these Nordic sailors wear a clear navy or cream.

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Knitting and opera, however is not a first. As part of Stavanger2008, European Capital of Culture, we presented Odysseus Unwound, composer Julian Grant´s wonderful opera which, improbably, brought together a team of knitters from Shetland – formidable ladies who could click at virtuosic speed – with opera singers from London, all masterminded by Bill Bankes-Jones´s tirelessly inventive company Tete-a-Tete. While Stavanger2008 came into the process relatively late-on, Tete-a-Tete´s initiative was astounding. Flying Englishmen, they sailed to Shetland with Julian Grant and a clutch of singers. Imagine the scene, in a far Northern village hall – ladies who have never left the island confronted with artists distinctly Southern and urban; needles and arias at the ready; an operatic score of sounds curious, strange-coloured and fantastical to folk-tuned ears.

Julian remembers: “My personal epiphany notwithstanding, it struck us all that the Odyssey is rife with references to the crafts we were investigating, most obviously Penelope at her loom; then there was Odysseus’s island hopping, which resonated most naturally with life in the Shetlands. Yet there was still trepidation… Would this improbable cocktail of talent work at all? Starting with a simple skills-sharing session (knitting singers and singing knitters) within days what had seemed improbable became inevitable.”

His version of the story, with librettist Hattie Naylor, somewhat bucked our sloppy thinking – they had no truck with a glamourous swash-buckling Odysseus “to whom” Julian says “we are introduced in our childhood is first as a hero of brightly coloured children’s books, a victim of superior forces who has fabulous Boys’ Own adventures, outwitting monsters and treacherous ladies of dubious repute”  For a more realistic story, he suggested, we should read, The Iliad about the terrible carnage of Troy, and the needless destruction of Cicones. Julian took a sober view: “Odysseus is a flawed con man, a smooth and suave psychopath, whose tales of his own adventures conjure up a nightmare of blood-letting, which ultimately does him in.”

The opera, for six singers, five craftspeople and seven instrumentalists, in fact premiered in timely fashion at the National Knitting Show at Alexandra Palace before its journey to Norway. We staged it in Sandnes, home – until the 1980s – to a vast knitting industry; today the sheds are a shopping mall. In Sandnes Culture House, I´m not quite sure who was the more startled – the Shetland knitters or the audience. But the musical language was arresting – touching, fierce and luscious.

Meanwhile in Bergen, the knitting continues. Edvard Grieg Kor´s first soprano – the ensemble is the hub of BNO´s chorus – is hard at work, and so, she says, is her mother. If there is rigour in the rehearsal room, it is matched by tension of a different sort as yarn is tweaked and stretched, sleeves emerge and hemlines achieve a woolly frill.

For sure, every premiere has its own glorious personality. On March 10th, Wagner´s opera will triumph and will deliver new truths in John Ramster´s vision, sung by stupendous voices. But there´s a certain pride in the design. In amongst Bridget´s dramatic set are costumes truly, veritably home-made. Now, pass me my pins….

Mary Miller

More info: The Flying Dutchman

*Hillesvåg Ullvarfabrikk : ull.no

Photo: Monika Kolstad

Future sounds from Bergen

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Oslo, minus several degrees, the landscape monochrome with luminous streaky skies. Bergen National Opera is in the capital at Operaen with a fine mix of nationalities and three Nordic composers to develop new operas for premiere in March.

This morning we slither over hard-packed ice to the rehearsal room to work on Øyvind Mæland´s new opera – one of three short works which Bergen National Opera has commissioned for Borealis Festival. The violinist is missing, the bass player is deep in discussion with conductor Steffen Kammler, and the singers are practising small swooping sounds and spitting consonants. Øyvind´s little opera is about tiny emotions – twitchy moments of apprehension, compassion, embarrassment – and the music is lucid, varied, and wonderfully eccentric.

Yesterday, Rebecka Sofia Ahvenniemi´s opera – a ‘trailer’ involving Beyoncé and female power – provoked fierce conversation. Ahvenniemi herself, an animated elf of fizzing energy, has a way with words: “Guitar” she says “you have an important role in creating confusion at this point.” The guitarist plucks with enthusiasm. Rebecka´s music here is full of collisions. Baroque vocal lines underline splintering string sounds, and Beyoncé song quotes croon over Straussian harmony. “Let´s go into this late-Romantic porridge a little earlier” she says briskly, adjusting her score.

In the canteen, singers from Operaen´s in-process production of Bellini´s Norma – the director is upcoming young Norwegian star – are noisily at lunch. A large baritone in fur, cape, Tolkien-like garb, is munching salad and barking on his phone. Long straggly hair, large boots and facial hair abound, along with Hollywood blondes and some startling make-up. Meanwhile the ballet corps are fiddling with their feet and giggling – other than a tiny ballerina who is crying quietly in the corner. Our guest BNO director, Sjaron Minailo, is wrangling cheerfully with dramaturg Gaea Schoeters. “How can you ask the composers about their ‘point of urgency’” says Gaea, rolling her eyes “it´s such a nineties question”. Sjaron mimes indignation “Really? Well how do we put it for our new cool age? Where´s the edge? I want to know their critical message.”

He had asked this of all of the writers at yesterday´s session. Our third composer, the quiet, thoughtful Lars Skoglund, had talked about how his opera – which takes place in a library where three people, an awkward triangle, converse in fractured whispers – reflected his fascination about how conversations chose words in a space where texts line the walls. Rebecka had talked about female assertiveness – a line in her opera talks about Beyoncé wanting to ‘wear a suit, go to meetings’. Our only male singer present, Halvor Melien, a proud recent attendee at a Beyoncé concert, spoke up fiercely ‘What! I don´t recognise the male sexuality you´re talking about!’ and we hastily moved on to how new violin bowing might produce white noise, and how to scream elegantly “without sounding like a horse” says Halvor helpfully, recovering tranquillity.

On Day Two, Annelies Van Parys – award-winning Belgian composer whose Private View Bergen National Opera co-produced with seven European partners in 2016/17 and is now with us here as a mentor – is discussing microphone techniques with singers Elisabeth Holmertz  and Lore Lixenberg, Lars Skoglund is handing out revisions and Øyvind Mæland is doubling as rehearsal pianist. Ahvenniemi is in the canteen writing furiously.

Exciting times – to have three new works in development, each one brilliantly individual in its sound world, each one topical, each one visually distinctive, is remarkable. Don´t let´s worry about our future opera. It´s all in good hands.

Mary Miller

January 9, 2018

Otello the Outsider

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Downstairs in Grieghallen, we have just started rehearsing Verdi´s Otello for later this month. We´ve celebrated with cake and coffee, sympathised with singers who have just stepped off red-eye ‘planes. Now director Peter Mumford is delicately picking at Shakespeare´s characters: the tortured Moor general, the growling, prowling adjutant passed over for promotion, the newly elevated Cassio.

If Otello´s agonies begin some pages into the opera, Iago is wracked with fury from the very opening chords. Iago, the soldier, the opportunist, the man with the bleak heart, has emerged from the ultimate world of trust: man together with man in the face of the enemy. He and Otello have soldiered together, faced death together, trusted their being to each other. Together, they have killed, smashed cities and broken lives. Now Otello has betrayed him. Iago is stuck in the hot-house of barracks with no plan other than revenge. And into this turmoil, Shakespeare introduces sex: the fragrant Desdemona, the Moor and mighty general´s young wife. It´s a terrible, provocative story. Nicholas Hytner, chief at the UK´s National Theatre, about to direct Shakespeare´s play and feeling alien to the world of the military, consulted a senior figure recently returned from Basra. Sex and the violence of war do not march well together, he learned. The hot-house will boil.

Centuries of performance have insisted that the play, and consequently the opera, are about race – that Otello is defined by his African roots, that the fact of his black skin makes inevitable his actions. As late as the 1960s, productions aligned his native ‘barbarism’ with his raging, uncontrollable jealousy. In the noughties, white actors still strutted obscenely with painted brown faces. And forget not that in recent memory, a good deal of pretentious babble preceded Jonas Kaufman´s Otello at the Royal Opera – would he be black, white, or merely tanned?

In Bergen, we´ve taken a fierce and deliberate line with a tacit agreement that we will concentrate fully on exploring identity and character – and of course, on presenting sounds which seize the heart. We have a white Australian Otello, and African-American singers as Desdemona and Iago.

Why, we´ve asked, presume that Shakespeare is writing about race? Far more, he is writing about the other, the outsider, the man alone in a writhing web of strangers. Otello is given his lofty position by the Venetian Court, who routinely appointed foreigners to command so as to avoid vicious muttering within their own elite. And in The Merchant of Venice, Shylock, defined as mean and an abuser, is referred to simply as ‘the Jew’. We call Otello ‘the Moor’ in much the same careless way as Hamlet is deemed ‘the Dane’ – it is a means of definition. Otello, paranoia apart, is aware that he is different – but his colour is only a part of his head-banging insecurity. He worries about not having ‘those soft parts of conversation that chamberers have’; about being a generation older than his wife; about being a military man amongst ordinary people. He´s not a murderer because of colour, but because he is a complex, frail human taunted by the perfection of his highly-born child-wife, driven to utter despair by his conniving peers, and given to feeling before he thinks.

The rehearsal begins. Poison is lapping round the rim of Iago´s being. Desdemona, a trembling teenager with a violent, volatile husband, is bewildered. Cassio is drinking heavily. Verdi is knitting stupendous swerving lines into a furor of dissonance. The drama is social realism at its most acute and distasteful, set to music which inflames the soul.

This is Verdi from two centuries past, but opera at its most raw and modern. Past, present future. Emotions never change.

Mary Miller

1st December 2017  /  Otello at Bergen National Opera

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Photos from rehearsals in Grieghallen: 1) Stuart Skelton (Otello) and Lester Lynch (Iago)  2) Lester Lynch vents fury in the role of Iago

Photos: Monika Kolstad

Il turco in Norwegia

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“Wow” says Pietro Spagnoli, great Rossinian buffo baritone “we´re talking Rossini to Broadway!”

At Bergen National Opera, everyone is breathless from high kicks, razzle-dazzle, fancy moves and footwork. The dancers are sweating lightly, stretching their lycra-clad legs and fiddling with their feet. The chorus is gasping quietly and practising jerky movements as though searching for a wasp lost in their clothing – dance director Sean Curran´s routines are not, for sure, in their usual repertoire. The soloists are beaming and chattering in Italian by the coffee machine.

Welcome to Il Turco in Italia directed by American opera supremo Mark Lamos – a riotous combination of highly sophisticated ensemble, fabulous arias, touching moments and carefully choreographed mayhem.

Mark, along with designer George Souglides, last illuminated BNO in 2014 with Rimsky-Korsakov´s The Golden Cockerel – a Norwegian premiere which put Russian opera firmly on the Bergen map – and which created pictures never to be erased from memory: a golden cage shimmering above the stage with a jittering boy/bird as the eponymous cockerel; a wicked Eastern queen in a dazzling scarlet feather coat singing seductive lines to bewitch a foolish, doddering Tsar; a blasted landscape under a blood-red moon with ruined trees and a scattered, broken army. Unforgettable.

But Turco! It couldn´t be more different. Now, listen carefully – like most Italian opera, the plot is tortuous. We are at the seaside – maybe even in Pesaro, Rossini´s eccentric, enchanting home town. A poet, Prosdocimo, is looking for a story for his next libretto and in front of him, an interesting tale begins to unfold. Old Geronio (Spagnoli´s role) has a tiresomely flirtatious young wife Fiorilla, a girl troubled by a voracious need for male attention, preferably not from her husband. A Turkish ship sails in captained by the glamorous Selim – do not look to this opera for political correctness – and Fiorilla wastes no time. Meanwhile, Selim´s old girlfriend and a pack of gypsies are in hot pursuit. In the end, after a domestic ruction, a masked ball, a critical letter, it all resolves… How? You will just have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, upstairs on Grieghallen´s third floor, a mix of Hungarian, Norwegian and German costume makers are draping bling onto delighted extra cast members. The clothes are outrageous, all froth, silk turbans, shocking pink trousers and bosomy dresses. There are harlequins in primary colours and pom-poms, crazy hats, and skirts the size of Victorian overmantels.

Along the corridor, Øystein is working with his puppets, little gesturing, weaving miniatures of the principal characters, clad in matching extravagant silks. Little Fiorilla is learning to stretch her wooden hand to slap mini Geronio. He is organising his dangling feet to swerve smartly away.

But right now, we have a half hour break. Spagnoli has taken his dog for a walk – he never travels without her – and our office has adopted her with somewhat soppy adoration. The dancers are outside smoking, and Fiorilla, Spanish soprano Sylvia Schwartz is on the phone to Rome, to her children´s nanny.

Mark is composing an email to the Metropolitan Opera, New York – they´ll revive one of his Verdi productions next year – and we are trying to catch our breath. We´ve just had cake for Mark´s birthday, and the sugar high compounds the atmosphere of overall exhilaration. In ten minutes, Rossini will swirl gloriously back on stage, the music will bewitch us and our toes will start to tap.

Broadway, Pesaro, Italy, Bergen – here we come, with the Norwegian premiere of an opera like no other. Bring your dancing shoes – isn´t that what the aisles are for? – and settle in for a night on the town, at the seaside, in the company of our cast of sparkling stars.

Mary Miller

11/03/2017

Fabulous Fabio

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In the thick of rehearsals for Bellini´s I Capuleti e i Montecchi – a notoriously difficult opera to stage – with complex chorus choreography, exhausted soloists and the alarming possibility of Tebaldo accidently stabbing a stagehand (yes, we have real swords) – a small figure remains serene. Fabio Biondi, conductor, Bellini specialist, baroque and classical violinist supremo is smiling calmly and discussing rubato with his Spanish assistant, José Ramón Martín Díaz. José is fiddling with the piano and playing snatches of The Way you look Tonight. Fabio is singing quietly ’…. La tremenda ultrice spada…’

Talking to him is like experiencing a gentle blood transfusion – inspiration flows from him in an extraordinary way, as though he himself is discovering new wonders as he speaks. He´s telling me about how bel canto, in present times, should really be described as bella musica – ’bel canto was really about writing music for the stars, about celebrating the spectacular voices. Now we try to show how deep this music is, how interesting, how much detail is in the chorus, the orchestra, the dramaturgy. So maybe we take a little focus away from the singers’. Hence bella musica for the 21st century.

He talks about ’the smell’ of Shakespeare´s tragedy and looking at Nicola Raab´s production here for us in Bergen, I know exactly what he means. As the curtain opens onto pale gloom, prone figures and a set where white walls drip with ink-black paint there is the sense that, inevitably, no good will come of this story. Biondi calls the opera ’a celebration, but in a terrible way’. The stars, for sure, are not aligned.

’So we hear at once’ he says ’that the music is not superficial. We have the first very important cabaletto from Tebaldo and Romeo; fabulous melody – Bellini, for me is the prince of that – and all the fantastically different elements in this intense and strong story’.

For Biondi, Capuleti is Bellini´s greatest opera. ’No, not Norma; yes, but it has a kind of monumental quality. But it´s much less human. Capuleti is like, well, it´s a multi-media opera!’ Many of course, will disagree. Capuleti, again and again, is dismissed with a shrug. ’Not my favourite’ said one critic (he´s coming to our premiere – I am trusting Biondi and Raab to change his mind….) The demands on the singers are frightening – Giulietta and Romeo both sing across a vast range – and the long, eloquent arias which cannot realistically be interrupted by any stage action must generate their own drama and hold their audience in emotional thrall. So the actual theatre of the piece is entirely in the music – a fact which thrills Biondi: ’You know, this is so good – it’s such a strong argument for showing the audience that this music is not in any way a simple accompagnata for the voice.’

’Bellini believed so much in the relationship between the sound and the dramaturgy. Romeo´s instrument is the clarinet, Guiletta´s, the horn. It runs so deep – right at the end of the opera, when Romeo is alone and distraught at Guiletta´s death – when he´s singing ’Come, come, I cannot live without you’, there in the orchestra her ’horn’ voice is calling.’

Listening to the first orchestral rehearsals, it´s clear that Fabio also loves the ’human’ sound of the middle stings. As the wind and violins strut rhythms which will support the chorus, he is leaning, gesturing and beaming at the violas, drawing rich, warm lines. (’No wonder we love him… how many conductors actually encourage us to play more’ says one happy violist at the interval). ’These long lines are so beautiful’ says equally happy Biondi; ’we must use all these elements to show the emotion in the music’.

The ’trouser’ role for Romeo is one of the last in 19th century musical development, something which bemused if not irritated his contemporaries who by then were busy glorifying the new hero tenors. ’Berlioz’ mused Biondi ’was actually a very nice man’ but he really hated this score because of the two women. But I think Bellini really understood the story´s trauma. These lovers have only just passed childhood – Romeo must have a sweet, fierce boyish voice. He is not an adult romantic hero.

’Actually, I once attended auditions in Dubai – they wanted a tenor for Romeo because of course to have two women there was out of the question. And it sounded horrible. No slight on the poor singers, but the poetry is lost.’

So, to Bergen, where Kristina Mkhitaryan and Nino Surguladze are our star-struck lovers, their voices blending in heavenly union.  Biondi is excited – the opera is a Norwegian premiere. ’Wonderful! We know that Capuleti e Montechi was a fantastic success at its debut performances in 1830. Now we have the chance to show Norway why!’

Mary Miller

1st November 2016

Farmers & Fiddles

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Planning for Norway’s quirkiest festival – Mimì Goes Glamping 2016

We are standing amidst chintz and gleaming crystal in the exquisite downstairs dining room at Åmot Operagard talking about slaughtering sheep. The evening sun is catching climbing strands of honeysuckle outside the window, we are drinking champagne and the group of Austrailan farmers currently visiting on a Grand Tour are not in the least concerned with ambience. Not for them any lyrical chat about fish leaping in fjords or limpid azure skies. No, they want to know about fencing and grain quotas. Fresh from days in Iceland, a landscape from which they have emerged a little bewildered – more different from Queensland one cannot imagine –  they are off at dawn to Oslo, then Stockholm. Then, bizarrely, Bejiing.

So talk about opera doesn’t quite hit the mark. We’re visiting our partners Steinar and Yngve to make final plans for Mimì Goes Glamping, our boutique and somewhat quirky festival of opera, drama, food, nature and all kinds of fun. The Australians listen politely as we explain about Sir Thomas Allen as artist-in-residence, young Norwegian stars in the making who will sing arias on boats on the water, and bonfires with fiddles and folk music. They escape, possibly with some sense of relief, to dinner upstairs. We hear them chattering happily – the beef is delicious – and no doubt discussing its butchery.

Next morning to Førde, to talk to the hotel about festival guests, free passes to the spa and a possible opera brunch. Norway’s hotel workers are on strike and are sitting playing cards in a jolly yellow tent outside. Sunnfjord Hotel’s management, currently running a family chain gang, look tired but seem immensely cheerful. The spa, it turns out, is enormous and designed for suitably sybaritic lounging – we look with some longing at marble-lined pools where the water steams gently, and huge windows give on to meadow. No chance – we are due at the Farmers’ Market where a chill wind is scudding round the stalls and the temperature is close to zero.

The region’s producers, busy setting out fish, cheese, home-cured meats, artisan chocolate and juices, are critical to Mimì’s success; while they will bring a fabulous market to the event and their produce will feed our guests and artists, we want to celebrate them more. In Førde centre, this morning’s range is astounding – salami from young goats, dark, rich berry syrups in glinting bottles, salmon cured in local herbs. Grills spit and spark with roasting lamb threaded on sticks with wild asparagus, the scented warmth curling fingers into the air. It is now threatening to snow. Harald is slicing home-dried lamb and singing lustily. Hurrah. We hire him straight away to entertain late-night at the bonfire.

We talk to Sunniva who makes cakes and has just bought a beautiful vintage red van from some obscure part of Poland which she will turn into a mobile shop. We order a Mimi chocolate from Janne and discuss a possible festival cocktail made from blackcurrant liqueur. I begin to jitter from large mugs of tar-like coffee.

At the Kulturskule we plan a new opera involving local singers in which Sir Tom will star as a troll, and discuss fanfares with Angedalen-Brunns Brass sextet, a group who play on vintage instruments and dress -for reasons a little unclear- as though they are resident in pre-war Yorkshire.

And, we devise our own distinctly eccentric version of Blind Date for the festival. By August we will have assembled a gleaming new Volvo estate (the local dealer is a sponsor), a large shiny blue tractor, and a wonderful ancient Buick, along with three very cheerful young singers. Pay 100 NOK, blind-pick a ticket and you have a 15 minute date with one of these fine vehicles and your very own diva. Just think: a gently stylish drive around glorious countryside with the wind in your hair, and music in your ears!

More meetings, more decisions and a long drive home. On the ferry we eat appalling sausages while discussing the day’s gourmet offerings, the music, the weather and the way forward. Arriving home in Bergen close to midnight, small boats plough out of the harbour. The light is still grey-pale and blue clouds rush north.

Sleep. Dreams of redcurrants and vintage trombones. And possibly a date with a tractor. Mimì’s going glamping. I can feel the joyful madness settle into my summer.

Mary Miller

The European Cultural Parliament meets in Pristina: politics, art, equality, strong coffee and opera

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Arriving in Pristina for the annual European Cultural Parliament meeting, we gather in the gleaming new airport foyer, all glass and marble, and so squeaky clean that one daren´t finger a surface. The airline magazine has already pointed out two unmissable Kosovan experiences: Pristina´s exciting nightlife and excellent morning coffee. These may, we feel, be related.

Driving into the city, a less upbeat scene is immediately apparent. Around the new airport are grim reminders of the old war airbase. Concrete bunkers and half demolished walls squat under barbed wire. Derelict vehicles lurk in lurching doorways. But the countryside is beautiful. Gentle hills, greenery, red roofs, verdant fields of vegetables. On into the city – we wave in passing at the cheery statue of Bill Clinton (Kosovo still loves the US for its unflinching support for its independence) – then pull up at the sumptuous Swiss Diamond Hotel where a flurry of flunkeys rushes to assist. ”Why is it, in these damnable conflicted Balkan countries, that there are always these ridiculous hostelries funded by the Swiss” mutters an elderly Austrian philosopher.

The coffee is indeed excellent. We walk past a half-built Roman Catholic church which looks untouched for several years, past the bizarre national library which appears to have been designed to replicate some strange tangled triffid, past innumerable posters of (Albanian) Mother Theresa, to the national museum filled with a mix of vibrant contemporary art and installations. A posse of disturbingly handsome political minders slide into the room, flanking the minister of culture Memli Krasniqi who talks passionately about culture and quality, and how fundamental both are to the growth of an emerging nation. Krasniqi will remain part of proceedings all weekend, an impressive and articulate contributor.

Dinner, then vague talk about the unmissable Pristina nightlife. All at our table are too tired. An early start tomorrow demands clear heads to listen to Kosovo´s prime minister, debate issues around new nation branding, the rise of neo-popularism, and to explore the peculiarities of artists´ knowledge which can bring insight to the business world.

So next morning, we arrive under the stares of even more sultry-eyed minders attending the arrival of the prime minister, culture minister and deputy foreign minister. The PM Hashim Thaci is formidable – the man credited above all others with the liberation of his country; there are probably about 17 different Kosovan/Albanian/Serbian versions of this story, which we will hear over the next three days – but his speech is formulaic and low on charm. Deputy PM Petrit Selimi is another matter entirely. Selimi studied in Oslo thanks to Thorvald Stoltenberg, who heard Selimi speak as a teenager at an international seminar. His speech is fast, tricky, funny and super-bright to point of being slightly dangerous. The PM´s body language, on hearing this torrent of virtuosity, is telling. That the European Cultural Parliament is in Pristina at all means a great deal; it´s a solid affirmation of Kosovo´s European aspirations. So Thaci clearly wants us to be impressed – but his squirming shoulders perhaps recognises that this young protégé needs ’supervision’.

The minders and the minded leave, and we listen to some bureaucratic noise about new nations and Europe, then some formidable interventions from various boisterous Central European members. The culture minister talks to me about how he wants to develop Kosovan opera – certainly they have the singers – two terrific tenors already are ’hot’ globally, Saimir Pirgu and Rame Lahaj – a good young orchestra and a choir of 50. But no venue. We talk about site specific work – the pros and cons. I say ’just do it’.

The day proceeds. So many ideas, so much talking. So much misery over new populism: Farage in the UK, Le Pen in France, Islamophobia in Denmark. At the National Library, we are to explore the artistic psyche: the session is called ’What artists know that others don’t’. We hear propositions from Ireland and Sweden before a mad intervention by Slovenian violinist Miha Pogavich who plays Bach while scribbling on a flip-chart (this is to explain the building and release of emotional tension). Pogavich sits next to me on the bus en route to dinner. It turns out that he knows Bergen, is a friend of Steiner School´s music director Magne Skrede with whom he shared a project some decades ago in Africa. He insists on borrowing my phone to call him, and I listen, incredulous, as Magne – ever gentlemanly – attempts not to sound bewildered at this sudden, untimely late night ear-bash.

So, shall we explore the exciting Pristina night-life? Um, no. But some report next morning that they did find a bar with local raki – but no sign of gleeful Kosovan revellers.

As well perhaps, for Ambassador Pär Stenbäck now leads a formidable session on the Ukrainian situation and its implications for Europe, shared with the Ukranian academic, Kateryna Botanova. It is intense, with several interventions from Russian ECP members asking that ordinary Russian citizens not be demonised. The brutality of the conflict is not glossed over: feelings are acute and solutions few.

Then, I have the inappropriately timed task of leading a debate on The Role of Culture in Gender Inequality. My French feminist colleague, Blandine Pélissier, who I know has prepared a vituperative paper on mispractice in theatre, shrugs and says ’after such a politically sensitive session, this issue is suddenly not important’.

We try to keep the discussion within a men/women frame – despite some vociferous interruption from gay activist singer/festival director Emilio Pons. We argue that GLBT are not victims of discrimination working in the artistic milieu. Quoting Gina Krogh´s 1875 speech, I urge concentration on the different qualities that both sexes can offer. Eliza Hoxha, Kosovan architect and singer, talks brilliantly. Lunch. Pristina-strength coffee. Heads are spinning. More about Kosovo´s opera aspirations from the culture minister. Maybe we send a Bergen task force?

Three of us absent ourselves from the afternoon session to explore a unique local monastery from the 14thC where we battle with an elderly whiskery nun for permission to enter; then a visit to the charming ethnology museum. Terrific dinner with spicy Balkan food. No-one reports exciting local night-life except for a few hardy Belgian raki raiders who turn up late next morning.

On Sunday we write resolutions for the EU on behalf of the Parliament, and start to trickle back to the airport. At the departure gate cafe, a young girl with pale shadows below her eyes and slightly shaking hands serves us odd sloppy cake and fine coffee – perhaps at last we´ve found an expert in Pristina´s exciting nightlife. It just doesn´t seem the moment to ask…

Mary Miller

13 October 2014

Israeli theatre caught in conflict

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With shows by Israeli artists cancelled at Edinburgh Festival Fringe amongst clamorous protest and current outcry here in Norway around Habima Theatre´s collaboration with Oslo´s Nationaltheatret, maybe it´s worth – on behalf of the artists themselves – considering a wider perspective. Edinburgh Festival was, after all, begun in the wake of World War 11 into a sombre world with the vision of a platform where artists of every nation could come together to build dialogue. The wish to use art as communion was deeply felt.

Days after the 9/11 bombings, I moved to America to direct the International Festival of Arts & Ideas in New Haven, Connecticut. New Haven, with Yale University at its centre – its status rather similar to the Vatican´s in Rome – sits in Connecticut, the US´s richest state. Academia and gun-crime exist uneasily in a city the size of Bergen.

In London, I had seen an exceptional play by Al Kasaba Theatre from Ramallah. Stories under Occupation achingly described the daily lives of ordinary people caught amongst curfews, racial divisions and violence, and the role that the media plays in disseminating – and perpetuating – misunderstanding. Stories is not veiled activism or rabble-rousing. It could be about Ireland or Kosovo. It is dark, sad, funny and powerful.

We launched it with the festival programme and Eastern America went berserk. Palestinians equalled terrorists, bullies, usurpers. The Jewish community held crisis meetings and issued vicious threats and manifestos, the New York Times ran hateful leaders, Jewish festival funders revolted, the Dean of Yale´s Law Faculty pulled out a chunk of my hair in the street. Ultimately, the FBI were summoned to performances. I learned a bitter lesson about wealthy anti-Arab self-interests in America; the ulcerous taste of human nature which cannot or will not apply its formidable intelligence to history or to forgiveness remains in my mouth to this day.

We put an immediate ‘blanket’ programme around the play, making rehearsal video available. We created a programme of debate, including the Israel Ambassador to the US, the Communications Director of the Arab League and the Anti Defamation League. We had talk-backs after each performance. The cast stood gazing at the audience, tears on their cheeks.

But also at the festival was the Israeli Inbal Pinto & Avshalom Pollak Dance Company. They looked on with bewilderment ‘What are you doing to our colleagues? they said to the press. The entire dance company sat down with all the Al Kasaba members and held hands. New Haven remained unmoved. ‘What do these young people know about the Holocaust’ they said, and turned away.

But we continued to present the play amongst demonstrations, the FBI, and chaos. And slowly things changed. There was a sense that the city held its breath. Extraordinary things began to happen. The CT Jewish Community Centre held workshops to re-examine their values. The Yale Dean became a valuable member of the festival Board.

Fast-forward to Stavanger2008, European Capital of Culture. Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak came as a resident company – a relationship with Norway which still remains. And, yes, as director I was attacked for working with Israeli artists.

So – Norwegian artists – surely the issue is not that Habima play in the occupied territories, but what they play. Bring Habima, talk to them as colleagues, learn what I hope they know, that art can heal and teach and grow our understanding. Meet them, talk to them, help them, for Heaven´s sake. Then perhaps we will no longer have to hear stories of occupation and the cries of ignorance and terror.

Mary Miller
General and Artistic Director
Bergen National Opera

 

Foto: Magnus Skrede. From the rehearsals of The Cunning Little Vixen, directed by Inbal Pinto & Avshalom Pollak Dance Company.

Tzars don’t change that much – Aftenposten, 24th March 2014

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It´s timely that right now in Bergen we are preparing an opera based on a Pushkin poem about Russian imperialist ambitions. Rimsky-Korsakov´s Gullhanen (The Golden Cockerel) – which tells the story of a mythical Tzar who invades a neighboring country, and is pecked to death by a golden bird charged with warning him of danger – was completed in 1907 as a thinly veiled satire on Tzar Nicholas II´s abortive conflict with Japan. Banned by the censors, the composer never heard the work in his lifetime.

Meanwhile, here in Bergen, we have our own international collision: a mainly Russian cast all of whom are distinctly tight-lipped on the subject of their present aspiring Tzar´s activities, and a distinguished American director (who also has an acclaimed Wozzek currently at the Metropolitan Opera, New York) who is fearless in the face of controversy, and from whose lips flip ironic asides which most certainly pay scant attention to political niceties. So, while Rimsky-Korsakov´s gleaming swirling romanticism soars around us, a certain amount of muttering goes on in corners. The price of vodka in Norway perhaps does not encourage bi-lateral conversation to flow.

All this, however, does call to mind a peculiar editorial in a recent edition of the monthly magazine Opera Now,which stated re: composers´ choice of material that “(opera is not).. a suitable vehicle for reductive political messages or social commentary.” How bizarre. One would have thought that Gullhanen´s success at its premiere in 1909 – as for today – is exactly that the opera is sharp and topical, delicately poised on the fragile axis of wit and tragedy. Rimsky-Korsakov manages all this beautifully, sliding savage, terrible comments behind the most jovial musical lines, and providing a postlude where the Astrologer – a major and sinister mischief-maker – tells the audience in silky tones, that actually all they have seen is ‘just a story…’

One wracks one´s brains to think of a successful opera which doesn´t address some kind of social or political issue, from class differences and poverty in La Boheme, sexual politics in Don Giovanni, terrorism in Klinghoffer, to the endless theatres of war in Handel. So perhaps what ON´s editor intends is to criticize regie-led productions, where Madama Butterfly is dressed in vinyl and lives in a waterfront Florida apartment, or Leporello appears as a transvestite. For that, one can hardly blame the composer.

But what is disturbing here in Bergen is the reminder of our privilege. We smirk and think how lucky we are. But as artists and as citizens surely we should be activists for our near-neighbours against the present day Tzars – be they political leaders or cultural bureaucrats – who literally and metaphorically call the tune and the words which it sets. Perhaps in presenting Gullhanen today we should be aware that behind a ‘funny’ opera lurks not satire but a shocking story about leadership and corruption in 2014. The pecking golden cockerel should be a warning to us all.

Published in Aftenposten 24th March 2014

Irrepressibly outspoken, forcing reinvention – with Gerard Mortier opera has lost a king

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There are those in arts leadership, some highly effective, of whom one could say ’his project was himself’. Of course personal ambition can be a fine thing and in its swirling wake, great things may happen. Egos dominate in most high level activities; Gerard Mortier, who died yesterday, most certainly had ego. His project, however, was not himself. Gerard Mortier, tiny, dynamic, charismatic and irrepressibly outspoken, had a mission to carry – drag if necessary – opera into the present, and to force this ancient form to reinvent itself continuously.

Meeting him, which usually involved a long wait as he whirled along corridors on two cell phones at once gesticulating with spikey fingers, smiling, mouthing apologies, talking in an articulate stream, was like experiencing the shudder of a small electric storm. Mortier was always in the moment – even if his moment was not entirely the one that you, yourself were expecting. He did not answer questions. He simply and with great charm told you what happened to be in his head at the time – or possibly a sanitised version, as he was perpetually at war with some politician, administrator, city authority, director, artist or sponsor.

He appeared to be utterly fearless. In retrospect it seems extraordinary that he stayed so long in Salzburg, running a revered festival in an immensely stuffy city twinkling with Mozart kitsch and feathered felt hats, with snorting insults levelled at his head every day of his 11-year tenure. But he had already blazed through a series of distinguished directorships in the major German houses, and renovated Brussels´s La Monnaie where he incurred an eye-watering deficit. Post-Salzburg, he swerved off to the Ruhr – an ambience less like gemütlich Austria one cannot imagine – and directed a festival of largely site-specific new work amongst the derelict factories and coal-blackened communities. He led Opera de Paris (where a Norwegian syndicate including Stavanger2008 and the company which is now Bergen National Opera co-commissioned Georg Frederik Haas/Jon Fosse´s Melancholia), flirted briefly and disastrously with the now defunct New York City Opera, and held his last post at Teatro Real, Madrid. Typically, while practically on his deathbed, he interfered roundly and imperiously with the process to appoint his successor, insisting that Spain itself had no suitable candidates.

Much has been made of his last commission from Charles Wuorinen, Brokeback Mountain from Annie Proulx´s story – a work he had originally intended for New York. Wuorinen´s dense, uncompromising musical language is just the stuff of Mortier´s artistic prescription for the audience, though it roundly bewildered the conservative Castilians. He attended the premiere despite being gaunt with illness; press pictures show him animated as ever, waving the spikey fingers, insistent, fierce.

We the audience owe him for countless new operas. He may not have treated us well – Mortier´s audience were not handled gently as humans with individual tastes and interests, more as a mass of beings lacking in courage and imagination – but for sure he taught the doubters that opening one´s mind can be exhilarating. He knew that undoubted truth – ask an audience what it wants, and it will want more of what it knows. No surprise. Few of us want what we cannot imagine. But Mortier understood that if artistic leadership is ambivalent, confused about its own taste, it will bewilder the audience. Mortier was certain: we need the new, the provocative and the startling, even if sometimes it fails.

Composers, directors, singers, artists of all kinds owe him something irreplaceable: he asked them all to take risks, and in taking that leap, he encouraged them to grow, be curious, exceed their boundaries, often by quite astonishing margins.

I don´t suppose for one moment that Mortier thought he was brave, or even assumed that he was always right. About the latter his enemies no doubt would totally disagree. His mission was absolute, and one imagines that as his life faded, his mind was still racing with plans and arguments, speeches unmade and music unsung.

Mortier´s project is now our responsibility to continue. Opera has lost a warrior of regal status. Now the king is dead. Long live the princes he has birthed and robed in pioneering spirit.

Mary Miller

Picture: SN/APA/ACHIM SCHEIDEMANN/ DPA