Who exactly is Michel Tabachnik? Well, he's a Swiss composer and conductor. From poking around on the internet I think that, although he's fairly prolific as a composer, this is his first opera, but I could not swear to that with absolute certainty. His wikipedia page says nothing about this or any other such that he might have written. That seems to indicate a...let's say lack of particularly intense general interest in him and his work, but who knows?
"Benjamin" is Walter Benjamin, the German Jewish intellectual best-known--at least to non-experts like me--for his essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," who in 1940 tried to flee from Vichy France to Spain thence to cross over to Portugal and go to the US; when he was turned back, in despair he committed suicide by morphine overdose. You know, apropos of absolutely nothing, but I've noticed that people who turn away refugees are always judged extremely well by history; they're seen as great heroes who definitely did the right thing and are worthy of emulation. What's especially good is when they say things like "my ancestors came here The Right Way; why can't they?" These are just profoundly moral people whose worldviews are built on a deep reservoir of compassion.
Too much? Once you start with the bitter sarcasm, it can be kinda hard to know where to stop. In any event, it's not exactly a cheery subject for an opera, is it? Which puts it in good company, of course, but somehow the fact that it's a real event in living history makes it seem all the grimmer. Still, the artistry in good opera redeems the tragedy, doesn't it? We'll see to what extent that's the case here. As you can imagine, this isn't very plot-heavy: there's a long-ish scene at the beginning with no music and only spoken dialogue, as Benjamin takes the drug in his hotel room and waits to die; his fractured memories are what make up the story; as Benjamin-the-actor remains on stage, Benjamin-the-singer appears for the musical part of the piece, which consists of a number of scenes each centered around someone who played a role in Benjamin's life, most of whom will be familiar names: Arthur Koestler, Bertolt Brecht, André Gide, Hannah Arendt, and others (and I must say, they generally do quite a good job of making the singers look eerily like the historical figures).
Anyway, it's interesting stuff. The music changes notably depending on whom Benjamin is interacting with, becoming, for instance, more strident for Brecht, romantic for his on-again-off-again lover Asja Lacis, and taking up strong Jewish-sounding motifs for Gershom Scholem, a German-born Israeli intellectual. The whole thing takes place in Benjamin's hotel room, with video projected onto the walls (that's in the debut, from Opera de Lyon--probably the only place it's ever been performed?)--including, towards the end, of someone doing a google image search for Paul Klee's portrait of Benjamin (which also features elsewhere in the piece):
I have to say, not a great likeness. Yeah, everyone's a critic.
The opera was interesting and sincere. I don't know if I loved it, but then, I don't know if I entirely wrapped my head around it either. It definitely seems to be a serious work worth engaging with, and possibly revisiting.
No comments:
Post a Comment