Lenox, Massachusetts — Problem “Lessons of Love and Violence” It was not “written on the skin”.
Skin, the unflinchingly savage second opera starring George Benjamin with librettist Martin Crimp, was hailed as a landmark when it premiered at the 2012 Aix-en-Provence Festival. The greatest opera of the century so far.
Benjamin and Crimp, who were received more soberly after their 2018 London debut, stuck to the template of the dreaded “Lesson,” its successor that premiered in the US here at Ozawa Hall on Monday night. The Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra sharply supports an astute cast of his fellow current and past Tanglewood vocalists.
Like “Skins,” “Lessons” has a dense historically conceived script, offering a cold plot that hacks into any feelings you may have left about power or love. There is incendiary and soothing music. The final eerie rumble of cymbals or brass clubs is conceived and executed with perfect clarity of gesture and tonal precision.
But somehow, the maces of this jewel-encrusted, velvet-wrapped score never feel intentionally methodical or sound entirely alive. Its striking rigor burns in the heat of the moment of murder.
Listening to it, you might ask yourself which of these two lavish operas should be Benjamin’s masterpiece. If the “skin” disappears, then only the “lesson” can anoint the composer.
Although the operas are similar, “Lesson” is not just a recreation of its predecessor. It abandons the meta-historical flourishes of its earlier works and focuses on the story at hand rather than creating character superstructures and dragging them into the present. Despite the medieval setting, the central preoccupation that the prince derives his ruling guidance from (let’s say dubious) the machinations of his parents – the king and his wife, Isabel – and their scheming courtiers. The house, Gaveston and Mortimer, has a Machiavellian timelessness to it.
“Don’t bore me with the price of bread,” sings the King as Mortimer confronts him with the doom his favor for Gaveston has unleashed on the political body. “There is nothing to do between our music and your labor,” Isabelle assures poor petitioners demanding an end to entertainment that can pay a year’s wages. The concert performance, played instinctively behind the music stand, took on an oratorio-like moral tale vibe.
It’s a shame “The Lesson” premiered like this, no matter how revealing its unstaged approach. How is it possible that the first American performance of such a major work could be left to a group of summer school attendees for only one of his sparsely attended nights—let alone a Monday in the Berkshires? ?
The Lyric Opera of Chicago is one of the seven co-commissioners of “Lessons,” but has yet to no sign Mount Katie Mitchell’s original staging that had to be postponed 2020With no major house to feature “Skin”, New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival, which premiered the work in 2015, is no more.
It is Tanglewood’s immeasurable achievement that he took the initiative, pushed his peers to the limit at the end of the annual contemporary music festival, and developed a long and close relationship with Benjamin, conducted by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Skin” quickly debuted in the US in 2013, followed by a cycle of songs in 2016 called “Dream of the Song”.
And while you won’t be delighted with this opera, you’ll be delighted to hear a performance as strong as Monday in a major house. picked up by those who Greater evidence of its value would be difficult to imagine. Nathaniel Sullivan Christopher Marlowe imagined and Crimp sang King Edward II reimagined. Daniel McGrew It was eerily implausible to see Mortimer, a soldier and technocrat, seriously combine orderly progress with the need to kill. Dominic Bellavi Giving Gaveston a happy, free-spirited air.
Sure, no soprano fearlessly plays a role written for Barbara Hannigan, but her current Tanglewood peers Elizabeth Pauls She looked like an arrogant Isabel. She excelled, just as Edmund Rodriguez learned his lesson well and brought terrifying majesty to the boy who chillily plotted Mortimer’s execution after the General put him on the throne. Meredith Wolgemuth, Claire McCahan and Jack Canfield acquitted themselves in smaller roles.
But the orchestra was the star. Benjamin, as always, played gracefully and efficiently. With the exception of Alban Berg, few composers have been able to make a brutally brutal sound so delicate and tender as Benjamin does here. His use of silence is as deliberate as his careful etching of textures around his voice.
The “lesson” has an unmistakable flow. Some of its seven short scenes echo each other. Interludes link them, commenting on or extending actions. And strange leitmotifs pierce through, most prominently the tumultuous trombone announcing the king and reappearing in mute as his son ascends the throne.
But what makes Benjamin such a powerful playwright is his ruthless ability to hunt down the most concrete sounds. A desperately longing solo horn full of lust plays as Gaveston recounts how the king likes to hold his hands over the flames. Woodwinds surround Madman, who fatally claims to the boy that he is the real king, based on testimony from Cat.
Gaveston dies the most gruesome death of all. It’s not like the tower of horrific cacophony that accompanies the murder of a king, but one that one has to imagine in absentia as the impotent ruler reads the details of his lover’s death from a letter while percussionist. . Carve the rhythm with the rim of the side drum.
In it you might hear the loneliness of Gaveston, or the terror of a king facing the passage of time before his own certain murder. . In any case, Benjamin makes magic what is predictable in the hands of other composers.
Lessons in Love and Violence
Performed Monday at Ozawa Hall in Tanglewood, Lenox, Massachusetts.
