Juranić - The Last Flower of Summer

Zoran Juranić - The Last Flower of Summer

Serbian National Theatre, Novi Sad, Serbia - 2013

Zoran Juranić, Christophe Poncet, Jelena Končar, Miodrag Petrović, Miljenko Đuran, Violeta Srećković, Goran Krneta, Vasa Stajkić, Igor Ksionžik, Ivan Dajić, Darija Olajoš Čizmič

Armel Opera Festival - Szeged - ARTE Live Web - 7th October 2013

The question of musical precedents and references must undoubtedly come up in any modern opera that draws from the historical operatic tradition. The principal influences on the musical language of any modern work that operates in a form that is largely tonal and is not of the minimalist school can often be found in the impressionistic touches of Debussy, with something of the freer form and dissonance of Alban Berg. You might find some musical influence of those composers in Croatian composer Zoran Juranić's The Last Flower of Summer, but the influence and their significance perhaps extends beyond the musical to the actual drama itself.

Pelléas et Mélisande inevitably comes to mind for example at the start of The Last Flower of the Summer when a man, Mr Bert, on his way home one night discovers a mystery woman lying on the street, with no name and uncertain where she has come from. It seems clear however that she has been abducted and has escaped from the clutches of two shadowy figures seen in the background. It's not the only thing shadowy about the story, the characters or the world they live in. From the watchful policeman, to the inquisitive lady walking the street and the interfering landlady of his apartment block, Mr Bert has some difficulty in bring the mystery woman back to his room in order to offer her some help.

Or is there a deeper attraction and motive at work here, perhaps without Mr Bert even realising it? Certainly he doesn't resist when Miss No-Name strips down and seduces him using her obvious charms, but Bert is also undoubtedly attracted by the romantic allure of the exotic and mysterious background she relates to him, particularly the line of poetry that she claims to have improvised at the moment - "If I fall at your feet, pick me up like the last flower of Summer".  It soon transpires however that the poem was not improvised and that there are further lines, just as there are many other mysterious figures and men in the troubled journey that has taken her to Mr Bert.

With a crazed and distraught armed Russian soldier called Vladimir on the streets looking for a missing woman, and a story that has taken NN from Monte Carlo to Venice and beyond, first with a wealthy industrialist Carlo and then with Lorenzo, a knife thrower, it seems that we could be dealing with a Lulu here rather than a Mélisande. There are even discussions between Mr Bert and the woman about opera and the elaborate love stories that they construct, suggesting further that there is some self-referentiality about all this. When it is revealed that NN's story is itself largely fictional and that even the poem is derived from a woman's magazine, this does suggest that the opera works on a meta-level that acknowledges outside influences. On the other hand, the opera can be seen as dealing with the nature of love itself, of meeting a stranger, getting to know them and falling in love, then finding out that you can never know the whole person or the whole story as it falls apart and one's certainties start to unravel.

The Last Flower of Summer was premiered in March 2013 at the Serbian National Theatre of Novi Sad, and the production - directed and conducted by the composer Zoran Juranić himself - is presented here at the 2013 Armel Opera Festival. The staging is necessarily basic, needing to be all-purpose and simplified to not require any major scene changes for the purposes of the opera festival. The entire work is presented in the form of a related story that takes place behind a mesh screen, narrated by an older Mr Bert (in a non-singing role) sitting reflecting on the events in the past at a table with a typewriter. Other than a bed and some portable open-doors, there's not much in the way of set decoration, but Juranić's set employs a see-saw platform at the back of the stage that fulfils most additional dramatic requirements.

The main purpose of the staging here at the Armel Opera Festival is to provide an opportunity to judge the performances of two of the competition singers. Having previously performed in Latin in Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex, the French tenor Christophe Poncet demonstrates his versatility here by singing in Croatian, and he seems to manage it exceptionally well. Serbian soprano Jelena Končar's role as NN is however rather more challenging vocally, dramatically and for the fact that she's singing constantly for a large part of the 90 minutes of the opera. If there was a prize for most daring performance Končar would walk away with it, stripping down and singing before a passionate love scene, baking a lasagne, and even working as an assistant for a knife-thrower (it looked like it was done for real), but her singing ability is impressive on its own and she really took command of the role. Her performance deservedly won her the Best Female Performer at the Festival.

The Armel Opera Festival performance of The Last Flower of Summer can be viewed for free for six months after the performance on the ARTE Live Web streaming service. Subtitles are French only.

Vrebalov - Mileva

Aleksandra Vrebalov - Mileva

Armel Opera Festival, Szeged, Hungary 2012

Aleksandar Kojić, Ozren Prohić, Victoria Markaryan, Dan Popescu, Violeta Srećković, Vladimir Andrić, Jelena Končar, Branislav Jatić, Marina Pavlović Barać, Miljenko Đuran, Verica Pejić, Laura Pavlović, Maja Mijatović, Saša Štulić, Branislav Cvijić, Igor Ksionžik, Goran Krneta, Slavoljub Kocić

Internet streaming - ARTE Live Web, 12 October 2012

The Armel Opera Festival production of Serbian composer Aleksandra Vrebalov’sMileva demonstrates the importance of a good libretto to the overall impact of an opera, or to be more exact, it demonstrates how detrimental a weakness in this area can be to the work as a whole. There is of course a variety of different disciplines that combine to create a work of opera, but they do not function independently, and a good musical score and strong singing performances are likely to be rendered meaningless unless it has a good subject and a strong libretto to express. It’s particularly frustrating that the libretto is so lacking here since the choice of subject is certainly an interesting one and in all other respects, the approach to the production is impressive. Mileva is a portrait opera of Mileva Marić, a native of Novi Sad in Serbia (also the composer Vrebalov’s hometown) who played a significant part in advancing the cause for women at the turn of the 20th century through her marriage to Albert Einstein and through her own studies and scientific research.

Actually, having just written that sentence, that in a nutshell is about as much as you’ll learn about Mileva Marić from this work - that she was a woman, that she broke conventions of what was expected as a woman, that she was involved in scientific research with Albert Einstein, and that she was married for a time to the world famous physicist. Written by Vida Ognjenović, based on her own play ‘Mileva Einstein‘, and adapted for the opera by the composer Aleksandra Vrebalov, the subject ought to be a lot more interesting than it is. It opens up with some promise, with a Serbian folk band playing in the night, as Mileva’s sister Zorka writhes around in a fit in bed, anxiously awaiting a letter from her sister who has gone to study in Zurich - the behaviour of the disturbed young woman and the anxiety of her parents powerfully scored with violent musical colouring by the composer. Elsewhere however, the circumstances of Mileva Marić’s experience are somewhat prosaically laid out in a rather simplistic and expositional manner. She is determined to be a successful academic and scientist, breaking new ground at least as far as challenging what is expected of a woman. Despite the example of Marie Curie however, Mileva is not taken seriously by her lecturer, who tells her to go home and do the cleaning (or something along those lines).

Despite her assistance to the young Albert Einstein (the opera doesn’t really examine the contentious area of how much personal input Mileva has into the development of his theories), it seems however that Mileva’s role is determined by the social expectations that come with her being a married woman and being pregnant. While Albert goes to Berlin then to make his great breakthroughs (”Oh planet, the true genius walks upon you!/ His great discovery will change the face of the planet/ The world is no longer the same from this day on/ The gods are jealous!” sing the chorus), it’s viewed as chasing fame, while his instructions to his wife (”You will make sure than my garments and undergarments are always clean“, “Expect no intimacy from me“, to which a chorus of faceless women in housewives’ clothes respond “I agree“) highlight how society and history view their respective achievements. It’s difficult to know then Einstein announces that his success “belongs to the two of us” whether Mileva’s contribution to it has been of the scientific or the domestic variety.

That’s about the height of the ideas and the characterisation explored in Mileva, the whole thing expressed in the most obvious, expositional and prosaic dialogue. Other than a token gesture of having Milena’s older self looking on and commenting on events - which works well, often in duet with her younger self - there’s little sense of the characters or the subject being explored with any depth or insight in the libretto. Vrebalov’s brilliant musical writing for Mileva however suggests rather a lot more, although it’s questionable how it relates to what is described in the limited character development and dramatic exposition that takes place. Vrebalov scores with broad strokes and bold gestures in lush orchestration. There’s no minimalist picking and plonking here and there, but huge swathes of strings and floating melodies with violent interjections of stabbing brass and percussion. The singing too is filled with melody and written for musical voices carrying a strong sense of personality and expression, but it’s telling that the merely vocalised closing section of Epilogue to the work is just as expressive, if not even more so, than the actual words of the libretto.Mileva doesn’t appear to have much to say, but it at least says it brilliantly.

Much the same thing could be said about the fine production design and the singing performances for the Armel Opera Festival in Szeged, Hungary (broadcast live on the 12th October via internet streaming by the French-German art channel ARTE). The opera festival presents fully staged productions of mainly contemporary works as a means of viewing young singers in competition. Mileva benefitted Georgian soprano Victoria Markaryan in the lead role more than it did Romanian bass Dan Popescu in a relatively minor part as Jakob Erat. Although the role did her no favours as far as establishing characterisation, Markaryan sang well, her voice only slightly too weak on a few occasions to always rise above the overwhelmingly powerful orchestration (superbly performed by the Serbian National Theater Opera under the direction of Aleksandar Kojić). She sounded marvellous however in her duets with Violeta Srećković, who also make a strong impression as the elder Mileva. Also worth mentioning is Jelena Končar’s powerful singing and chilling performance as Mileva’s sister Zorka. Vladimir Andrić was similarly light-toned as Albert Einstein in a way that worked well with Markaryan’s Mileva.

Ozren Prohić’s design and stage direction strived to bring a flow of continuity to the opera’s string of short scenes and succeeded most impressively, requiring little in the way of props, but relying more on the positioning of figures on the stage, using backscreen projections and effective lighting techniques with a consistency of tone that worked with the opera itself. Visually strong, musically impressive, with good singing performances, it was a pity that the libretto wasn’t able to make some rather more insightful points about the life of Mileva Marić, but this was a fascinating work nonetheless, wonderfully presented.

The Armel Opera Festival production of Mileva is currently available to view on-line from the ARTE Live Web site.