How to make opera today.

More than one contributor to Czech Music has noted that interest in opera remains high among contemporary composers, and this May has brought another three new operas to underline the point. The first two are the work of a group of students of the Music Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts (AMU) and the other an addition to the Banging on the Iron Curtain series at the National Theatre.

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Operace

Roxy NoD, 5th and 7th May

Opera project Operace presented two graduation pieces by AMU students Roman Pallas and Slavomir Horinka. Some of the singers, the orchestra (under the baton of Marko Ivanovic) and production team were from the same school.

The project press release informs us that "The priority here is communication of the topical contents that have some points of contact in the two works. The composers see the capacity of of music drama to convey ideas as the huge potential of the genre." What is meant today by "capacity to communicate"--in its time the slogan of socialist realism?

In both cases it means a return to certain musical "certainties" such as tonality, melody and rhythm. In Pallas's opera Klinicka smrt [Clinical Death], based on a short story by Igor Chaun, communicative power seems to be a matter of Minimalist inspiration and ingenious instrumentation. The story is bizarre: a necrophiliac mortuary employee (Jan Dolansky) as the deliverer of an apparently dead woman (Tereza Roglova) and the desires he arouses in her husband (Petr Matuszek). The music successfully reflects the atmosphere of the story, and the singing often shifts into spoken language. The concrete severity of the NoD means that it needs no decor to be changed into a plausible mortuary. The director Karla Sturm-Staubertova exploited the fact and so staging is minimal. The space is often entirely empty, left to the music alone. In his concept of communicativeness Slavomir Horinka draws on the traditional understanding of opera as the scene of great stories and emotions. His Ortel [The Verdict] is essentially a romantic opera transposed into chamber dimensions. The story (based on the novella by Y. Zamyatin) is an Orwellian vision of a totalitarian society and its conflict with human individuality, but also a tale of unhappy love, and this is this level that predominates. A member of a society rejecting love as the greatest evil suddenly falls in love and believes that he is capable of standing up to society for love's sake. At the decisive moment, however, he chooses obedience to the social order. The musical treatment is also faithful to opera tradition. The melodies are arched and there is a culminating love aria. This does not mean that Horinka's music thinking is stuck in the 19th century, but the techniques that he takes from more recent music serve the ideas of the opera as a great story held up by great melodies. The "anti-heroic image" of Goran Nacevsky in the leading role of Citizen D might seem to contradict this, but in fact it reflects the character of a man hesitating between feeling and obedience. Citizen I, his partner, was sung by Pavla Jancova. The director Jan Nebesky made more attempt to create the illusion of "real theatre" including mass scenes. Compared to Clinical Death the spectator has to engage his own imagination more, but the creators of opera perhaps have a right to demand this of the public.

Miroslav Pudlak: Sasici v Cechach

[The Saxons in Bohemia]

Estates Theatre, 16th of May

Following Nagano, another opera on the theme of national identity has been staged at the National Theatre, and just like Nagano it treats the theme playfully and ironically. The complete title is Sasici v Cechach aneb Marnost boju proti RKZ (posledni vlastenecka opera) [The Saxons in Bohemia or the Futility of the Fights against the RKZ (Kralovy Dvur and Zelena Hora Manuscripts--forged ancient Czech epics once considered genuine--translator's note) (the last patriotic opera)]. The libretto is by Pudlak together with Lukas Jiricka and it employs many quotes from all kinds of different sources. Just like the libretto the music is full of references and hints. Compared to Miroslav Pudlak's concert output this opera music is more energetic, rhythmically more striking and less melancholic. A limited instrumental range (clarinet, trumpet, tuba, violin, viola, cello, electric guitar, piano) in no way hampers the composer as the music shifts from the grandeur of "ancient Czech scenes" to the drunken yodelling of the German singer Beckmesser or an Old Prague cabaret. The music of Richard Wagner has an important role here--in some places it is played from a recording--but cut and looped in various ways. The contrast between the Wagnerian orchestral pomp and the eight-member band in the orchestra put reflects the contrast between the dreams of the main character, the composer Foltyn who wants to create a grand patriotic opera on themes from the manuscripts, and the reality in which the director of the opera wants him to produce "... showy numbers and brilliant singing parts ... women, ballet," and in which Masaryk convinces him of the falseness of the inspiration he has chosen. The composer Foltyn and the singer Lumir are both sung by Pudlak's "court singer" Petr Matuszek, who copes well with the split personality and confusion of his character. Rather more expressive, however, is Zdenek Polda as Beckmesser and also the theatre director Schmoranz. Irena Houkalova in the role of Ludise has little to sing and mainly stands there like a statue in an ancient Czech robe.

While most of the productions in the Banging on the Iron Curtain series tend to economise on the visual side, the director Ondrej David has tried to the use the existing National Theatre resources to the hilt, and has taken costumes from Libuse. English titles were projected, but anyone who concentrated on them for a moment was rewarded by the discovery that they were rarely limited to the function of translation, but commented on the action on stage in a manner worthy of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

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