Audience members were leaving the Coliseum in droves
The Mask of Orpheus
English National Opera/ London Coliseum ★★★★★
It will never catch on; there is something beyond Wagnerian about this opera’s ambition. Over three hours long, often fiercely cacophonous, with a preposterously arcane text lacking any narrative coherence, The Mask of Orpheus makes no effort to be loved.
But something of incontrovertible magnificence is presented here: using a battery of electronic sound, as well as more conventional instrumental forces, Harrison Birtwistle has hewn a score of unique imaginative complexity and aesthetic integrity, built on librettist Peter Zinovieff ’s multidimensional cubistic exploration of the Greek myth of the bard who tracks his dead wife, Eurydice, to Hades. And like some great rocky outcrop, the result commands awed respect, like it or not.
There may be one story here, but it is told many different ways, without beginning or end, through music that is intricately repetitive and highly schematic. Broadly, the first act shows Orpheus losing Eurydice; the astonishing second act takes him down to Hades through 17 arches or musical episodes; the third act traces him as man, hero and myth. There are no loose tunes or flights of
impressionistic fancy, and no stable, realistic characters either; both music and action are densely ritualistic, its figures and movements constantly refracted, reinterpreted and contradicted.
The orchestra contains no strings but much percussion, and the vocal lines are fragmentary and angular; much use is also made of speech. Although amplification is used, the singers have little hope of getting the words across the barrage of noise – something that reflects the music’s merciless refusal to compromise with expectations or give pleasure.
The original staging in 1986 offered an archaic setting, with wonderful masks designed by Jocelyn Herbert; for this revival – the opera’s first theatrical appearance since that debut run – Daniel Kramer suggests that Orpheus is more like a reclusive rock star, cracking up and hallucinating in his Beverly Hills pad. Decorated with Daniel Lismore’s preposterously fantastical costumes (which must have cost a bomb), there are many visually striking tableaux in the production, but nothing is done to create a helpful thread through the maze. The somersaulting acrobatics are a tiresome cliché.
In the insanely demanding title role, a brave and accomplished performance by a scantily clad Peter Hoare deserves prizes, and the rest of the cast do wonders, too. Martyn Brabbins conducts with steely discipline. Droves fled the Coliseum in both intervals. Let’s be frank: for an average audience of ordinary folk, The Mask of Orpheus, astounding as it is, will be a physical and mental ordeal.