Visit the opera for an emotional workout
After a series of controversial operas, Kasper Holten, ROH director, is leaving unrepentant: innovate or die, he tells Hannah Furness
The world of opera is nothing if not controversial. Both onstage and off, it conjures the passions like no other art form, inspiring lifelong loves and vicious criticism in all quarters. At best, it captures the finest music, emotion and spectacle human beings can muster. At worst, it is seen as an out-of-touch indulgence, beloved by a cultural elite but doomed to falter in the fast-paced world of the 21st century.
As director of opera at the Royal Opera House, then, Kasper Holten is not only arguably the most influential industry figure in the country, but also a brave man. And he has one clear message: by all means worship the great composers of the past, but opera must innovate if it wants to survive.
“We live in a time where we’re all so focused on success, short-term success,” he says. “And actually there are so many masterworks that wouldn’t exist if theatres hadn’t taken a risk on them.
“We sometimes forget that in Mozart’s time, thousands of operas were being written and thrown out. We forget Mozart and Wagner’s first operas – we hardly ever do them because they’re maybe no great masterworks.
“So for composers today, to be able to work, develop, learn, is so important if we want any operas to remain from our time.”
The sentiments may seem obvious, but in a world peppered with purists, it is not always easy.
At the Opera House, eyebrows have been raised over several productions on Holten’s watch, most notably a version of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell this summer that inspired resounding boos, walkouts and passionate complaint from those who believed a scene in which a woman was stripped naked was gratuitous and offensive.
Fair enough to deliver experimental works, then, but what if audiences simply don’t like them?
“The real risk for an artistic organisation is if we’re so focused on success that we forget to have courage,” Holten counters. “Of course it’s OK to say there are things you didn’t like, of course it’s OK to reject things. But it’s not OK to reject things up front.
“Audiences are critically important to us as an art form, but taking audiences seriously also means putting the new in front of them and challenging them. It means expecting them to come as grown-ups with curiosity and openness.”
Without that curiosity, he emphasises, opera risks not only stagnation but leaving the next generation with a tedious list of repeats. “We know how the Hollywood model works: you’re successful with one thing and you make the sequel,” he shrugs.
“But how often is the sequel better than the first movie? Very, very rarely, because you’re just trying to capitalise on success. So it’s that originality that we’re looking for.”
That originality, he hopes, could well come from the Helios Collective, a company of up-and-coming singers, directors and writers which Holten is championing. In a rare afternoon away from his day job, Holten is putting his time where his mouth is to conduct a masterclass for the collective in a tiny West London rehearsal room, giving out frank feedback to a run-through of one of the company’s new productions.
He was “smitten”, he says, by the “incredible passion for making the impossible happen” on the part of Ella Marchment, the artistic director, and predicts big things for those involved in the future. “I feel quite humbled,” he says, after delivering his verdict to the Helios Collective and before dashing off to deliver a lecture on Wagner elsewhere. “Because it’s so easy to come and criticise, and it’s something completely different to have the courage to put yourself out there in the middle of a process when you’re still vulnerable. “God knows I admire their courage to let us in.”
Holten has announced his intentions to leave the Royal Opera House in 2017, saying that the commute and heavy workload had proved too tricky to continue, with his wife and children still in Copenhagen.
But his passion for the job is undimmed, as he espouses the value of opera in all its forms, not just as high-minded culture but something as essential as going to the gym. Holten, 42, who was born in Denmark, declares: “I’ve always said opera is like an emotional fitness centre. You go to the fitness centre to use your muscles, because you want to be more fit. If you want to be more emotionally fit, go to the opera, where you can get a really intense workout. “Two and a half hours with La
Boheme is a very, very intense workout, where you go through what other people have to go through a whole emotional life to get through.”
He is unexpectedly sanguine about the future, arguing that if there comes a time where opera has no audience, it “should be allowed to die” peacefully.
“The art form should only thrive if people want to see it,” he says. “But people are missing out.”
The biggest enemy it faces is prejudice, he believes, and he says that those who tell him they don’t like opera have usually never seen one.
Nor does he have any truck with those who claim opera is elitist. “It’s ridiculous when people say operas are elitist,” he says emphatically, with the air of someone who has made this case before.
“Most operas are actually quite subversive. They question power, they question money, they’ve always traditionally been speaking up for the men at the bottom.”
In addition, Holten points out, “actually, opera is more accessible than football, if you look at the ticket prices”.
Despite his unbridled enthusiasm, even Holten does not go as far as saying opera is always enjoyable. He worries, he says, that it could become “something that is always nice, where you relax and lean back”.
“Opera of course is terrible,” he says cheerfully. “Opera is pain. Opera is about all the disasters in life, the pain we all go through. The pain of knowing we’re going to die, the pain of knowing what love is. That is what opera can remind us of. Stuttgart had a slogan that was fantastic. It said, ‘Enjoy other people’s pain: go to the opera’.”
While the Royal Opera House hasn’t quite signed up to that mantra, it is safe to say that Holten’s remaining programme will see the full gamut of emotions, both onstage and off. As the search for his replacement begins, he has one year left to convince the British public that adding an emotional workout to their new year’s resolutions is not so extraordinary after all.
‘Opera is more accessible than football if you look at the ticket prices’