Myth-making : ’s and ’s Jane Eyre [2007]

David Malouf, one of ’s leading writers and intellectuals, read Jane Eyre (and Wuthering Heights) at the age of twelve when he spent hot Christ- mas holidays at Surfers Paradise, and was fascinated by Jane going for a walk in the snow (cf. “Lost Classics” 7). This fascination with the world of Jane Eyre made him suggest the story for a second opera on which to collaborate with Michael Berkeley, whose earlier opera, Baa Baa Black Sheep, with a libretto by Malouf based on ’s youth and his Jungle Books, had been very successfully premiered in 1993. Berkeley “really took a very big breath” (qtd. Service 2002: 6) at the suggestion, knowing about the challenge of basing his new opera on one of the best-known and best-loved novels in the English language. With Malouf, however, he was in very good hands for meeting that challenge of writing a successful libretto drawn from a sensitive literary text: it was to be Malouf’s fourth libretto, two of which he had written for the Aus- tralian composer Richard Meale (, 1986, based on ’s great novel, and Mer de Glace, 1991, based on Frankenstein), the third being Baa Baa Black Sheep. All the stories which Malouf has turned into librettos have an ele- ment of “the mythic or fantastic” (Benson: 3), which speaks for the writer’s wisdom about opera, and Berkeley was happy to acknowledge that Malouf “real- ly understands the nature of opera” (Copeland 6). Stephen Benson (passim) has carefully traced Malouf’s very sound conceptions of music, in particular his views on the libretto, especially as they apply to Berkeley’s . We will re- turn to these views later, yet a general statement by Malouf will be able to form a fruitful point of departure for our discussion of Berkeley’s opera Jane Eyre as an adaptation of the Brontë novel: “No libretto can reproduce the novel from which it is drawn. […] The best a libretto can do is reproduce the experience of the book in a new and radically different form.” (Malouf 1986, qtd. Halliwell: 2001: 33) 356 Myth-Making Opera: David Malouf ’s and Michael Berkeley’s Jane Eyre

Before following up the fundamental differences to be observed between the Jane Eyre novel and opera, a few facts about the opera and its composer should be given. The opera was premiered at the 2000 Cheltenham Interna- tional Festival, whose Artistic Director Berkeley has been since 1995. It was produced by the Music Theatre , had “glowing reviews” (Price) and sub- sequently toured the UK. It is a chamber opera in two acts, lasting a little over 70 minutes, and has a cast of only five singers (Jane Eyre – soprano, Adele – sop- rano, Mrs Fairfax – mezzo-soprano, Mrs Rochester – contralto, Mr Rochester – bass) and an orchestra of not more than 13 instrumentalists. It is modelled on ’s chamber operas, mainly The Turn of the Screw, which is also otherwise re-echoed in various ways. The link to Britten is no surprise as Michael Berkeley, who was born in 1948, is Britten’s godson and was from his earliest childhood influenced by the famous composer’s musical language and artistic discipline. This accounts for Berkeley’s basic grounding in a modernist aesthetics, yet further shaping forces for him (cf. Copeland 3f.) were his time as a chorister at , which made him familiar with musi- cal fundamentals such as Gregorian plainchant and Bach, and French influen- ces (Poulenc, Ravel, Debussy), and Stravinsky, whose sensational Rites of Spring, which opened up for him the world of rhythm. Berkeley also played in a rock group around the age of twenty – all in all, a wide musical background, typical of his generation. Referring to the musical style as found in his operas, Berke- ley said himself “that opera is not necessarily the palette on which you mix your most innovative colours”, and one ought to be “more cautious” because of the singers and the audience (Copeland 7). This moderation, characteristic of modern English opera, has elicited slightly condescending remarks from some critics1, yet if the opera’s music may be disappointing to critics of an avantgarde persuasion, it answers successfully expectations of a more general audience and finds itself – with its mixture of styles2 – in league with established postmod- ernist practices. The recording of the 2000 premiere of Jane Eyre (with book- let) was brought out by Chandos in 2002 (see Service 2002).

1 “[…] an enjoyable melodrama” (Elsom); too much “period costume and waltz tunes” (Griffiths); “naïve interludes that lack the terror of Britten’s ‘Malo’” (Elsom), referring to Miles’s song in The Turn of the Screw; “[a]s a purely aural experience, it has its limitations” (Haywood). 2 “[…] somewhere between Britten and Berg, with a nod (at the end) to Lloyd-Webber thrown in”, “soaring Puccini melodies” (Haywood), a “saucy Parisian waltz and a snatch of Donizetti” (Mad- docks).