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CHAN 9983 Book Cover.qxd 15/5/07 2:43 pm Page 1 CHAN 9983 CHANDOS CHAN 9983 BOOK.qxd 15/5/07 2:44 pm Page 2 Michael Berkeley (b. 1948) premiere recording Jane Eyre An opera in two acts Libretto by David Malouf Dramatis personae: Jane Eyre ..........................................................................................................................Natasha Marsh soprano Adèle............................................................................................................................................Fflur Wyn soprano Mrs Fairfax............................................................................................................Beverley Mills mezzo-soprano Mrs Rochester..........................................................................................................Emily Bauer-Jones contralto Rochester .................................................................................................................................Andrew Slater bass The Music Theatre Wales Ensemble Michael Rafferty Jane Eyre was commissioned by the Cheltenham International Festival of Music with the generous support of the Vivian Duffield Foundation, Bob and Kate Gavron and contribution from the Cheltenham Festival of New Music Fund and the Arts Council of England. The first performance was given on 30 June 2000 by Music Theatre Wales at the Cheltenham International Festival of Music. Michael Berkeley This recording is based on the Music Theatre Wales production. 3 CHAN 9983 BOOK.qxd 15/5/07 2:44 pm Page 4 Act I Time Page Act II Time Page 1 [Orchestral introduction] – 13 ‘Jane, my dear, it has come’ 3:58 51 ‘Silence. Quietness’ 8:08 25 Mrs Fairfax, Adèle, Jane, Mrs Rochester Jane, Rochester, Voices 14 ‘Goodnight, goodnight’ 2:28 55 2 ‘I am expected, I think’ 2:31 29 Mrs Fairfax, Adèle, Jane Jane, Rochester, Mrs Fairfax, Adèle 15 [Mrs Rochester’s wordless singing] 1:26 55 3 ‘I can sing you know, Miss Eyre’ 4:44 31 16 ‘Beautiful, so beautiful’ 6:39 55 Adèle, Jane, Mrs Fairfax, Rochester Mrs Rochester, Jane, Rochester 4 ‘Paris –’ 2:21 35 17 ‘Listen, Jane. Hear the rest of my tale’ 3:21 61 Jane, Adèle Rochester, Jane 5 [The sound of a horse] – 18 ‘Silence. Silence’ 3:05 65 ‘Ah, Miss Eyre, there you are’ 5:26 37 Jane, Rochester, Mrs Rochester Rochester, Jane 19 ‘Jane! Jane! Where are you, my angel?’ 3:30 67 6 ‘And are there those in this house who love me?’ 4:59 41 Rochester, Jane Rochester, Voice of Mrs Rochester 20 ‘Jane. Jane. Is it really you?’ 4:17 69 7 ‘Mr Rochester, you are hurt’ 1:30 43 Rochester, Jane Jane, Rochester TT 71:47 8 ‘Jane, did you see no one, Jane?’ 3:12 43 Rochester, Jane 9 ‘Listen! Listen!’ 1:50 45 Rochester, Jane 10 ‘Listen now, listen, I will tell you a story’ 3:35 45 Rochester, Jane 11 ‘But I know this story’ 1:11 49 Jane, Rochester 12 ‘Silence. Quietness’ 3:17 49 Jane, Rochester 4 5 CHAN 9983 BOOK.qxd 15/5/07 2:44 pm Page 6 needs music in order to breathe; something with recalls her arrival at Thornfield she begins to relive it. bones sticking out of it’. This skeletal but poetic text She is greeted by the housekeeper, Mrs Fairfax, and Michael Berkeley: Jane Eyre has allowed him to ‘provide the work’s flesh and her new charge, Adèle. She asks Adèle about the clothes’ with his music: ‘The great thing that music can master of the house whom she has not yet seen. On the face of it, choosing a pre-existing literary work a concentration on the novel’s psychological core: do is point up an inner turmoil of frustrated desires. Adèle describes a man who is kind but also gloomy, a as the basis for an opera neatly circumvents the the relationships among Jane, Rochester and And that is what this piece is all about – and that is man who can find no peace at Thornfield; a man with problem for both composer and librettist of having to Mrs Rochester. what Baa Baa Black Sheep [Berkeley’s previous opera] a wound. Jane speculates about the strange laughter create an entirely new drama. However, when that The characterisation of Mrs Rochester marks was all about.’ Berkeley characterises the sound world she has heard from behind one of Thornfield’s locked work is as famous as Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Malouf and Berkeley’s most significant rethinking of of Jane Eyre as a ‘dark, glissando-y turbulence’, doors. and is cast in the form of a novel instead of a play, Brontë’s work. ‘She is not as wicked as we have been persisting almost throughout the opera. Even when Jane tries to imagine what Mr Rochester is like. there is clearly rather more for a creative team to do led to believe’, according to Berkeley. Rather, she is a Jane is given her wedding veil, and she is being Suddenly she is startled by a rider. His horse rears up than simply furnish a narrative with a musical cloak. ‘tragic figure, somebody you sympathise with, who prepared for the apparently happy ceremony, there is a and the rider falls. Later at the house Jane recognises How do you compress so familiar a story as Jane Eyre does not know why she has been locked away like ‘constant worried music going on in the bass’. him as Mr Rochester, the master of Thornfield, and into a drama suitably concentrated for the operatic she has’. Jane’s confrontation with Mrs Rochester Berkeley’s music inhabits a gripping, introverted they have their first unusual encounter. Rochester stage, yet maintain its central features? This concern seals her flight from Thornfield: as Malouf’s Jane says, harmonic world, with a basis in tenebrous, suggestive describes a strange figure who dares him to free is at the heart of the collaboration between Michael ‘Is that unhappy woman what I was to be tritones. It is the centrifugal power of the score which himself and be happy. Mrs Rochester appears unseen Berkeley and David Malouf on their opera Jane Eyre. tomorrow…?’ The importance of Mrs Rochester to articulates the intense psychological undercurrents in by Jane. For the librettist the main task was to boil down the tense emotional landscape of this opera Brontë’s novel, and which fills out the framework of In the night Jane is wakened by a commotion. the complexities of the book and focus on the events generates a fascinating dramatic situation, where the the libretto. In Berkeley and Malouf’s hands, the Someone has started a fire in Rochester’s bedroom at Thornfield. So we do not experience Jane’s early, love between Rochester and Jane must achieve an narrative of Jane Eyre becomes an investigation of and torn his face. Jane is disturbed and frightened. He desolate years with Mrs Reed and her family, or even greater transcendence of ‘stale custom’, as ‘suppressed eroticism’, as the composer puts it. Far leads her outside and in the first light of day tells encounter her exile from Thornfield with the Rivers Malouf has Rochester say, than it does in Brontë’s from being a reduced version of Jane Eyre, this Jane the story of a young man seduced and betrayed family. Those familiar with the detail of Brontë’s novel novel. The dark, possessive side of the passion adaptation magnifies and illuminates previously in the West Indies, and declares that Jane, if she is may lament such excisions as distortions of the between Rochester and Jane is revealed and hidden corners of the story, thereby creating a willing, might save him from a life of loneliness and original story. But Berkeley and Malouf’s reworking of enhanced in the opera. strongly independent operatic work. exile. Jane begins to sense that in some way this is Jane Eyre reflects their creative engagement with the It is in the conception of the interaction between her own story. She admits her love and Rochester book. Berkeley himself has commented on its libretto and music that the consequences of Malouf © 2002 Tom Service reassures her that there is nothing to fear. celebrity as a potentially hampering problem: ‘When and Berkeley’s collaboration are most significant. The David first suggested the idea of doing Jane Eyre, I art of writing a libretto is to achieve the delicate Synopsis Act II really took a very big breath.’ In fact, Jane Eyre’s very balance between conveying the flow of the drama and The night before Jane’s wedding to Rochester, familiarity turned out to have a creatively liberating permitting the music to give the story its essential Act I Mrs Fairfax and Adèle bring Jane’s veil and sing a effect: ‘It is no good just putting on a Hollywood re- momentum. Malouf accomplishes this through a A year after her flight from Thornfield and her wedding song. Mrs Rochester is watching from the run of Jane Eyre. You have to show it in a new light combination of expressivity and emptiness. The discovery that Edward Rochester already has a wife, shadows. When Adèle and Mrs Fairfax leave, she and refract it somehow.’ The result of that refraction is composer describes the libretto as ‘something which we find Jane haunted by voices from the past. As she approaches Jane and, semi-deranged, tears the 6 7 CHAN 9983 BOOK.qxd 15/5/07 2:44 pm Page 8 wedding veil to pieces. Jane confronts her attacker Welsh soprano Fflur Wyn is currently studying at the Tippett in venues such as The Queen Elizabeth Hall, Norway, Ireland, Canada and The Netherlands, and and when Rochester arrives his secret is revealed. Royal Academy of Music with Beatrice Unsworth and St John’s Smith Square, St David’s Hall in Cardiff and runs an education and outreach programme designed Vainly Rochester pleads with Jane to stay. He Clara Taylor. Winner of several awards, such as the The Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. Her opera to increase the public’s understanding of and describes how he was tricked into marriage, but Kathleen Ferrier Bursary Award for Young Singers performances have included Third Lady in involvement in opera.