Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 21 - 27 September 2000 Issue No. 500
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

	Egypt Elections Development Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Special Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters

Please be dead by ten

By David Blake

Bluebeard's Castle, opera in one act by Béla Bartók, Kolos Kovàts bass, Màrta Lukin soprano, Cairo Opera Orchestra, conductor Gergely Vajda, Cairo Opera House Main Hall, 17 September

Swamp ladies of the river Danube, beware, Bluebeard is coming this way. He came, he saw, he conquered poor Judith, married her and took her home to his palace. They truly loved each other, and with a great destructive passion. But being prosaic, like the world she came from, Judith was thrown by the surprises she met in the world of the rich and powerful, and began asking questions. Getting merely dusty answers from Bluebeard, she became a demented questioner, and finally found out what happens to people in opera who start being too inquisitive. She could not turn back, had to go forward, and quickly passed into eternal darkness.

This alarming opera was given in what must have been a rush-job production but coming, as it were, direct from the horse's mouth, worked well. Bluebeard's Castle shed its plague-like miasma across the stage of the opera, and mesmerised a huge audience. And no wonder -- it is a work of genuis of the calibre of Die Walkure of Wagner and Elektra of Strauss. Once it begins there is no stopping it, and its end totally floors us. We feel pity, horror, terror and compassion for the two incandescent beings who turn myth and fantasy into something horribly human and touching. It should not relate to us, but somehow it does by the sheer power of its music.

Bartók is the great predator. He is unlike all the others, a unique subterranean explosion whose music needs no isms or complex verbal explanation; the work of the theatrical projection is so simple. There are three sections: the arrival of the couple at the abode of Bluebeard, Judith's vow to know all and the appearance of the seven doors before which the action is performed. The seven doors are as irritating as the three calves of Tchaikovsky's Picque Dame. Seven doors to open, and it all fits into its own horribly logical formula, like a grandfather clock chiming away the hours from one to seven.

The music is formal, tonal, with a different key change for the opening of each door. These are quite simple and direct. From way up at the back of the stalls, where they are stationed, come waves of gorgeous martial sounds from the brass section of the orchestra. These involve not only the stage picture but the entire audience of the opera house. The characters almost end in the laps of the sitting audience. That is one of the reasons why opera flourishes on divas and heroic men who, with the power of their voices and their very physical being, come directly to the audience in cinematic close-up. Judith and Bluebeard stride across the stage, proudly immersed in triumphant calamities only death can resolve.

No doors but a suggestive visual thing, a vast white sheet spread over the stage which is hoisted up, down, over or across by invisible hands. The thing moves subtly to rhythms to suggest Judith and the answers to her questions. It is cleverly manipulated, is almost a living presence, a clinging colour and shape, but always turning gradually red as the awful answers to Judith's questions become realities to her.

Apart from this cunningly manipulated thing, the two singing actors, both from Budapest's state opera, more than fulfil the two roles. Experience enabled them to suggest all of Bartók's demands -- aggression, dementia, lust and finally fear. Each question provokes a different use for the white flying cloud as their destruction advances. One of the most shocking is of Bluebeard, an enormous, palpitating white mass, the stage suddenly bared and naked, exposed to a dazzling white light, with Bluebeard high in the heights, master of his realm, with stairways leading to nothing, a vast, empty eggshell.

When Judith suddenly realises the trap she has set for herself, which is a fate worse than dying, the white cloud suddenly spirals high, then drops to the floor, moving reptile-like and horrible to see. It creeps to Judith's feet, oozing pale red blood. What has she uncovered? Bartók has the last word, which is no word at all but the awful power of sound.

The white cloud envelops Judas gently but totally. Bluebeard must endure his own awful ghosthood.

Les Preludes of Liszt, The Four Last Songs of Richard Strauss and Tchaikovsky's Symphony Op.5, Cairo Symphony Orchestra, conductor Ahmed El-Saedi, Cairo Opera House Main Hall, 16 September

Playing with noise: the first and last of these are stamping grounds for Ahmed El-Saedi and the orchestra of the evening while the middle set piece was The Four Last Songs of Richard Strauss, which with Olga Bulgari the soprano, was quite another matter.

The smaller Liszt's compositions, the better they become. But as the pieces grow bigger, look out. With Les Preludes, something takes hold of Liszt and the music grows and grows till it is immense. It becomes empty and flashily rhetorical.

In past years El-Saedi made a sympathetic showing of the symphony. He searched and found places of rest and calm during the four movements, changes of colour and a quality of patience with the music, which allowed him to show the tormented Russian as a human creature. Once El-Saedi managed to make the symphony fresh and free from attitudinising. And now? A nervous, capricious, neurotic madman's dance. Each phrase seemed about to top the preceding one, pile and pile of tone and volume, signifying nothing.

Where was Tchaikovsky in all this noisy, commonplace riffraff of empty phrases and empty crash-bang climaxes? If you disliked Tchaikovsky, then this was your performance. El-Saedi has played this before, scaled down in size and with no noise. But something seems to have bitten him, some mad bug or other, and the longer it grew, the louder it became. El-Saedi was in stamping mood, and when this happens, best take care.

El-Saedi was ruthless to Liszt, he never once softened the onslaught to allow the poor listener a rest, never a gentle modulation or some help with the tonal pressures. The conductor seemed to relish the harsh light he shone on the poor composer. This does not help concentation on the music in hand, to be confronted by a solid wall of impassable sounds. How loud can you get?

So too Strauss's Four Last Songs. These pieces are so well documented and loved they need no words, but this showing does. They were written for the greatest voice of the 20th century -- Kirsten Flagstad, dramatic soprano, who gave them their premiere under Furtwangler. And so these songs continue, every great soprano must sing them and the conductor must be careful. The old genius Strauss had two great loves, his wife and the soprano voice. His opinion of conductors was rock-bottom, and so they must tread carefully as the soprano soars and floats above the orchestra, culminating in the vision of two larks singing and winging their way to paradise.

How were they treated this time round? Olga Bulgari, a lovely singer with a young voice like Lisa Della Casa, was cut to ribbons. Strauss's phrases were nipped and tucked, and the entire group of songs submitted to a show of impatience which carefully removed all humanity from them. The only tears possible were tears of anguish and impatience at such barbarism.

	weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg