Jean-Luc Fafchamps - Is This The End? (Brussels, 2020)
La Monnaie-De Munt, 2020
Patrick Davin, Ouri Bronchti, Ingrid Von Wantoch Rekowski, Sarah Defrise, Amaury Massion, Albane Carrère
La Monnaie Streaming - 12 September 2020
2020 has been a tumultuous year, the consequences of the Coronavirus pandemic likely to have a longer term impact on all of our lives and in ways we can't yet imagine. As far as the arts are concerned there has been an immediate and noticeable impact. The opera world has not been immune from Covid-19 related deaths, but everyone involved in opera, from performer to spectator, has at least been affected by the cancellations and the pause in live performances. It's a pause however that may give time to reflect, to create anew with an eye towards where we are now and how we adapt for the future.
That's probably why the few opera productions that have been able to go ahead in the meantime can’t help but reflect on the challenging situation we find ourselves in. All great art, if there is truth in it, reflects life back at us, revealing new aspects as we change and as the world changes around us. Così fan tutte and Elektra at Salzburg reflected new ways of looking at life, death, mental illness and social distancing, opera in the process proving that great art can touch deeply and be a meaningful and necessary part of our lives, helping us put the world into a context that we can better understand and help us get through challenging times.
Whether Jean-Luc Fafchamps' Is This The End? can aspire to the operatic greatness of Mozart or Strauss is very much debatable, but like Marina Abramović's 7 Deaths of Maria Callas in Munich - conceived before the outbreak and delayed by the lockdown - it can be seen as a valid artistic response to a time when there is much concern in the world, and at the same time question the role that art plays in our lives. Opera can be responsive to contemporary events, explicitly or simply through the nature of the subjects it deals with and death is certainly a subject that is prominent in opera. The untimely death of conductor Patrick Davin, who worked on this project only to die suddenly just days before its premiere can’t help but give it additional poignancy and real-world meaning.
The subject of the Is This The End? ‘A pop requiem in three parts’ by Jean-Luc Fafchamps is one that consequently delves into a difficult area but it’s not one that opera has ever shied away from. From the very first opera compositions 400 years ago, Orpheus and Eurydice have been an inspiration and a model to explore the relationship between art and death, and that is recognised in the opera itself which openly references such works, including Die Walküre, but there's an acknowledgement also with a brief scene with a Jim Morrison lookalike singing an excerpt from 'The End' that it’s also a subject that provokes and inspires artists in many musical and non-musical artforms.
Is This The End? consequently embraces the classical form of the Requiem mass (the first part here with an In Paradisum, a Dies Irae and Communio) as well as rock and pop elements in the use of more modern instruments that include electric guitars and even a steel drum. The three characters that the opera follows are sung by opera singers Sarah Defrise (The Teenager) and Albane Carrère (The Woman) but there is also a role for Belgian folk-pop singer Amaury Massion (LYLAC) as The Man. As a necessary response to Covd-19, where fully staged operas with a full audience appear to still be some way off - Ingrid Von Wantoch Rekowski's direction of the project also embraces technology, presenting the work as a 'live filmed opera'.
In some ways then Is This The End? is a reflection on the necessity of opera to adapt and be able to adapt to what is becoming the new norm. In these exceptional times opera needs to reach out and extend traditional performance through the technology of streaming, using filmed elements and virtual reality if it wants to continue to be relevant and not be a dead artform. The technology has been available for a while now, but - like working from home arrangements - circumstances have somewhat forced the hand and demanded an urgent response. On the question of whether the composer manages to touch the questions of life and death in any meaningful human way - even with the tragic circumstances of the death of its conductor - it's less obvious that it succeeds.
Using various backstage areas of the La Monnaie theatre and auditorium as a stand-in for the in-between world between life and death might be meaningful in an opera context, but it doesn't seem quite like the kind of environment that a dead teenager girl - seemingly from a drug overdose - would end up in limbo. There’s little that is wrong with the hybrid live/filmed approach though, and indeed a similar approach to an operatic 'underworld' was used for the DVD recording of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice at Český Krumlov Castle. Written and developed in record time under lockdown conditions, the project only started at the beginning of May 2020, here in the world premiere of the Is This The End? the music is performed and broadcast live from the stage of La Monnaie, while the dramatic aspect of the work behind the scenes is enacted in the filmed segments.
Some elements grate. Actually quite a lot grates. First of all, although it is standalone to an extent, it's only the first of an opera in three parts that will be completed Ring Cycle-like in subsequent seasons. Most of the one hour long Part One : Dead Little Girl takes the viewpoint of the Teenage Girl, whose reaction throughout is fairly mundane and unrevealing, constantly wondering along the lines of "What the fuck!", “Where am I and how do I get back?”, which is nonetheless probably an accurate sentiment that a young person in her no-longer-living condition might at first wonder. There's little evidence that Éric Brucher's libretto opens up any philosophical or contemplative view of mortality, but the teenager's confusion is broken up by the voices of The Man and The Woman who will presumably have their own story to play in subsequent parts. There is some further enrichment of the colour and tone of the work in interludes from an angel voice, a choir, as well as strange camp advertisements for death whose purpose is baffling and not particularly original or funny.
I know it sounds like justification more than genuine evaluation of the musical qualities, but like Georg Friedrich Haas and his use of in-between microtones in a similar hinterland at the moment of death in Morgen und Abend, there is something to be said for the musical technique and its approach fitting the subject. At first there's a resistance to the jumble and patchwork of elements, sound effects, dissonance, rock guitar, the blend of opera singers and pop singer as well as the sweary libretto. Conducted by Ouri Broncht it can be difficult to find your musical feet, but that a sense of confusion and discomfort may indeed be the effect that the opera is striving to achieve. Gradually you may find that you do grow accustomed to the distinct sound world which does have a consistency and mood of the sonic environment it establishes.
Links: La Monnaie
