The final performance for the 2008 Festival Season at Glyndebourne Opera was Love and Other Demons, starring Allison Bell and Nathan Gunn with the London Philharmonic and the Glyndebourne Chorus. It will be broadcast on Radio 3 in October.
Before setting off for Glyndebourne, a confidant said that sneak previews during rehearsals reported ‘very strange sounds, more jarring than pleasant to the ear’. I kept that to myself. My companion had only been to one other opera; I didn’t want to put him off.
The reports were deceptive for soprano coloratura Bell’s performance as Sierva María, the misled and tortured heroine of Love and Other Demons was quite extraordinary.
Her top notes reminded of Yma Sumac, another particularly unusual singer whom I remember hearing on the radio as a youngster (Sumac recorded an extraordinarily wide vocal range of more than four octaves).
Love and Other Demons is a strange opera, although for different reasons to those given by the unknown reporter quoted above. For one thing, it is nothing like the predictable ‘top ten operas’ that so many mainstream companies put on year after year.
Instead, it is a brave new commission, based on the best selling novel by Gabriel García Márquez, whose whimsical yet stubborn characters from the book, Love in the Time of Cholera still haunt me. The production team at Glyndebourne deserves huge credit for having the courage to put it on.
The story goes… ‘One Sunday, in the slave market in the port of Cartagena de Indias, a dog bites a young girl. The girl is Sierva Maria, the daughter of the Marquis, and the dog is rabid.
‘Although Sierva herself seems unhurt, this is a town where reason and superstition are at war. Soon the talk is not of rabies but possession.
‘Sierva finds herself imprisoned in the Convent of St Clare, where Cayetano Delaura, the bishop's exorcist, comes to drive out her demons. But soon it is Delaura who is possessed by Love - the most terrible demon of all.
‘As the lovers' obsession grows, so too does the desire of the authorities to purge this sickness from their midst.’
The Glyndebourne season has seen the world premiere of this work by the Hungarian composer of Angels, Peter Eötvös, and the composer thinks it very much a Glyndebourne piece.
“I know the Glyndebourne audience as I have conducted here (The Markropoulos Case/Festival 2001),” he told Edward Kemp, dramaturg for Love and Other Demons.
“There is no physical limit in this novella, everything is possible… Márquez lies to us from the very beginning! This fantasy world allows me freedom as a composer to concentrate on the music rather than the action."
This work is Peter Eötvös’ first opera about love; his first opera ‘quasi bel canto’. He says, “It gives each singer the chance to show the beauty of the voice.”
The novel’s central elements – forbidden love, the restrictive hand of religion, imprisonment – certainly belong to the heart of opera repertoire; a frenzied exorcism akin to a butcher's market marks the finale.
This final scene reminded me of the famous mad scene with Joan Sutherland in Lucia di Lammermoor. I saw her late in her performing life at a Sydney Opera House production during the early 80s, conducted by her husband Richard Bonynge.
It was one of Sutherland’s last performances before retiring and she didn’t quite soar over the top notes in the way she had in the past. But what power!
Likewise, with Allison Bell, who did soar over the top notes – an eagle could have ridden on her voice – although her long red hair (soon to adorn the floor) added to the faint illusion that I was in a time warp harking back to a performance by the great Australian singer.
With Love and Other Demons, the madness lies less in the central figure than with the ‘protectors’ of this young girl’s innocence.
When the physician, Abrenuncio can no longer help her, she capitulates to the overtures of the last person she feels she can trust, heinous priest, Father Cayetano Delaura.
In the final, exorcism scene, it is clear that everyone but Sierva María has lost their sense of reality.
As I watched, a shudder went down my spine for there are mind terrorists in modern life and, in my opinion, opera is better at amplifying the fine line between human sanity and madness than any other medium.
The music itself incorporates elements of the African, “a style that the Spanish transformed,” according to the composer, “during the 17th century.”
Mysteriously, for I could really define no pressing reason for it, the composer Peter Eötvös also divided the orchestra into two halves, “left and right, like stereo speakers.”
“The housekeeper Dominga and the slave women represent this (African-Spanish) style as does Sierva at the beginning,” he said.
“The second musical style is my own style for this piece...The third style is for the physician, Abrenuncio, who sings in melisma, a baroque technique.”
Felicity Palmer as Josefa Miranda, the abbess and Jean Rigby, in particular, as Martina Laborde - a definitively insane nun, both gave remarkable performances.
The cast included mezzo-soprano, Marietta Simpson as Dominga de Adviento, the housekeeper and apparently an influential mother-figure for Maria, Robert Brubaker as Don Ygnacio, the Marquis and abstracted father of Maria, John Graham-Hall as Abrenuncio, a doctor without power, and Mats Almgren as Don Toribio, the ambitious Bishop.
Silviu Purcarete was overall Director of Love and Other Demons with Music Director, Vladimir Jurowski as conductor.
Pieter Schoeman led the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Thomas Blunt was Chorus Master for the Glyndebourne Chorus.
Glyndebourne Opera House is renowned for its Summer Festival and their touring opera company, Glyndebourne on Tour. It can be found 11 miles east of Brighton and four miles from Lewes. Many people coming from London or elsewhere board a coach at Lewes Railway Station.
Love and Other Demons will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 at 6pm, 11 October 2008
