Brilliantly Dispatched in Musik and Vision 1 December

Brilliantly Dispatched
Ian McEwan and Michael Berkeley's 'For You',
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI

About one year ago (on 20 December 2009), I reported that 'chamber opera' is alive and well on the basis of Italian and American chamber operas touring Italy at that time. Chamber opera requires a small orchestra, a few soloists, no chorus and normally quite simple sets; thus, it is easy to transport performances from theatre to theatre and from town to town. Other chamber operas, especially brand new chamber operas, have delighted the audiences at summer festivals -- in particular, Oscar Strasnoy's engrossing Un Retour which had its début in Aix-en-Provence in July.
Two British chamber operas are currently touring Italy: Powder Her Face (1995) by Thomas Adès (born 1971) and For You (2008) by Ian McEwan and Michael Berkeley (both born in 1948). These works are generally quite well known to British and Anglo-Saxon audiences, especially Powder Her Face, which after a controversial start, also became a movie. I had seen a previous production of Adès' work in Rome some eight years ago -- the opera début in London was in 1995, when Adès was only twenty-five. Thus, I did not go either to Bologna or to Lugo to see the new staging by Italian director Pier Luigi Pizzi. Conversely, For You had its Italian début in Rome on 25 November 2010 -- a joint undertaking of the British Council, the Filarmonica Romana and the Istituzione Universitaria dei Concerti. There were sixty music critics (including me) in the audience at the 1500 seat theatre.

Hector Guedes as Charles in Act I Scene 1 of 'For You' by Ian McEwan and Michael Berkeley. Photo © 2010 Stefano Spina
It is useful, though, to discuss For You together with Powder Her Face. They both deal quite explicitly with sex. Things have changed a lot in the UK since 1971 when the hottest ticket in the West End was the farce No Sex Please, We're British by Alastair Foot and Antony Mariott. These days the leitmotif of chamber opera in the UK seems to be 'Sex please -- we're British'. Music historians know that sex was the main ingredient of commercial opera in Venice in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries -- just during the dark decades in the Inquisition -- when people would run to the theatres to see what was actually happening in bedrooms -- as Francesco Cavalli's La Calisto and La Statira clearly depict.

Hector Guedes as Charles and Piia Komsi as Joan in Act I Scene 4 of 'For You'. Photo © 2010 Stefano Spina
However, McEwan and Berkeley, both now in their early sixties, treat sex quite differently to the then twenty-five year old Adès. Powder her Face deals with real events: the 'Dirty Duchess' whose sexual exploits were the stuff of scandal and gossip in Britain in 1963 during her divorce proceedings. The opera is explicit in its language and detail. The opera (a two hour and twenty minute work) contains the first onstage blow job with a 'coloratura fellatio aria'. The 'Dirty Duchess' becomes a half-comic, half-tragic figure, a nitwit outlaw. There were clear parallels with Alban Berg's epic of degradation, Lulu. The libretto reads like a nasty farce, but it takes on emotional breadth when the music is added. With a few incredibly seductive stretches of thirties-era popular melody, Adès shows the giddy world that the Duchess lost, and when her bright harmony lurches down to a terrifying B flat minor, he exposes the male cruelty that quickened her fall. Adès' harmonic tricks have a powerful theatrical impact: there's a repeated sense of a beautiful mirage shattering into cold, alienated fragments. Thus, there is plenty of irony, and I remember having quite a few good laughs.

The Sextet Concertato, Act I Scene 5 of 'For You'. From left to right: Piia Komsi as Joan, Hector Guedes as Charles, Virginia Kerr as Antonia, Philip Sheffield as Robin, Harriet Williams as Maria and Daniel Broad as Simon. Photo © 2010 Stefano Spina
McEwan and Berkeley want to be funny, but they are bleak and grim. In about ninety minutes (in the version presented in Rome and touring continental Europe), the plot revolves around Charles Frieth, pre-eminent composer, conductor and prodigious womanizer. Charles is preparing for a performance of one of his early works, and the world première of 'Demonic Aubade'. Obstinate and myopic, he is oblivious to the growing turmoil around him; his wife Antonia's poor health and dissatisfaction; the exhausted efforts of his secretary; the disquieting diligence of his housekeeper, Maria. As the first performance draws near, the maestro is suddenly awoken to the chaos, and as Charles struggles to regain control of his life, a terrible tragedy begins to unfold: Maria kills Antonia and leaves around her dead body enough evidence for Charles to be jailed.

From left to right: Virginia Kerr as Antonia, Daniel Broad as Simon, Philip Sheffield as Robin, Hector Guedes as Charles, Harriet Williams as Maria and Piia Komsi as Joan in Act II Scene 1 of 'For You'. Photo © 2010 Stefano Spina
The libretto is Ian McEwan at his very best -- for those who like his novels -- sex mixed with havoc and obsession. Whereas the central scene of Powder Her Face -- the fellatio coloratura aria -- is full of humor, the centerpiece of For You -- Charles and horn player Joan's erection duet -- is quite gloomy and tiresome. One could argue that Adès was young and had plenty of vigor; thus, he could have a laugh during a blow job, whilst McEwan and Berkeley, both over sixty, look back in anger to the time when an erection was not a problem.

Hector Guedes as Charles and Virginia Kerr as Antonia in the Act II Scene 1 duet from 'For You'. Photo © 2010 Stefano Spina
Fortunately Berkeley's score, brilliantly dispatched by the fourteen players, is full of zest and humor, with sly quotes from Mozart, Britten and his own Oboe Concerto, and a blues stretch recalling Michael Tippett's The Knot Garden. Berkeley follows all the operatic convention: recitative, arioso, duets, trios and a concertato at the end of each act.

Philip Sheffield as Robin and Harriet Williams as Maria in Act II Scene 3 of 'For You'. Photo © 2010 Stefano Spina
On a simple touring set, director Pamela Hunter has four good and two decent soloists. Hector Guedes is very effective in the leading role of Charles Frieth, the composer-conductor whose self-regard blinds him to the needs of others. Full-voiced and blustering, he wins unexpected sympathy when he meets his inevitable punishment. Virginia Kerr sings his wronged wife with passion. Piia Komsi is his umpteenth wronged lover with rare stage bravery in the first operatic scene to cry out for viagra. As the Polish housekeeper Maria, the mezzo Harriet Williams turns out to be a doting but dastardly villainess. Vocally less convincing were Daniel Board, Antonia's lover and Philip Sheffield, Charles' assistant. Vittorio Parisi conducted the Ensemble Roma Sinfonietta quite well.
Copyright © 1 December 2010 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy

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