In the feverish build up to Festen, Mark-Anthony Turnage’s new opera to a libretto by Lee Hall, one question has dominated. Why make an opera based on Thomas Vinterberg’s cult 1998 film, in which a son accuses his father of child abuse? The implication: why not think of something new. Since nearly the entire operatic repertoire, from Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (1607) to Puccini’s Tosca onward, is based on extant sources – myth, plays, novels and, now it exists, cinema – the question should hardly detain us, beyond initial acknowledgment. Opera needs stories that can be sung.
Festen, as well as being a dark exploration of human frailty, offers the potential for arias, choruses, crowd scenes, intimate duets, orchestral interludes: the stuff of opera. The result, which finds Turnage (b.1960) at the peak of his powers, is a dazzling and jubilantly entertaining work. It was premiered last Tuesday by the Royal Opera, conducted by Edward Gardner, directed by Richard Jones and designed by Miriam Buether, with a flawless cast, orchestra and chorus.
Turnage’s first opera was Greek (1988), a prodigious early work based (via Sophocles, and Steven Berkoff’s play) on Oedipus Rex updated to the Thatcher era, as aggressive and affecting now as when new. The Silver Tassie (2000), Anna Nicole (2011) and Coraline (2018) followed. A composer loyal to his collaborators, he is back working with some of the same team. Richard Jones directed Anna Nicole, about the American Playboy model, in a production memorable for pneumatic breasts and much pink. Gerald Finley sang the lead in The Silver Tassie, adapted from Sean O’Casey’s anti-war play.
Now Finley is Helge, the father celebrating his 60th birthday with friends and family. The large cast consists of many singers who, directly or not, have accompanied Turnage throughout his working life. Centre stage was John Tomlinson. As the baffled grandfather he sings only a line or two, but with his years of experience became the paternal linchpin of a collective enterprise. Star singers took their bows together, as part of the company: Allan Clayton as Christian, raped by his father in childhood and still blank with trauma; Stéphane Degout as the younger son, Michael, who moves through life with the grace of a demolition ball; Natalya Romaniw as Helena, the daughter attempting to make family peace through a haze of drug addiction. Among the long list of names to mention: Susan Bickley, Philippa Boyle, Clare Presland, Peter Brathwaite.
Set in a 1980s-style hotel that switched between reception, bedroom, kitchen and dining room, helped by Lucy Carter’s lighting effects, Buether’s sets are stylish and efficient. Action is swift-moving. This makes the impact all the more devastating. Festen, in the hands of Turnage, Hall (credits include the screenplay for Billy Elliot) and Jones, is often funny. Comedy whets the tragedy. Hall’s nimble, demotic text bristles with internal rhyme. An opening “hello” chorus, a hideous, racist rendition of Baa Baa, Black Sheep and, as a centrepiece, a conga support a strong dramatic structure.
Above all, Turnage’s score, confidently played by the Royal Opera orchestra under Gardner, has assurance, noisy ebullience and lyrical intensity. An army of percussion instruments – whip, ratchet, castanets, maracas, edgy and scratchy in mood – is softened by marimba, harp, piano and celesta. Rumbles of bass clarinets and contrabassoons lurk beneath sparky top lines. Characters are given definition by instrumental colour: Helmut (Thomas Oliemans), the unlucky master of ceremonies, is accompanied by strident high brass; Helge by a torpid sludge of tuba and trombones. Silence, the white space between sounds, is employed to arrest and shock.
Turnage has always owed much to jazz, but here the echoes of Britten (the choruses of Peter Grimes) and Tippett (the dances from The Midsummer Marriage), as well as the precision and transparency of his teacher, the composer Oliver Knussen, show Turnage embracing, rather than shying away from, a vital lineage. Opera can be more palpably avant garde, no doubt. In the myriad alliances the art form requires, of music, words, staging, every decision is an extreme experiment. Failure is a norm. This one works. Daring and brilliantly achieved, Festen is the composer’s best work yet.
The lure of Wagner’s Ring, especially in the UK, remains irrevocable if not mysterious. Devotees flocked to Gloucestershire last summer for Longborough Opera’s cycle. One couple, dressed as the god Wotan and his Valkyrie daughter Brünnhilde (unless horned helmets are their normal attire), had travelled from the US. Last Sunday, identifiable Wagnerians – you learn to recognise the markings – wandered up and down in freezing rain, waiting for the doors of York Hall in Bethnal Green, east London, to open. Famous as a boxing venue, this is the new home for Regents Opera’s in-the-round Ring cycle, built up, with minimal budget, over the past five years.
The conductor Ben Woodward has arranged the score for 22 instruments, including electric organ. Initially it sounded underpowered, with rough edges, but my ears grew accustomed. Caroline Staunton’s production, with designs by Isabella Van Braeckel, takes place on a small stage. Costumes are eclectic, from folkloric tunic-tabard (Ralf Lukas as the conflicted Wotan) to rocker tight trousers (James Schouten, a wily, hip-swivelling Loge). The set is a group of different sized plinths, prone to thudding to the ground when the action speeds up.
The graft needed to bring off two complete cycles in this way (the first ends tomorrow; the second starts next Sunday) is incalculable. Das Rheingold, first of the four operas, had some admirable performers: the Rhinemaidens (Jillian Finnamore, Justine Viani and, also singing Erda, Mae Heydorn), Ingeborg Novrup Børch as an incensed Fricka, Charlotte Richardson’s gleaming Freia. As her brother Froh, god of spring and the only half-decent character in the whole of the Ring, Calvin Lee perilously cartwheeled on stage and sang his high phrases with exuberant charm. Then he summoned up the rainbow bridge and it was all over. I doubt the cheers when Tyson Fury beat Rich Power at York Hall were much louder than those that erupted once those rotten, gold-greedy gods had crossed to Valhalla.
Star ratings (out of five)
Festen ★★★★★
Das Rheingold ★★★★
Festen is at the Royal Opera House, London, until 27 February and will be broadcast on Radio 3/BBC Sounds on 22 March
Regents Opera’s Ring (cycle 1) at York Hall, London, ends with Götterdämmerung, Sunday 16 February, 3pm; cycle 2 dates: Das Rheingold (23 February); Die Walküre, (25 February); Siegfried (27 February); Götterdämmerung (2 March)
