Cassandra: Foccroulle picks an activist theme for his debut opera

In Brussels, the ancient world meets the modern. Cassandra is summoned from 1200 BC to announce her woes to La Monnaie/De Munt audiences. Sandra, a present-day ecologist and media-campaigning influencer tries to persuade that melting icecaps spell doom for all.

Composer and organist Bernard Foccroulle has chosen an activist theme for his debut opera. He comes slightly late to the opera game at the age of 69 but has made his reputation mostly through his organ works. Before heading to Brussels, I listened to samples of his output on Spotify and found it truly ghastly. An unstructured, atonal river of incoherent noise. 

Try this Toccata for size but keep away from sharp blades and any other instruments of self-harm for the eleven minutes it assaults your brain cells. 

Fortunately, Cassandra is a totally different kettle of fish. Foccroulle has found a harmonic, melodic touch I cannot unearth anywhere else in his oeuvre. And he writes at a pace that matches the exceptionally tautly written libretto from Canadian Matthew Jocelyn. There is nothing hugely memorable, but that is the sad trope of much of modern opera composition. 

Jocelyn spent ten years as artistic and general director of Atelier de Rhin in France and was named Chevalier des Art et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture in 2008. Cassandra is a product of excellent teamwork. 

This is an opera aimed at stirring audiences from their torpor of ecological indifference. Cassandra prophesied doom for Troy. Sandra, the climatologist, predicts that it is the disappearing Bach ice shelf which will doom us in the end.

Here is what happens when Cassandra meets Sandra.

THE PROLOGUE – SOMEWHERE FAR AWAY IN TIME

Human spirits (timeless)make their voices heard in the ether. They speak to Cassandra, evoking her frenzy, her prophecies, the curse that struck her. They see Troy on fire, as she predicted. That was then. We also see scenes of carnage from the present day.

FIRST SCENE – TROY BURNS, CASSANDRA WATCHES

Helpless, Cassandra witnesses the destruction of Troy by flames. It is in the form of a library collapsing. Knowledge is under attack. Seeing what she had announced happening, without being heeded, she screams in distress. Is it only about the past, is it not also about our future? She sings prophetically, ‘What was, what is, what must be’. There is a sense we are being set up for déjà vu all over again. 

SECOND SCENE – ‘CALL ME CASSANDRA’- The Influencer

Present day. Sandra (Geddit?) Seymour, doctoral student in climatology, closes a climate conference – Cop-Out 23 perhaps – with a stand-up show in which she transmits the results of her research with a solid dose of humour. Maybe going viral will make a difference. Our Sandra is a celeb. She has written a book.

The audience cheers, but post performance, an activist takes her to task backstage. How can she laugh about a subject like global warming? Enter love interest, Blake, a classics student. Despite a lively confrontation they are shortly a vigorously copulating item. 

THIRD SCENE – ‘YOU SPIT IN MY MOUTH’

We are back in Troy. This spitting thing is not ‘Allo Allo’ mistranslated invective. Apollo granted Cassandra the gift of seeing the future, but when she failed to respond to his advances, he spat in her mouth. After that no one would believe her prophecies. 

This is a stratagem which seems to have been deployed with a fair degree of success during the current UK party conference season, and possibly on Speakerless Capitol Hill. 

Apollo tries it on with Cassandra again. She stands up to him and mentions other women that Apollo wanted to conquer. He taunts her. Does she think she is the only one capable of ‘seeing’? The future is within reach. Anyone who really wants to can see it. Which is, of course, b….cks. Cassandra is, nonetheless, consumed by mourning and sorrow.

SCENE FOUR – THE BEES (1)

A hundred bees are buzzing. The bees are a stunning visual effect and, unlike the bedbugs now infesting most Paris opera performances, thankfully, an illusion. They illustrate the healthy state of nature.

SCENE FIve – ‘OTOTOÏ POPOÏ DA’ (which isn’t Welsh)

A year has passed since Sandra and Blake met and fell in love. Now they live together, and each works on a thesis. Using algorithms, Sandra models the melting of the Antarctic ice cap and its consequences. Blake studies the Agamemnon of Aeschylus. 

During a discussion, Blake cites an expression uttered by Cassandra in the play: ‘Ototoï popoï da’ – an exclamation which expresses the unspeakable horror of the prophetess’s visions but is essentially meaningless. 

Take it from me. I know how poor Cass felt. I was taught Greek by a long-suffering Jesuit known as ‘Big Jeff’ for 11 minutes in 19?? before being sussed as useless, drummed from his classroom and sent to needlepoint classes, muttering ‘Ototoï popoï da’ all the way down the corridor.

There now comes an awkward melding of the two timelines. Like Cassandra’s predictions, Sandra’s warnings about the climate crisis go unheeded. It is a ‘prophetic, unwelcome song.’ The discussion is interrupted by the phone ringing: Sandra’s mother invites the couple to her birthday party. Sandra and Blake are not keen to go. Blake is about to be sussed by the family. This contrast of the lofty with the prosaic maintains a necessary sense of humour throughout. 

SCENE SIX – FAMILY DINNER

We’ve all been to one of these. Sandra, her parents Victoria and Alexander, her sister Naomi, and Blake are gathered to celebrate Victoria’s 55th birthday. The atmosphere is strained but happy, the guests talk about different ways of predicting the future, and the teasing is going well. It becomes obvious that Alexander – dad – is a big cheese in some environmentally destructive business.

Science is compared to divination. Sandra pouts. During the discussion, the parents’ trip to Antarctica to visit Sandra’s centre of operations and witness the alarming state of the continent are discussed. 

Alexander pays little attention to Sandra’s ice-cap-Armageddon. On the contrary, he brazenly points out the opportunities offered by the melting of the polar ice in his field – in particular the possibility of exploiting new resources. He is like these annoying climate change optimists who tell us at dinner parties we will soon be able to grow grapes in Machrihanish.

Really wound up, Sandra and Blake attempt to leave. The arrival of the birthday cake detains them. After Victoria blows out the candles, Naomi finally manages to announce that she is pregnant.

SCENE SEVENTH – IN THE LIBRARY OF THE DEAD

We are back in Troy. Characters from the past wander through the ‘library of the dead.’ King Priam continually rereads what has been written throughout history about his death and the fall of Troy. He reproaches his daughter Cassandra for having launched a curse against him and against the city, but she claims she had only announced the foreseen catastrophe. 

Hecuba pleads in favour of their daughter, and Priam gradually realizes that Cassandra’s words were not a curse. 

There was some bafflement, as the roles of Priam and Hecuba were performed by the same singers who took on Alexander and Victoria, South African bass baritone, Gidon Saks, and experienced British mezzo soprano, Susan Bickley. Costume variations were minimal. What on earth was going on? A glance at the programme set the timelines and characters to rights.

SCENE EIGHT – THE SIREN SONG OF MOTHERHOOD

Sandra and Blake are at home. They are bickering. As he prepares to leave for Antarctica for a risky ecological intervention mission – stopping ships going there – Blake says he wants a child with Sandra. Talk about bad timing.

She does not want to give birth in this tainted world. Blake argues that they are fighting for a better world – that of their children. Deep down, Sandra recognises that she hears the siren call of motherhood. But she fears the ‘sinking’ of our world.

NINTH SCENE – THE BEES (2)

Fifteen bees are buzzing. Perceptive readers will have noticed they are having a hard time of it.

TENTH SCENE – LULLABY

Naomi sings a lullaby for her soon-to-be born child, a daughter she will name Alexandra, having ruled out Sandra. Naomi is a daddy’s girl at heart.

SCENE ELEVENTH – A BOAT ON ITS WAY TO ANTARCTICA

Sandra has finished her thesis and is giving her show one last time, but in a serious form. The very different tone she adopts is not to the taste of all spectators. Invective and insults fly. 

Cleverly, members of the cast were spread around the audience and jumped up, shouting abuse or support. One left from a highly visible box in disgust. I was amazed this did not provoke a general melee. I was about to stand up to protest about the poor bees and twigged just in time. 

Sandra then announces that she will leave the academic world and the stage to become an activist, like Blake, who is on his way to Antarctica.

During the performance, Sandra’s father receives a phone call telling him that the boat Blake was on has sunk. At the end of the show, the whole family comes to announce the terrible news to Sandra. General collapse.

Not much is made of it, but I assumed that as the call came through to Alexander it was one of his ships that was being boarded by Blake which had caused his death. Speculation.  

Naomi’s waters break at the same time. Sandra finds herself alone. Cassandra appears, compressing the timeline.

SCENE TWELVE – NO ONE, EVER, WILL DEPRIVE ME OF MY VOICE

We are now in the territory of the team effort. Sandra gradually understands she is in the presence of Cassandra and that their destinies are linked. Cassandra, who has suffered so much, seems to be trying to console Sandra – she knows well the ordeal the young woman is going through. 

Before disappearing, she insists that there is no Apollo to spit in Sandra’s mouth. No one can therefore prevent her from being ‘heard’.

SCENE THIRTEEN – THE BEES (3)

Five bees are buzzing. Curtain call. Certainly, for apiarists.

The operatic device of melding the classical past and the present in opera is not novel. Mark Anthony Turnage used the ploy in Greek, 1988 when Oedipus Rex clashed with the perceived ‘loadsamoney’ culture of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain.

The device risks over-complication and a clunky meeting of cultures. I recall at a performance by Boston Lyric Opera the plot of Greek was rendered incomprehensible by a director, who had clearly failed his O Level geography, introducing a fiery-eyed Egyptian Sphinx into the proceedings. Clearly, left over from Aida.

No such bloopers here and for a first opera Foccroulle managed with the help of director Marie-Eve Signeyrole to deliver a success just short of a triumph. This was a very watchable and compelling performance.

He was, however, not helped by the casting of Cassandra. Katarina Bradić, a passable Serbian mezzo soprano, looked like an unassuming girl who had wandered in from a hen party in the nearby Grande Place by mistake. No grit, rage or torment. Wrong. And a voice that sometimes failed to carry. 

Au contraire, Sandra, American soprano Jessica Niles, bubbled, shone, sang as if she was on a mission and delivered a hugely convincing performance. 

The set and visual effects were stunning, the work of Fabien Teigné who has worked mostly in Strasbourg. At the opening the library – wisdom – stands proud, boasting shelf upon shelf of books. They were devilishly clever projections. As they faded in the overwhelming conflict, the centre of the library crumbled to rubble, trapping innocent victims. This is the fate of those who destroy truth. 

Back projections were supported by visuals provided by onstage camera operators who filmed the carnage in live newsreel style. There was a sense of constant, vibrant action. And the immediacy of the reportage from sad war zones.

La Monnaie/De Munt is an opera house prepared to test the limits. Dingy on the outside, enter the porticoed doors of the former money mint and find a gloriously restored opera house dating back to 1830 in various forms. 

The custodians are intellectually rigorous, the programme supplemented by the options of a full libretto – in French, Flemish and English – and a long book of essays on the opera’s creation.

It is a mystery that more opera houses do not follow La Monnaie/De Munt’s sensible example. New York’s Met is particularly bad at providing programmes which give audiences the detail they need to appreciate what they are seeing for $400 a seat. No libretto, but ten pages of unknown gold-plated donors in unreadable 5-point font. Pathetic. 

This year La Monnaie/De Munt presents Solar by Howard Moody, another ecological offering; But my ‘must see at any cost, over whatever distance, no obstacle shall deter’ is – wait for it – We Purge Baby by Philippe Boesmans, based on a Feydeau farce and described by the opera house as, ‘An end of year family comedy as acerbic as it is deliciously virtuoso. Good shit!’ 

Apparently, it figures unbreakable chamber pots being sold to the French army which cannot survive the constipation problems of Toto, the tyrannical son of the manufacturer’s wife. So, also a comment on the corruption of the military industrial complex.

Whatever, La Monnaie/De Munt is always pushing something out, if not the boat. Let’s call it boundaries. There are other more conventional works for the hard to please. Cassandra is currently available free on Operavision. I advise having a look.

And my prophecy is that the temptation to head to Brussels, sample the excellent Moules Frites in the adjacent Café de l’Opera and, suitably fortified, address the challenges of one of the most innovative opera houses in Europe will prove hard to resist. ‘Ototoï popoï da.’

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