Benjamin - Picture A Day Like This (Aix-en-Provence, 2023)

George Benjamin - Picture A Day Like This

Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, 2023

George Benjamin, Daniel Jeanneteau, Marie-Christine Soma, Marianne Crebassa, Anna Prohaska, Beate Mordal, Cameron Shahbazi, John Brancy, Lisa Grandmottet, Eulalie Rambaud, Matthieu Baquey

ARTE Concert - 14 July 2023

I have to say that my first impression of the new opera from George Benjamin and Martin Crimp premiered at the 2023 Aix-en-Provence Festival was that it appeared to be a slight work; a simple story, a fable, a fairy tale with a fairly obvious moral and meaning. Such thoughts were also there to an extent while viewing the previous two operas, Written on Skin and Lessons in Love and Violence, at least in as far as they seemed overly studied and mannered, removed from the everyday. Both those operas however nonetheless left a great impression and have rewarded further listening for detail and substance, and I have little doubt that Picture A Day Like This will be the same.

Running to around 65 minutes Picture A Day Like This is certainly shorter and perhaps even slighter than the previous two operas by Benjamin and Crimp, but it is by no means a lesser work, since it deals with deep emotional reaction to difficult human experiences and situations. It doesn't employ a full orchestra, nor does it appear to take in the wide range of emotions and dramatic action as the previous two works. Rather it's a chamber opera with a smaller cast and orchestra, although it does have at least as few principal roles as Written on Skin. Like that work, it's equally as intense and bristling with underlying menace and unease, only here it does so in an appropriately more concentrated form. Such is the impact that it's only when you come out of it that you realise how successfully the composer and librettist have gripped you in their world.

The plot is related in the simplistic manner of a fairy-tale, but also similarly touching on deep human emotions and universal experiences the way a fairy-tale can do. And, in the opera form, that means that it has the benefit of music to delve even further, and we know that Benjamin's music is highly capable of doing that. The story relates the loss of a child by the Woman (the creators like to operate on the idea of general human rather than specific), who is so distraught she searches for a means to bring him back to life. She is told that if by the end of the day she can find a single person who is happy with their life and cut a button from their sleeve, her child will be returned to her, and she is given a list of a number of people who all seem to be living a life of perfect bliss. Evidently, their lives are not as filled with contentment as they appear to be.

The implication or moral is clearly evident. Everyone carries their own burdens, and if they appear to be happy, it's only because they have had to learn live with their fears and trauma - some more successfully than others. Ultimately, many of those strategies have failed and there is no real pleasure to be found in material possessions, in fame or success, even love has its limitations. None of these situations is comparable to living with the death of your young child, nor is it that the intention when it comes to the Woman's final encounter with Zabelle and the beautiful garden she has created to suggest that it's in any way similar to a composer's struggle with their art, but the latter suggests that is important is finding a way of living with your unhappiness, making it a part of you, not denying it.

It's a simple moral or message then, one that shouldn't need dressed up in a fairy-tale situation with intense music, but here is no question that bereavement - particularly of a child - is a challenging and multi-faceted subject to explore. The coming to any realisation is a journey that the Woman has to make and be experienced, and - to a much lesser extent obviously - the listener has to make that same journey over the course of the opera. And to be honest, that would be hard to endure over anything longer than the running time of just over an hour. Nonetheless, George Benjamin uses every minute of that to find the right note, taking care not to overload it, using space and silence as important elements to give room for the music, the situation and the content to breathe and express itself to the fullest extent. There are few if any dramatic flourishes, and nothing seems superfluous. At times the score feels like 'mood music' or soundtrack backing in the way that it rarely draws attention to itself, but it nonetheless weaves a complex way through the emotional and dramatic content.

The impression that this is slight and lacking in dramatic action is probably also due to the mostly dark, minimalist stage direction, but this is also deceptive. Carefully directed by Daniel Jeanneteau and Marie-Christine Soma, as well has handling the set design, dramaturgy and lighting design, it's actually appropriate and essential that the attention isn't drawn away from the emotional impact of the primary expression of the music and the singers. As such it's highly effective, using glass and mirrors so that figures seem to appear from nowhere and vanish like in a dream. When it comes then to stressing the vital importance of the impact of Zabelle's garden then, the effects are extraordinary and almost magical. All of it contributes to enveloping you in this otherworldly place, the otherworldly place where grief takes you.

Since all the singers were hand-picked by the composer, who worked with them to play to their strengths, it's no wonder that the singing is so effective in the part it plays in this. The performances are as carefully calibrated as the music, with Marianne Crebassa creating the vital central role of the Woman. Crebassa's ability is well known on these pages, but here in such a role where a huge journey has to be undertaken over the running time of little more than an hour, it goes beyond technical ability and into timing, delivery, expression, feeling and being. Similarly, you might regret that Anna Prohaska doesn't have a larger and more showy role, but again it's a case of providing only what is essential to the work. The other singing roles of the happy but not happy people the Woman encounters - Beate Mordal, Cameron Shahbazi and John Brancy - are likewise impressive in their ability to tap into the essence of the situation and what lies behind in the music.

Benjamin, as is customary for this composer, conducts the score himself, leading the Mahler Chamber Orchestra through the dark intricacies of the score. It's a short work with few characters, few situations and minimal orchestration, but when Marianne Crebassa gazes out as the dying notes remain suspended in the air and the listener emerges out of this dream-like state, any suggestion or impression that this is a minor work is immediately erased. I've no doubt that not only does it reach as deep as Benjamin and Crimp's previous collaborations. but as well as standing on its own terms, Picture A Day Like This actually contributes another level to their body of work as a whole.

External links: Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, ARTE Concert

Strauss - Ariadne auf Naxos (Aix, 2018)

Richard Strauss - Ariadne auf Naxos

Festival d'Aix en Provence, 2018

Marc Albrecht, Katie Mitchell, Lise Davidsen, Eric Cutler, Sabine Devieilhe, Angela Brower, Huw Montague Rendall, Jonathan Abernethy, Emilio Pons, David Shipley, Beate Mordal, Andrea Hill, Elena Galitskaya, Josef Wagner, Rupert Charlesworth, Petter Moen, Jean-Gabriel Saint Martin, Maik Solbach, Sava Vemić, Paul Herwig, Julia Wieninger

ARTE Concert - 11 July 2018

For a work that I used to consider a bit of a one-note meta-theatrical joke confected as a compromise to a failed theatrical/operatic crossover, Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos has continued to enjoy popularity and stimulate a variety of interpretations. It shouldn't be that surprising, because at its heart the work is precisely about how art as entertainment (and particularly opera) has a unique way of connecting with people to express and communicate a rich variety of life experiences.

And if that's not enough there's always the music of Richard Strauss, gorgeous and alluring in its own right, as well as forming a bridge between the words and the deeper intentions of the work; like Capriccio, making a clever self-referential commentary at the same time on its working methods and intentions. Director Katie Mitchell is also used to working with divisions between form and content and trying to find ways to bridge them in her stage productions. One other divide you will also find Mitchell tackling is the male/female divide in classic works, seeing to offer a 'corrective' to their traditional male-dominated bias. How will Ariadne auf Naxos stand up to such scrutiny?

A one-note joke or not, there is a certain boldness in how Ariadne auf Naxos turns its gaze on the process of opera and performance, in how it marries popular entertainment with high art, and it's obviously necessary for that marriage to be seen to be successful and mutually beneficial, but certain structural and ideological weaknesses remain that need to be addressed. Regardless of whether you agree with or find musical value in Strauss and Hofmannsthal's somewhat nostalgic neoclassical idealisation of opera's past, and some of the reactionary attitudes towards men and women that persist within it, there is at least the structural disjoint in Ariadne auf Naxos's division between Prologue and Opera.

Forced to adopt this as a fix after the failure to pair the operatic element with Molière's 'Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme' in the original 1912 version, the two parts don't sit perfectly well with one another either in the reworked 1916 version. Once the Prologue is out of the way, the dispute between the artists and the entertainers over how to simultaneously present their different perspectives because of the whim of the Richest Man in Vienna resolved by compromising artistic integrity for commerce, the meta-theatrical framing is largely forgotten about. Even though the contrasting dialectic remains at the heart of the work, it does tend to forget its original audience (the guests of the Richest Man in Vienna) and seems to start taking itself rather seriously presenting itself to the 'real' audience as a neoclassical drama/music theatre revue with a grand Wagnerian ending.

You could look at that as intentional, as the work itself taking on its own artistic life, removing itself from the framework of the craft, from the personalities and problems of its creation to become something that relates directly to an audience without any necessity of explanation or commentary, and if so, it's another level of cleverness. It does tend to make the intention of any director seeking to insert another level of remove or abstraction on the work rather more difficult, but it has been done, most successfully I believe in Katharina Thoma's 2013 Glyndebourne production. Katie Mitchell's response to the work, in collaboration with Martin Crimp, doesn't seem to have quite as much to offer.

The immediate intention of their Aix production seems to be to make that divide between creativity and creation visible again, but also to show how they are brought together through an audience. It's a worthwhile endeavour, certainly central to the premise of opera, and in the process Mitchell and Crimp also find a way to draw the Prologue back once again with the Opera. Rather than remaining invisible in this version of the opera, since they don't have any part to play in Ariadne auf Naxos (or 'Ariadne auf Naxos'), the Richest man in Vienna, his wife and guests remain seated throughout in this production to the left of the stage while the players perform for them on the right. Occasionally, they make comments on the performance (a role they performed in the first version), and in one or two places are drawn in to participate or get closer to the drama. When the opera finishes, it's indoor fireworks that are set off and the performers put on their party hats and take a bow to their on-stage audience. It brings the work full circle in a way that Strauss and Hofmannsthal neglected to do and for which they could be justifiably be criticised.

That's fine as far as it goes, but obviously Katie Mitchell will have other issues with Ariadne auf Naxos as it stands, not least of which is the pomposity that is allowed to remain in the performance of the opera seria part of 'Ariadne auf Naxos'. Whether you agree that Strauss got carried away and forgot about it supposedly being a pastiche, it's clear nonetheless that the musical composition is much more considered than clever, Strauss fully aware of the variety of musical forms and techniques employed and how they interrelate with the drama. What is harder to swallow is how men and women are depicted, where the women are waiting for a man, "a new god", who even though he may be unfaithful is better than nothing and necessary to deliver them from their loneliness and misery. It depends how you play it obviously, and with how much tongue in the cheek.

Katie Mitchell is obviously not going to have any of that, or leave any room for ambiguity. In her version, Ariadne is pregnant, and it's the delivery of the baby - which takes place on-stage - that is the birth of a new god, Bacchus. Where this leaves the real Bacchus in the opera I'm not entirely sure, he could be Theseus returned or Hermes, the messenger from the Gods who delivers her this 'gift'. It's very much one of those feminist twists that Mitchell can employ that seem unnecessary and don't always work terribly well (Miranda, Lucia di Lammermoor), but here I liked how it deflated the grand Wagnerian sweep accompanying the woman finding her man. The playing out of the drama within a dining room instead of a desert island also helps in that regard, reminding you that it all remains a theatrical construct.

Some of it works and some of it doesn't, but what works and what doesn't will obviously depend on the individual viewer. The role reversal dressing of the richest man in Vienna in a dress and his wife in a suit felt gratuitous and unnecessary to me, and I felt that Zerbinetta's role and the risk of her appearing to be a bimbo may have been underplayed, allowing the Ariadne storyline to dominate, but the "discussion" between Zerbinetta and the Composer in the Prologue is touching, all credit to Sabine Devieilhe and Angela Brower. What really makes it come alive here however is the fine musical performance of the Orchestre de Paris under Marc Albrecht, playing down the propensity for the work to seem overblown or just too damn clever, finding instead the incredible variety of expression within it.

That incredible variety also extends to the singing roles in Ariadne auf Naxos, and the cast assembled here are outstanding. Lise Davidsen is not the most natural actress, but less can be more for Strauss, particularly when you can express everything so well through the voice. Davidsen is just superb, carrying gravity and a commanding vocal presence that is just extraordinarily rich and expressive in her hold and control and swelling of a line. Sabine Devieilhe doesn't have quite the same volume but is an appropriately flighty and bird-like Zerbinetta, and always impressive. If her presence isn't given the same stature in Mitchell's production, she remains dignified and 'luminous' in her eye-catching dress. Eric Cutler's Bacchus may also be given shorter shrift here, but his singing is clear and lyrical. Angela Brower also makes a very favourable impression as the Composer.

Links: Festival d'Aix en Provence, ARTE Concert