Tempo 60:238 CD Reviews
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Tempo 60 (238) 35–50 © 2006 Cambridge University Press 35 DOI: 10.1017/S0040298206000313 Printed in the United Kingdom BRIAN FERNEYHOUGH: Shadowtime. Nicolas Hodges me to be, in essence, true to the work’s (pno, speaker), Mats Scheidegger (gtr), Neue extraordinary range – bitterly, naturalistically self- Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Nieuw Ensemble, c. Jurjen destructive at one extreme, seeking out a kind of Hempel. NMC D123 (2-CD set). rapt, stylized, stability at the other. I was certainly looking forward to seeing the production again in Brian Ferneyhough has written that his opera London in July 2005, and it was a disappointment Shadowtime ‘takes as its starting point the suicide when the planned Sadlers Wells staging was and imagined descent into the underworld of the cancelled and replaced by a concert performance German theorist and writer Walter Benjamin’. at the Coliseum, the source of this 2-CD set. However, since he is ‘not interested in either the This change had obvious consequences for the development of opera or the evolution of its recording. To some extent, I suppose, the almost conventions’, he has ‘tried to do something not complete lack of movement, or action, brought usually attempted in opera – and especially not performance conditions closer to those of a now – and that is to explore issues of morality and recording studio, although a studio recording social conditions’. At first glance, this is a question- might have used quite different set-ups to cope able statement: don’t Wozzeck, Peter Grimes and a with the very varied forces used in each of the good many other operas or dramatic works, scenes. Under different conditions, the solo guitar including those by Steve Reich and John Adams, in Scene 2 and the solo piano in Scene 4 might explore such issues? But what Ferneyhough have been given better positions within the probably means is that other operas don’t attempt overall sound configuration. On the whole, his Benjamin-inspired version of allegory, the nevertheless, I think that listening to these discs intransigent contention that, in an allegory (as the provides a pretty good reconstruction of the Benjamin-authority Graeme Gilloch puts it) ‘the experience in the Coliseum, if not of that in meaning of the subject is torn apart’. Munich’s Prinzregententheater. By July 2005 the Ferneyhough is not interested ‘in representing performers were well-practised at pacing individuals according to established rules of themselves against the work’s testing demands, characterisation’: nevertheless, he admits to with only occasional signs of strain in the very finding Benjamin ‘particularly sympathetic’, high soprano lines. And the deal between NMC partly on account of his ‘richly chaotic’ and the BBC has probably helped to make the set personality, whose philosophical and aesthetic available much sooner than might otherwise have concerns make him ‘the archetypal intellectual of been the case. his time’. Benjamin actually appears in two of the The main cause for regret is that NMC were opera’s seven scenes, though less as a character, not able to include Charles Bernstein’s teasingly still less a ‘hero’, than as the subject of a process in intricate libretto (with a flair for punning which that descent into the underworld – the unmatched since Stephen Pruslin’s Punch and myth of death and time (life) as exceeding human Judy) in the booklet. Details of how the text can understanding – is explored, but not in any sense be obtained via a Shadowtime website are resolved. For Benjamin as allegorist, again provided, but it was distributed free with the according to Gilloch, ‘the world never appears as a programme at the Coliseum performance, and legible totality, but always instead as an irres- offers an enormous boost to comprehension, olvable puzzle’. Shadowtime has similar attributes. even when particular segments, usually in The result of Ferneyhough’s ten-year Benjamin layered, overlapping textures, are not audible. project was first seen in May 2004 at the Munich Nevertheless, comprehension doesn’t come Biennale in a production that aroused mixed easily, even with the text; it will always be difficult responses. In these pages (Tempo No. 230, October for most opera-goers to join the austere sect that 2004, pp.53–5), Graham Lack outlined the case for welcomes the chance to elevate ideas above the prosecution as far as the production was character so determinedly. This ‘richly chaotic’ concerned, and many of his points are well taken, Benjamin is not celebrated by Ferneyhough as a though I was less incensed by the overall approach tragic figure driven to despair and/or suicide by a than he was. The Munich production seemed to set of circumstances which his intellectual powers 36 (his personality) made him specially unable to agencies, and of human qualities that artists – cope with. But perhaps there are enough operas especially those concerned with ‘issues of about characters like that already? morality and social conditions’ – forget at their From the composer’s own perspective, peril. To react in this way is clearly to risk therefore, it might be as irrelevant to attempt to forsaking allegory for reality (verismo?), out of align his opera with the genre’s humanistic nostalgia for a ‘legible totality’, that unified world mainstream as it is, for some, to feel compassion which Benjamin explicitly resisted. Ferneyhough’s for the sacrifical victim in the final dance of The ending is at the opposite extreme from the Rite of Spring. But can we consider how depicted deaths of Verdi’s Otello, Berg’s Wozzeck, Shadowtime ‘explores issues of morality and social or Britten’s Gustav von Aschenbach. Yet what is conditions’ without mediating between ideas – real about it, and powerfully conveyed in this philosophy – and character-psychology? Perhaps performance, is a lament for lost, or wasted time, we can make a start by way of the work’s starkest lost, or wasted lives; a lament to which only contrast, between the last two scenes. In the first sentient humans can give voice. (Scene 6) an individual assumes the guise of a Arnold Whittall demented lecturer (a distracted philosopher?) who can only speak – not sing – by way of parody and word play, and whose final conundrum homes in not so obliquely on the matter of BARRY: The Intelligence Park. Richard Jackson (bass bar), meaning: ‘Who’s to say, what’s to say/Whether Paul Harhy (ten), Sephen Richardson (bass), Angela what is is not/Or whether what is is so because/is Tunstall (sop), Nicholas Clapton (counter-ten), Buddug so because it’s not’. Then the lecturer exits, Verona James (contralto), Almeida Ensemble c. Robert gesturing madly, talking to himself – a feature of Houlihan. NMC D122 the original production which Nicolas Hodges was able to preserve in the London performance. Gerald Barry’s first opera took nearly a decade to So much for the collapse of the unbridled write and has taken even longer to emerge on CD. intellect, to the point where furious feelings This NMC release of The Intelligence Park uses the outlive verbal expression. At first the orchestral BBC broadcast recording of the original 1990 conclusion to Scene 6 ups the unstable, mocking Almeida Opera production – a second production ante. But eventually the mood changes, to is still awaited – and was timed to coincide with prepare the final scene, ‘Stelae for Failed Time Barry’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant at ENO (Solo for Melancholia as the Angel of History)’. in the autumn of 2005. The text of this extended lament is not devoid of Perhaps unsurprisingly given the composer, all personal qualities – two strands refer to such The Intelligence Park is an uncompromisingly human activities as touching and holding – and eccentric piece and listening to it on CD can be a against the background of the composer’s voice baffling experience. It is also an exhilarating and manipulated to provide a recurring, grounding, compelling one. Barry says in his sleeve notes that tolling sound (a resonance with Act 3 of he does not ‘like texts which are bound by logic or Birtwistle’s The Mask of Orpheus) the choral plot,’ preferring ‘coolness and a bizarre writing can suggest, not just ‘an evocation of one artificiality which allow extreme careering at of Benjamin’s central concerns, the radical break tangents.’ In these terms Vincent Deane’s libretto with historical time into “now” time’, as serves his needs. It is rich in historical and operatic Bernstein sums it up in his notes, but the texture, if short on comprehensibility. connexion between thinking and feeling: as if to The convoluted plot is set in Dublin in 1753 compensate for the terrible, ultimate disjunction and concerns a composer, Paradies, who has of factors which drove Benjamin to his death. writer’s block over his new opera. His fiancée As Fabrice Fitch writes in his admirable booklet abandons him for the castrato Serafino, with essay, useful to those who have seen the opera as whom Paradies has become obsessed. In a burst well as to those who haven’t, ‘Shadowtime is of furious inspiration he casts the two as thinly- ultimately an opera of catastrophe’. Yet not even disguised characters in his opera, who begin to ‘the opera’s ultimately pessimistic conclusion’ can interact with their real-life alter egos. Paradies ‘exclude music of great refinement and poetic descends into madness as his creations take allusiveness’. To the extent that Shadowtime control of him, and the final act fractures into conforms to the principle that no worthwhile scenes of unreality and hysteria.1 work of art will make an entirely negative impression, those qualities of refinement and 1 Wittingly or not, the plot curiously resembles that of Franz allusiveness serve as reminders of human Schreker’s Christophorus oder ‘Die Vision einer Oper’ – Ed.