"Stories of what I see" - Happy, Coming Up, Act 2
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bullish horns and killer punches
This week I saw two Harrison Birtwistle operas in the space of 7 days, which is more than most people see in a lifetime. I've like Birtwistle since I saw Gawain at the Royal Opera House in 1991 - I get a genuine pleasure out of the sound of the music (which puts me in a very small minority, I am sure) as well as being fascinated by the nature of his theatre, which is as close as any contemporary theatre-maker gets to purely archetypal drama. A drama of archetypes raises a lot of intriguing questions, but nevertheless his music theatre pieces have a deep and profound effect on me, which has given me food for thought.
On Monday I saw Birtwistle's new opera The Minotaur at the Royal Opera. I'd been looking forwards to this for some time, as the combination of the Royal Opera, singer John Tomlinson, poet David Harsent and mythical subject matter were all at hand in Gawain and all present and correct once more here. As with Gawain, a large part of the opera's success - and I think it's a considerable success - lies with Harsent's libretto, as he's as fine a poet as this country has got, capable not just of embedding striking and indelible imagery in his sturdy lines but also of creating theatre structures which both work theatrically and take you into the heart of the story. The heart of The Minotaur is an excavation into the mythic labyrinth built by Daedelus to house Asterion, the half-bull half-man ("half and half" as the libretto calls him) Minotaur. The beast at the centre of the labyrinth is a ravening monster, full of rage and lust, despoiling the innocents which are fed/sacrificed to it; a real heart of darkness. In The Minotaur, the beast slays the sacrificial victims, stamps his hooves and grunts - but in his dream life he confronts his fate, realises that he is a human and wonders who that is looking out of the mirror at him. In the final scene, he is slain like the bull in the bullring by Theseus, who he identifies as the man who was peeking out of the mirror at him. From this brief description, you might be able to see that what we have here is a dizzying exploration of the self - isn't there a Minotaur in the depths of all of us, and don't the worst most animalistic people lay dormant in us all? That is what a Jungian mythic reading would surely suggest, and this insight into the beast within would seem to me to be the raison d'être of the opera. (There's also the intriguing question of the possible divinity of both Theseus and Asterion.)
The Minotaur is a brutal and jagged experience (although not without its moments of beauty and pathos); we live in brutal and jagged times (although what times are not?). There are striking descriptions in the opera of the mothers of the sacrificial victims lined up on the shore watching their children go off to death - I couldn't help thinking about parents at the Quayside watching their children go off to fight somewhere like Iraq[i]. We remain a culture build on human sacrifice, and that dark secret at the heart of Minos' court is the dark secret at the heart of us. Edward Bond - who I suspect hasn't got that much time for Birtwistle's dramaturgy - spoke at the time of The Woman about the way classical Greek society still influences and affects us, and although it could be objected that a purely mythic approach to drama such as that set forth in The Minotaur misses the nuances and specifics of who is responsible for what, what it does offer is an insight into a stream of human being which in any specific society runs through every member of what society (or is the Minotaur a male potential only?).
I came out of The Minotaur feeling inspired and elevated, and that because I felt that I had confronted something within myself. Even without that feeling of connection, there's much to relish in the piece - not least the poetic evocations of the labyrinth itself, "its foetid alleyways … its dark dead-ends and cross-cuts… the walls graffitied with blood… all those dark meanders…" Harsent and Birtwistle have also made sense of the relationship between Ariadne and Theseus - him needing her help into & out of the labyrinth, her needing his help to escape the tyranny of waiting and watching in denial as atrocities take place. But the heart of the piece is the Minotaur, and its arena scenes of slaughter - with baying faceless crowds, young flesh abused and destroyed and a poor beast lost in its own rage - are the scenes that will stay with me. Tomlinson, by the way, is supreme as the Minotaur Asterion.
To the Young Vic today, to see ENO's chamber production of Birtwistle's first opera, Punch and Judy. As with the Harsent pieces, Punch benefits from an excellent libretto, this one by Stephen Pruslin. The story follows the basics of the children's seaside entertainment - Punch kills his baby, his wife Judy, a lawyer and a doctor, the devil and even tricks the hangman (your actual Jack Ketch) into hanging himself. Birtwistle and Pruslin develop the character of Pretty Polly, who becomes Punch's ultimate object of desire - he vainly pursues her through much of the piece, until he wins her in the end. This ending would seem to be a happy one, but time is still ticking and Punch seems liable to repeat the same old round of murder and mayhem again.
As much as the Minotaur, Mr Punch is a powerfully archetypal figure, and perhaps the perfect protagonist for a contemporary opera. Brutal like Ubu, he disposes of everyone who stands in the way of his desires - the ultimate Western guy (his puppet show became popular as Protestant Capitalism became established). It's hard not to admire and enjoy Punch's ability to escape any comeuppance for his crimes - wouldn't we all like to do that? - but there's also something tragic about him being caught on an eternal round of desire, its frustration and murderous violence.
Seeing the two Birtwistle operas almost back-to-back has got me thinking about the relationship between story, myth and contemporary drama. I've been through a bit of a period in which I've purposefully denied the timeless - I've thought it maybe too generalised, too abstract. But as I say above, there's no denying the force with which this stuff hit me, which is a greater force than most of the time-specific contemporary plays I have recently seen. I always thought there must be a way of marrying time with eternity (my apologies to any readers who don't think eternity is worth thinking about), and I suppose the success of any archetypal drama depends on the willingness of its audience to imaginatively interact with the archetypes. That's about the only form of interactive art which makes any sense to me!
[i] One of Birtwistle's inspirations for the opera was, according to a Guardian interview, Picasso's Minotauromachia - a picture which leads directly to Guernica, which itself features a Minotaur and which is resolutely modern in its approach and concerns as well as specific but also applicable beyond.
