Hosokawa - Matsukaze (Brussels, 2017)

Toshio Hosokawa - Matsukaze

La Monnaie-De Munt, Brussels - 2017

Bassem Akiki, Sasha Waltz, Barbara Hannigan, Charlotte Hellekant, Frode Olsen, Kai-Uwe Fahnert

ARTE Concert - March 2017

Using music as a means of bringing out or fusing the drama with another more spiritual dimension is I imagine is something that most opera composers attempt to do, but based on the few works that I've heard from him, it seems to me that Toshio Hosokawa manages to do this rather better than most contemporary composers. It's perhaps because Hosokawa shares an affinity with traditional Japanese Nôh drama, an aspect that was alluded to in Hosokawa's most recent opera, Stilles Meer, but which is even more apparent in direct adaptation in his earlier 2011 opera Matsukaze.

Still, it's not easy to translate expression of the stylised movements and gestures from Nôh to the western form of lyric drama, and it usually requires other techniques and instruments to bring out a sense of the other. Adapting two Nôh dramas in her 2016 opera Only The Sound Remains, for example, Kaija Saariaho made effective use of the otherworldly sounds of the Finnish kantele harp. Hosokawa often uses recordings of sounds of wind, rain and waves as well as other instruments to evoke nature, but he also makes effective use of other Nôh elements not commonly used in opera to such an extent: movement and dance.

And to that end, Hosokawa has dance choreographer Sasha Waltz as an effective collaborator and in La Monnaie an opera company willing to explore such new collaborations and extend the range modern opera by commissioning such experimental works. Musically, theatrically, dramatically, in terms of performance and yes perhaps even spiritually, Matsukaze is one of the most successful new productions of contemporary opera and its 2011 production revived here for La Monnaie's 2016-17 season demonstrates this beyond any question.

As with Stilles Meer, Hosokawa takes time to establish a sense of mood and place that is outside of the common experience and the common opera tradition. To the sound of wind through trees and the distant sound of the sea, grey and white clad figures spin, swirl, roll and interweave like crashing waves, crosswinds or perhaps invisible spirits. Into this space walks a priest (Frode Olsen), again singing in a manner not typical of the western tradition, but more like a ritual chant or prayer. Hosokawa paints the scene of this introduction with a flurry of percussion, shimmering strings and whispering flutes that gasp and blow.

In an adaptation of the original 14th century Nôh drama, Matsukaze relates the story of two women, Matsukaze (Wind in the Pines) and her sister Marasame (Autumn Rain), whose names the priest sees carved in a memorial on a pine tree. In a dream, the ghosts of the sisters tell their tale, how they became the lovers of Yukihara, a courtier exiled to Suma for three years. Soon after his departure, the women learned of his death and died from grief. Unable to let go of their earthly longing however, they are condemned to remain tied to the world of mortals.

Although the question of abandoning earthly attachments in order to pass over to another state of is an important aspect of the Buddhist doctrine, there doesn't appear to be any deeper message or moral to be drawn from Matsukaze than this. As in the original Nôh drama however, the true meaning or value of the work is in the ritual and the expression of the drama in performance, and it's here that Hosokawa's music conducted by Bassem Akiki, its use of sounds and silence, the dance moves of Sasha Waltz and the set designs of Pia Maier Schriever and Chiharu Shiota all create an effective environment for Barbara Hannigan and Charlotte Hellekant to struggle to cast off those powerful human emotions.

The darkened stage following the priest's discovery of the memorial to the women related to him by a fisherman, opens up (to the rippling of a stream) to reveal a webbed background of black threads, representing the seaweed that the women gathered, as well as a barrier that separates the spirit world from the world of mortals (not unlike the curtains and barriers in Peter Sellars' production of Saariaho's Only the Sound Remains). Scurrying high up in the tangle of the netting are Matsukaze and Marasame, who descend - their white robes turning to black robes - to re-enact the story of their own entanglement with Yukihara in the mortal domain that they have not yet escaped.

The production, like the original Nôh drama, uses a variety of means to relate the story and find other ways to delve beneath the surface and represent the less tangible emotions that are in conflict. Much of that in the opera is taken up by the dancers, some of whose movements and roles are somewhat abstract and difficult to define. One figure with his upper face and eyes masked could be 'blind desire'. The use of props are limited, but a hat left behind by Yukihara is used as a representation of Matsukaze's emotional attachment to the material world, which is also represented in the latter part of the production as a large boxed frame. Within and without this the dancers also shift and gather to form the pine tree that is a representation of Matsukaze's love. Her sister Marasame is able to resist being wound up into the tree and consequently succeeds in eventually passing over to the other side.

The role of the singers then is somewhat unusual as in addition to the considerable singing challenges and differences that define the two sisters, Barbara Hannigan and Charlotte Hellekant also have to move, interact and dance with these abstractions, fluidly moving from one state to another. Hosokawa's score, conducted by Bassem Akiki, also works fluidly with Sasha Waltz's choreography to give the simple tale of Matsukaze's fate a sense of momentum and urgency. Matsukaze's ghost would appear to be doomed to remain unable to depart entirely from the physical plane, but Hosokawa and Waltz suggest a more peaceful if unclear resolution as an older woman, dressed in white, moves slowly across the stage as all the other elements fall away into a silence broken only by the rippling of water.

Links: La Monnaie-De Munt

Lang - Re:igen (Schwetzinger Festspiele, 2014 - Webcast)

Bernhard Lang - Re:igen

SWR Festspiele Schwetzingen, 2014

Rolf Gupta, Georges Delnon, Almerija Delic, Cornel Frey, Clara Meloni, Alin Deleanu, Amélie Saadia, Kai-Uwe Fahnert, Lasse Penttinen

ARTE Concent, Live streaming - 25 April 2014

Written in 1900, Arthur Schnitzler's play 'La Ronde' or 'Reigen' caused something of a scandal when it was first published. Using its circular structure, the play connects men and women of various social classes through ten sexual encounters that work their way like a relay back to the same prostitute who is seen in the first encounter. The play has a lot to say about the nature of class and society in turn-of-the-century Vienna, but it's also revealing about the attitudes and the relationships between men and women.

It's the fact that the encounters between them are sexual in nature that is significant here. Each of the scenes are brief, fleeting, lustful and exploitative on the part of at least one of the parties (usually the men), but each of the participants is looking for something, whether it's an escape from their regular partner or illicitly seeking love, attention and reassurance in the arms of another. The encounters are also each divided into a before and an after the act (which is not described), where instead of finding what they are looking for, there's a measure of dissatisfaction, shame and disappointment.

La Ronde doesn't seem to have the kind of structure that makes it suitable for adaptation to a traditional narrative format, but it has been successfully made into film (most notably by Max Ophuls in 1950), and has been the subject of at least one other opera that I'm aware of, Philippe Boesman's Reigen. Bernhard Lang's Re:igen, composed for the Schwetzingen Festival in 2012 and revived here in 2014, uses instrumentation and a "transformative iteration" technique of repetition that is very different from Boesman's more serial method. It's a technique that seems better suited to the cyclical and repeated structure of 'La Ronde', allowing it to have a consistency and a flow, with subtle variations of expression.

Lang's Re:igen retains the all-important structure of the original work and the social class/profession of its characters, the opera divided in to ten short sections (1. the prostitute and the policeman, 2. the policeman and the parlour maid, 3. the parlour maid and the young gentleman, 4. the young gentleman and the married woman, 5. the married woman and the husband, 6. the husband and the schoolgirl, 7. the schoolgirl and the author, 8. the author and the actress, 9. the actress and the rich man, 10. the rich man and the prostitute). It's worth noting that it's a married couple, the only legitimate encounter, that lies at the very centre of this circle of deception and disappointment.

What is evidently significant about the encounters is that they are somewhat ill-matched, the connections briefly made only to be just as quickly broken. Lang's score works to the rhythms of Michael Sturminger's libretto - the singing adhering also to regular speech patterns that rise to lyrical expression in moments of high emotion - but it has an instrumentation and language that allows it to describe situation and character. It's not an easy work to sing and act, and it's to the credit of the cast that they define these roles so well. The clash of types and personalities is evidently what is important and Lang finds a tone and a style for each character in each encounter (Eastern Turkish sounds for example suggest that the schoolgirl is of ethnic origin), all of them contained within an overarching and very distinctive sound world.

That sound world is far from conventional opera instrumentation and distinct even from what is more commonly heard in avant-garde or contemporary classical opera. The 23 musicians for the opera consist of members of the SWR Radio Symphonic Orchestra as well as SWR Big Band players. There's consequently a rhythmic pulse to score that is anchored with an electronic bass and a drum-beat, the rhythm having a definite jazz swing, or even a slightly sordid lounge quality of Kurt Weill-like decadence that suits the subject very well. There seems to be an effort to integrate the hopeful/lustful musical expression of each of the partnerships in the lead-up to sex into a common rhythm that inevitably breaks down into a resigned dissatisfaction in the 'after' section.

The staging also plays a significant part in retaining the sense of flow that is so much a part of the structure and purpose of the work. The dramatic action all takes place in what looks like the rear stalls of a rococo Baroque theatre, with chairs scattered around, TV screens and monitors, and even a descending chandelier. Despite the clutter on the stage Georges Delnon's direction allows situations to develop, change, flow and move on. Rolf Gupta conducts the orchestra from behind the stage, the musicians spread out around the boxes of the theatre's circle. A mattress is an important prop here and could be used to connect and make other implications of sharing and passing on, but there's a more realistic variety of positions adopted. Like the play however, the sexual act is elided.

Implications however are important in determining whether La Ronde has something more to tell us than just providing us with a snapshot of fin-de-siècle Vienna society. This production doesn't seem to have much to tell us about the divisions, deceptions and exploitation between class and position in our own society, nor does it seem to raise issues such as the transmission of STDs or AIDS. There are a few small tweaks in Lang and Sturminger's Re:igen - some doubling of roles that might suggest the interchangeability of partners, the "actress" moreover being a man in drag - but whether there is any intentional commentary made here is hard to determine. Whatever you read into it - and at the very least, it has much to say about what men and women expect from relationships - La Ronde remains a fascinating piece and Re:igen explores the depths and mysteries with wonderful fluidity.

Links: ARTE Concert