Festival d'Aix en Provence, 2018
Bassem Akiki, Airan Berg, Martina Winkel, Loay Srouji, Nai Tamish Barghouti, Yoann Dubruque, Judith Fa, Sachli Gholamalizad
OperaVision - 8 July 2018
The Aix-en-Provence Festival is known for its adventurous approach to new opera works and one of the finest and most surprising revelations was bringing Arabic opera to the stage in 2016, with Palestinian composer Moneim Adwan's Kalîla wa Dimna. There's always the danger that such ventures will be seen as cross-cultural tokenism and fail to make a wider impact, but if that's the case it's through no failing of the quality of the pieces. Nor is it any failing of the Aix festival, who I was delighted to see commission a new piece with Adwan, a composer of real talent and musical storytelling ability who brings a colourful and invigorating freshness to the world of contemporary opera.
While the Arabian folk fable character of Adwan's Kalîla wa Dimna is very much present in this new work, Orfeo and Majnun however is a collaborative opera between Moneim Adwan and two other western composers Howard Moody and Dick van der Harst. Whether the collaboration is a genuine attempt to further experiment with form and composition, or whether it's an attempt to make the unconventional Arabian instrumentation more accessible to an opera audience is debatable, but there is at least a sense that the cross-cultural collaboration is compromised towards tokenism in its presentation.
The story itself for example is not just one story but two blended together to show a common theme across cultures. From the Greek tradition there is Orpheus and Eurydice, a popular subject for western opera from its very beginnings, since it puts music and poetry together as an expression of human endeavour and ability to strive to overcome seeming insurmountable challenges, where love sets itself against death with the journey of Orpheus to Hades. There's a similar treatment of those themes in the ancient Arabic story of Layla and Qays. When Layla is forbidden to marry her true love Qays, the young man becomes 'Majnun' (a crazy man), writing poetry that charms the animals, but their love endures and Layla remains faithful to her love until death.
The connection between the two stories lies on a deeper level of two lovers who find a distance between them that cannot be bridged. The commonality is made clear in a number of overlapping scenes, Layla walking a distance behind Qays in one scene while Eurydice follows Orpheus out of the Underworld, but the distance of those few steps is nonetheless a huge gulf. Orpheus's song charms Cerberus, the three-headed guard-dog of Hades, and Qays likewise writes poetry that enchants and draws animals to him. Love, represented in the abstract by music and singing (opera) is the unifying force in both cases that enables man to exceed his human boundaries and be capable of something greater, something written in the stars.
Despite their commonalities, bringing them together creates something of an Ariadne auf Naxos situation, another imperfect matching of life, myth and art that was also part of this year's Aix programme. While the stories should come together naturally, there is however a clear division between the eastern and western traditions in Orfeo and Majnun that is immediately marked by the instrumentation and melody, each composer seeming to work on their own alternating section of the work. If you listen closely however there is some crossover of harmonies in the sections where Layla and Eurydice meet and where the stories overlap, but it rarely does the piece really feel like it has a single voice of its own.
Obviously this is inevitable to some extent, as musical composition is rarely a collaborative process in the opera or classical tradition, but the narrative doesn't help matters. Martina Winkel's libretto does unfortunately tells too much rather than let the story and the music fill in the detail. It goes as far as including a narrator who explains the moral and the message throughout on the common power of myth just in case you don't get it, as well as providing a bridge between the two stories that as a consequence remain largely separate.
Where it might have come together better also is in the stage production. Directed by Airan Berg and Martina Winkel, you can't say that they don't make every effort to provide a strong visual presentation that attempts to integrate the stories. There are abstract projections, giant life-size puppets of the animals, figures with animal masks, puppet shows and shadow plays. The only thing lacking is the character direction and singing, which mainly consists of standing singing with heartfelt expressions and some dance movements/yoga poses that don't really express the underlying sentiments terribly well.
The need to ensure that everyone understands the cross-cultural importance of the work also extends to the make-up of the chorus and the orchestra, which combines traditions as well as amateur and professional singers and musicians. While the chorus is mixed age, the predominance of children's voices does make it sound like a children's story, particularly when aligned with the moralising narrative. The international composition of the Mediterranean Youth Orchestra however are superb, creating a wonderful range of sounds and melodies under the direction of Bassem Akiki, navigating the changing moods and styles well.
I think it's important that the Aix-en-Provence festival (and La Monnaie in Brussels who are one of the co-producers here) continue to support innovation in contemporary opera and seek outreach to a wider international audience of all ages, but the creators of Orfeo and Majnun, Airan Berg and Martina Winkel, seem to feel it is within their remit to make the cross-cultural message what the opera is about and it feels a little patronising. Again however, even if it highlights the contrast in approach more than commonalities, there is much to admire in what Moneim Adwan's Arabic melodies and storytelling have to bring to help diversify the language of contemporary opera.
Links: Festival d'Aix-en Provence, OperaVision
