900 Words
The Royal
Opera House has announced its plans for new opera, outlining a set of
radical new works to take us up to the year 2020. The plans are
presented as part of Musical Director Antonio Pappano and Director of
Opera Kasper Holten's striking new stance, which affords new work a
central role in the formation of the Royal Opera House's identity;
where “New work is not and should not be at the periphery of our
programme, but right at the core of what and who we are”.
More than
15 new operas will be performed on the main stage and at the Linbury
Studio theatre, from composers including Turnage, Adès,
Weir, Herbert, Eichberg, Haas and Chin; and on themes ranging from
the myth of Faust, the sexually subversive Les
Liaisons dangereuses and responses to a set
of questions developed by the philosopher Slavoj
Žižek.
The Opera House also announced a new set of relationships to be
forged throughout the decade, including more co-productions which
link across international venues, new opportunities for emerging
composers and more opportunities for academic credentials in opera
making with Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Plans
made so far have not looked for a streamlined type of commission, but
for a range of composers and librettists from different backgrounds
united by one artistic vision and a “true flair for opera”.
Holten hopes this new direction will be a step towards current
practices in Finland, where operatic premieres are not an aside to
canonic repertoire but the unmissable event of the season.
2013/14
will kick off to a shocking start with Australian composer Ben Frost
and Scottish writer Iain
Bank's directing an adaptation of
his own cult novel The
Wasp Factory – a
dark and disturbingly intimate portrait of a teenage psychopath who
commits a series of ritualized acts of monstrous cruelty.
Commissioned by Bregenz Festival's Art
of Our Times
programme, the work will be a Royal Opera House co-production with
Hebbel-am-Ufer, Berlin, Holland Festival and Cork Midsummer Festival,
To parallel The Royal Opera's revival of Gounod's Faust,
2013 will also see two responses to the Faust myth for the Lindbury
Studio Theatre: a collaboration between Luke Bedford and Scottish
playwright David Harrower, and a piece by British sound artist
Matthew Herbert which integrates cutting-edge technology into the
fabric of the musical score. In 2014/15 the Lindbury will be host to
a new opera by Philip Glass, based on Franz Kafka's unfinished
masterpiece The
Trial,
co-commissioned by Music Theatre Wales and Houston Grand Opera. A new
“thriller” opera written for chamber ensemble by composer Søren
Nils Eichberg and librettist Hannah Dübgen is also commissioned for
2015.
Thomas
Adès's eagerly awaited next large-scale opera
will be
performed at the Royal Opera
House
in spring 2017. The work is based on Buñel's
film The
Exterminating Angel,
which charts the disintegration of social relationships when guests
at a dinner party become psychologically trapped in the same room.
The work is a commission from the Royal Opera House and a number of
international partners including the Saltzburg Festival.
Towards
the end of the decade we will also see an adaptation of Max Frish's
play Count
Oederland by
Judith Weir working with librettist Ben Power, a commission from
composer George Haas and librettist Jon Fosse, Morgon
og Kveld
(Monring and Evening) based on his novel of the same name; and a new
main stage opera from Unsuk Chin who, following the success of his
Alice in
Wonderland will
adapt Alice
Through The Looking Glass
with librettist David Henry Hwang.
To
celebrate the iconic year 2020, The Royal Opera House has challenged
four leading composers from different countries to create large-scale
works for the main stage. Kaija Saariaho (Finland), Mark-Anthony
Turnage (UK), Luca Francesconi (Italy) and Jörg Widmann (Germany),
will all create individual responses to a set of questions
developed in collaboration with Slovene philosopher Slavov
Žižek
including 'What preoccupies us
today?' and 'What are the collective myths of our present and
future?'
Operas
for family audiences are also programmed: a childrens' opera by
Mark-Anthony Turnage is to be directed by award-winning director
Katie Mitchell for December 2015, and composer Julian Philips and
librettist Edward Kemp will premiere a work for Christmas 2013.
Holten
and Pappano also announce exciting plans for those nearer the start
of their careers, responding to the lack of organised pathways for
those seeking careers in opera creation. In collaboration with
Guildhall School of Music and Drama, later this year The Royal Opera
is to launch a Masters' progamme in Opera Making, and a new doctorate
in opera composition, the result of which will be a new opera to be
performed in 2016. An annual collaboration with Aldeburgh Music and
Opera North is also to be launched for the 2013/14 season, which will
commission first operas from promising composers to celebrate the
legacy of Benjamin Britten.
This bold
new direction should offer relief to those worried about the future
of such a demanding medium in a tough economic climate. The road to
2020 might not be an easy path,
but Holten
makes it clear that this bold and optimistic vision is in fact the
only solution: “Risk taking is more important than ever before. If
we didn't have the courage to make new work, then would we really
deserve public subsidy? If you let the crisis into your heart, you
risk becoming the
crisis.' Surely new work – sculpted from the sweat and toil of
today's best creative minds in reaction to the hopes and fears of our
own lifetime – is the best way to prove opera's enduring relevance
to the people of today.
