#nederlands-kamerorkest — Public Fediverse posts

Micha Hamel on his opera Caruso a Cuba: ‘Caruso is trapped in his star status’

(c) Petrovsky & Ramone, Origithing Photography

It all started at a book market during a holiday in Berlin, with the book Wo Aida Caruso fand. This German translation of Como un mensajero tuyo (As Your Messenger) of the Cuban author Mayra Montero at once triggered Micha Hamel’s interest: ‘The title made my antenna crackle. It was clever of the publisher not to choose a literal translation but to refer to the main characters: the historical figure Caruso and the opera heroine Aida’. Hamel read the book in one go and decided to turn it into an opera, Caruso a Cuba. It will be premiered on Sunday 3 March as part of the Opera Forward Festival, Otto Tausk conducting the Nederlands Kamerorkest.

The libretto starts from a historical fact – the bomb that exploded in the theatre of Havana while Caruso sang the role of Radamès in Aida in 1920 – the rest is fiction. ‘I had been talking to Pierre Audi for quite some time about a new production and now I knew: this story is an opera. Love and fate are the themes, it’s about opera and plays in an opera house.’ Hamel decided to deepen his bond with the opera tradition and at the same time write a work about unfulfilled love. ‘A difficult subject, which I have never worked out before in music theatre.’

Belcanto

From a very young age Hamel was inspired by the love for the belcanto of composers such as Verdi and Puccini: ‘My parents played a lot of recordings of opera, and I started composing after seeing the film Amadeus, I was fourteen years old. When the new venue of the Dutch National Opera opened I immediately took out a subscription. I visited all productions, until I went to study at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague.’ Thanks to a Neapolitan lover he also learned to speak Italian fluently, the language of the libretto, which he wrote himself.

Act of love

The spirit of Verdi and Puccini can be heard in the score: ‘Without imitating I try to make my music sound as I hear theirs. Composing is always an act of love, an homage to the existing body of music that mankind has developed. For example, the orchestra plays a few bars from the Aida overture when the performance begins, and via audio fragments we twice hear the real Caruso as Radamès. There are also some style quotations, but with their own, contemporary colours.’

Musically, Hamel follows the story closely: ‘The protagonist Enrico Caruso arrives in Havana majestically and confidently, intent on shining as a star there. Towards the end he is completely wrecked and disillusioned, abandoned by all and every. My music starts melodiously and traditionally, but ends in grim atmospheres, with atonal fragments and radio noise.’

Baritonal tenor

The voice of Caruso still attracts admiration, also from Micha Hamel. ‘He does not really sound like a tenor but full and broad, also in the higher registers, more like a baritone. In his early years he even had trouble with the high notes, but when he mastered them technically, his career went fast. He always sings from the character, with small glissandi, sobs, accelerations and decelerations that logically sprout from the meaning of music and text, from what his character feels at that particular moment.’

In the tenor Airam Hernandez Hamel has found the ideal Caruso. ‘That role is quite a challenge because of the gigantic reputation of the historical Enrico Caruso. Also in terms of physical and appearance, the singer must be able to carry the role. As soon as I heard Hernandez sing I adapted my first sketches and I sculpted the rest of the part to his possibilities. He seems to love high notes, I love that.’

Doomed love

Hamel himself considers his chamber opera as one spun-out duet between Caruso and Aida. Their doomed love forms the dramatic core, around which the other figures circle. Aida’s mother and her godfather, the priest Calazán, try to turn fate away with rituals from their Lukumi religion. They represent the spiritual dimension. At some more distance there is Caruso’s manager Zirato, who also tries to protect him from evil.’

‘Caruso’s tragedy is that he is a world star, and is trapped in this role. He has no choice but to sing and earn money. He is obsessed with himself, he is the hero of his own life story. The explosion of the bomb may serve as a liberation: he escapes from his life and finds a great love. At the same time, raw reality knocks at the door: the mafia, his ailing health, the fact that he is married, even though his wife lives in New York.’

Caruso disrupts relationships

‘Aida’s tragedy is that she feels Caruso is her great love, but has to release him because he must return to New York. Spurred on by her love she helps him escape from the mafia, but at the same time she helps him escape Cuba – and her. She carries his child, but knows there will never be another man in her life. In a metaphorical sense, Caruso himself is a bomb: wherever he goes, he disrupts personal relationships. In this I see a similarity with Pasolini’s Teorema, in which the human is treated as a primal force that confronts us with our insignificance.’

‘It remains unclear whether the story actually takes place, or only in Caruso’s feverish dreams, floating between life and death. The opera is told from his perspective, his head is full of memories. When he sings we often hear a Neapolitan mandolin, as a melancholic touch. Moreover, an out of tune piano sounds. This reminds him of his youth, but also of the rehearsal room when praciticing an opera role.’

Death in Naples

Hamel once uses an Aida trumpetthe instrument Verdi had especially built for the triumphal march of this opera. It sounds during the ritual in which Caruso is immersed in a lagoon, to alleviate the chaos that his presence in Havana has created. Hamel:  ‘This forms the centre of the piece: in a vision Caruso sees his hometown of Naples; Calazán foresees that Caruso will die there – the latter is also historical.’

Towards the end of the opera, more and more noises creep into the sound image, via percussion and electronic soundscapes. ‘At a certain point there are no longer any stable chords, everything seems to happen randomly and accidentally. Rhythms get stuck, chords only consist of two notes. Caruso a Cuba ends with a high whistling tone. Perhaps this depicts the screaming sound of the falling bomb that Caruso relives in his head, or the tinnitus that the explosion gave him. Tinnitus, the death sentence of every musician…’

Caruso a Cuba runs from 3-9 March

#CarusoACuba #DuctchNationalOpera #MichaHamel #NederlandsKamerorkest #OperaForwardFestival #OttoTausk

Julia Bullock sings Anne Trulove in #TheRakesProgress: ‘Anne is a very mature woman’

Julia Bullock (c) Christian Steiner

At the first opportunity he abandons her. He leads a debauched life, marries someone else and ends up in the madhouse. Yet Anne Trulove keeps loving Tom Rakewell, the main character in The Rake’s Progress. On 1 February, Dutch National Opera will present its fourth production of Stravinsky’s opera, staged by Simon McBurney.

It’s a collaboration with Aix-en-Provence, where the opera was premièred in July 2017. The same vocal cast performs in Amsterdam, accompanied by the Dutch Chamber Orchestra under Ivor Bolton. The young American soprano Julia Bullock sings the role of Anne Trulove. Bullock: ‘Anne faces her emotions, learns from them and continues. She is a very mature woman.’

Reading the libretto of W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman I can’t help asking myself what on earth Anne sees in the weakling Tom. Julia Bullock laughs exuberantly at my bewilderment, but then carefully chooses her words. ‘Tom is an intelligent, ambitious and warm person; Anne is attracted by his energy, his liveliness. The opening scene at once offers various dynamics, but most important is the dynamics between Tom and Anne. They express their mutual love. And whatever this implies, it must be presented as sincere and real’.

Tom is an unfaithful rake, who is seduced by Nick Shadow to lead a debauched life in London. Yet Bullock abstains from condemning him outright. ‘He is someone with great ambitions, getting the chance to realise them. If you get every conceivable possibility handed to you on a silver platter, this brings along quite a lot of temptations. This applies to everyone, but some can handle this better than others. Tom is less stable and self-confident than Anne, though I do not believe she is trying to save him.’

‘I consider it important to convey that their love relationship really goes deep, that their concern for each other is sincere. Despite the unholy path he follows, she remains faithful to him.’ Anne’s behaviour set Bullock thinking about her own life: ‘I recently got engaged myself. If Christian were going through a difficult time, or even if we were splitting up, I would still like to be there for him.’

The soprano finds a new challenge in every piece: ‘I learn from each composer and from any character I perform. Anne is a remarkable person. She copes with the many difficult personalities and situations that come her way. Moreover, she has the gift of constantly growing her compassion and love. Anne is certainly not a silly girl, but a mature and thoughtful human being.’

Once more Bullock’s contagious laugh fills the room: ‘It’s refreshing to have to train that muscle in myself while working on this piece. The more so because of the intimate way director Simon McBurney works. This sometimes leads to tensions, but there is great mutual respect. Perhaps he goes home and gets really furious at his performers, but during rehearsals he is very patient. I regularly cry out: this is not going to work! Yet we always find a solution. Simon was a performer himself and acquaints you step by step with the character you are interpreting.’

‘As for Anne, of course she has intense and also negative feelings. Sometimes she is extremely angry, bitter or deeply sad. Simon helps me to shape all these layers emotionally, psychologically and physically. He strives for authenticity, it must never be artificial. Thus I learn to internalize my character and make contact with the Anne inside me. She is able to admit strong emotions; she learns from them and goes on. Tom, on the other hand, carries circumstance after circumstance with him. I think that’s also what is haunting him and ultimately driving him mad. If you can’t let go of a trauma, you will disassociate from yourself, because it becomes too hard to bear.’

Tom imagines being Adonis and ends up in the madhouse. Anne plays along with this delusion at first and pretends to be Venus, but leaves him alone in the end. Is she choosing for herself after all? Bullock: ‘You could say that, but what can she do really? No matter how important her presence is to Tom, in his new world Anne remains peripheral. She may have been tempted to be part of their love story again, but he is in a place where she just cannot follow him. Once again, it testifies to her adulthood that she acknowledges this.’

But what development does Tom make? After all, the title of the opera is The Rake’s Progress. ‘You should ask Paul Appleby, who sings his role,’ says Bullock, thoughtfully raking her fingers through her curls. ‘For me, his progress lies in a form of self-realisation. Tom reaches a point where he sees who he was, what he wanted to achieve and where he ended up landing.’

‘He wanted to take up an elevated position throughout his life, hence the fantasy of the gods. But that’s not the sort of place a human being can function within, at least not permanently. We can have moments of ecstasy, but Tom wanted to always be in this heightened reality, this heightened world. Towards the end he increasingly reaches that insight. He is not totally lost, but accepts the reality of his life. You hear this in the music, which ends calm and simple. Tom has finally found his peace, he is not wrestling anymore.’

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#AnneTruelove #DutchNationalOpera #IgorStravinsky #JuliaBullock #NederlandsKamerorkest #SimonMcBurney #TheRakeSProgress