Festival d'Aix en Provence, 2018
Ondřej Adámek, Léo Warynski, Éric Oberdorff, Anne-Emmanuelle Davy, Shigeko Hata, Nicolas Simeha, Landy Andriamboavonjy, accentus/axe 21
ARTE Concert - 10 July 2018
The commissioning of new opera work is an important part of Aix-en-Provence Festival, something necessary to keep opera fresh by providing opportunities for established composers to develop new repertoire, but Aix also seek to extend it to encompass and expand the definition of what opera can be and the audience it can reach. In recent years there have been children's operas, opportunities for female composers and works from other parts of the world with a different musical tradition, played on instruments and in a style far removed from the western tradition. Largely these have all proved to be fascinating and innovative works, enriching the programme.
Commissioning a first opera from the Czech composer Ondřej Adámek is a further ambitious outreach into the field of experimental new contemporary music. Adámek's new works, which premiere regularly at the annual Donaueschinger Musiktage Festival of new music, are unconventional to say the least, but there actually is something theatrical about his use of unconventional sounds and the voice as an instrument. There can also be something of a visual spectacle in his presentation, such as in the 2014 Donaueschinger premier of his 'Körper und Seele for air machine, choir and orchestra', which derived sounds from inflating and deflating balloons.
The voice is the primary musical instrument in Adámek's Seven Stones, an "Opera a capella for four soloist singers and twelve chorister singers", but the work also makes use of a variety of percussive sounds and music performed on unconventional instruments, found objects, kitchen utensils and others built in the composer's workshop specifically for the purposes of the opera. In fact, everything about the composer's approach to the opera is a challenge and questioning of its traditional form. It accepts no preconditions but builds anew, from the instruments to the use of the voice, whether it should be an operatic voice, a normal pitch of voice or the voice as an instrument. Neither is it performed by a static orchestra sitting out of sight in the pit, but moving around and up on the stage.
The conductor too has a different role to play in Seven Stones, setting the story off with the recurring image of putting a stone to one's head. The story and libretto is created by Sjón, an Icelandic poet who has worked with Björk, and there is something mythic (fitting with the theme of this year's Aix Festival) about the story of a mineralogist who sets out on a quest to discover 'the first stone', the stone that Jesus Christ prevented from being used in the Biblical story of the woman condemned to death by stoning for adultery ("Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"). A quivering figure found in the snow at the start of the opera, the collector is brought back by the touch of a stone to a Central European pub where his stone collection is kept. There he is minded to recall how his search for stones would take him from Argentina, to Japan and Paris.
The international flavour of the journey is not accidental, as it in many ways reflects both Adámek and Sjón's own journeys of exploration and discovery of music, tradition and storytelling from far-flung places. Seven Stones however is a journey in time and in space, not just appropriating the sounds of other cultures and traditions, but exploring them for resonance, looking into them for deeper relationship to questions of mythology and its importance to the human spirit. It's not Parsifal by any means, but in a similar respect Seven Stones touches on the essence of what opera is for and about, seeking to overturn some of those grand myths and get to the essence of the truth that we seek to hide behind them. In the case of the stone collector, the reality he is hiding from leads to a resolution that is perhaps a little contrived, but the journey to get there has many other things to reveal.
The use of unconventional instruments, household objects and custom built instruments for each scene is another way of breaking down preconceptions and predetermined musical constructions, Adámek seeks to find something that brings us closer to the sentiments and true nature of the subject. Rather than remain in the pit, these constructions that are wheeled out onto the stage, providing a dual function of being played and also being part of the scenery and props. Those instruments include a framework of pipes that are used to create crashes and rhythms, string instruments that evoke a tango sound for the Argentinean sequence and small hammers on stones for the scene in Japan sounding similar to the striking of blocks in Noh theatre. More than just providing exotic colouration, the instruments - particularly stones - are also crucial to the foundation and building blocks of the work itself.
The use of voices, provided by accentus/axe 21 are similarly woven into the framework of the music and the narrative. They start out percussively, stuttering and staccato, sounds and syllables forming words and then sentences, marking time and rhythm as well as meaning. Sung in English - not always the most musical tongue in contemporary opera - Adámek is not afraid of allowing the words to be audible and lyrical, with musical and melodic phrases, rather than letting it slide into dissonance and recitative or stretch out into extravagant virtuosity just for the sake of it. Whether you find anything meaningful in the message of "A stone thrown in anger never returns to the hand", there is certainly more to be gleaned with the symbolism of a stone, a man, a journey, time and associations with mythology, obsession and idealism. Adámek's musical approach adds another dimension that does extend the work's ideas, and indeed the reach and definition of what opera can be.
Links: Festival d'Aix en Provence, ARTE Concert
