Erwartung
Music: Arnold Schoenberg
Libretto: Marie Pappenheim
The Murderous Delusions of Gavrilo K
Music and libretto: Kevin Rodgers
Director: Valeria Perboni
Contemporary opera is a hard nut to crack, but Kevin Rodgers has most definitely cracked it. The Murderous Delusions of Gavrilo K may not be the world’s most enticing title, but this is an exciting piece. It’s meatily dramatic and beautifully lyrical, by someone who knows just how to write for the stage and the human voice, with music that is both appealing in its own right and expressive of the characters’ emotions. There is a directness about this score that is positively Verdian, not dissimilar to Philip Glass or Górecki’s Third Symphony, but with much greater energy and variety. It’s short and fast-moving, but expansive in the right place, with ensembles and duets as well as solos.
Gavrilo K has assassinated the country’s president. Whether he is executed or imprisoned for life will depend on his psychiatric assessment. Doctor Sunderland is expecting to conclude that he is insane, but then she finds that he knows about her affair with the Institute Director (Olelskii Zasiadko) and her secret abortion. The vocal lines are challenging for the singers but also full of vocal opportunities, which this splendid cast grabs with both hands. Quito Clothier as Gavrilo has a touchingly youthful innocence and sincerity and is thrilling in the more demanding passages without ever forcing his voice. Elizabeth Marshall’s voice gleams gorgeously as she writhes with Dr Sunderland’s dilemma, and Anna Loveday in a variety of roles is terrifying as the Prosecutor.
This is a splendid piece, and the audience clearly love it. Valerie Perboni’s production unnecessarily adds a camera that provides projections of the cast – plus a few other visual images – on a screen at the back. Some of the words of Rodgers’ libretto are also projected onto the screen – often just the nouns in a rather reductive sloganeering kind of way. It would have been better to have given us consistent surtitles or not to have bothered at all (the diction was excellent). This is an incidental defect that doesn’t detract from these excellent performances.
Perboni makes much less impact with Schoenberg’s monodrama Erwartung (‘Expectation’ in English) because she fiddles with it more. A woman wanders through a moonlit forest and comes across the body of her lover, but is she responsible for his death? Perboni has three actor/dancers represent the woman in three roles: as mother/giver, bride, and empowered woman. Anna Marmion sings this ferociously demanding score magnificently from a music stand, but is reduced to being an accompanist in a ballet. The programme notes suggest that the woman is going through a therapeutic exercise and working through her trauma, but the piece only comes to life when Marmion abandons her music stand to join the dancers and tears up and crumples her score. There is no attempt to represent the forest: instead, we get some green netting suspended from the ceiling, plus a gigantic revolving glitter-encrusted cauliflower, which is supposed to represent the moon, but partially obscures the surtitles.
Schoerberg’s score represents the extreme of atonality, which will be enough to scare off some. It is athematic in that no musical material returns or is developed. As a result, there is no sense of continuity or surprise, and it all ends up sounding rather the same, albeit with brilliantly varied instrumentation. The music glitters and slithers in a menacing fashion – cold rather than hysterical – but wonderfully evocative of the moon, which is repeatedly mentioned in Marie Pappenheim’s text. Schoenberg’s musical kale is fascinating and atmospheric, but 27 minutes of it is enough.
Grimeborn continues to break the rules of conventional opera in that, for both these pieces, the performers sing to a previously recorded orchestra track by the Guildhall Session Orchestra conducted by Peter Longworth and Sam Dinley. Orchestral tracks have almost become the norm for modern dance, and it works remarkably well here, never coming across as karaoke. But it raises some interesting questions about the future of the operatic orchestra.
Runs until 8 August 2026
