Powder Her Face opera review – the original retelling of A Very British Scandal

Scandal! The mainstay of many an opera. The stuff of blockbusters. “Don’t’cha hate it?” “Don’t’cha love it?” 

Either way, we have all been glued to our screens this new year as a societal docudrama brings the mighty low. Confess. You have been binge-viewing.

Even if the hand grabs the remote, there is insufficient courage to hit the “Off” button. High jinks in high places are being revealed, and judicial processes engaged to refresh memories. Reputations are crumbling before our eyes.

So much for PMQs last Wednesday. I much preferred binge-viewing A Very British Scandal over the holidays on BBC 1 – still available on iPlayer.

The former tells the quantum story of Downing Street events – parties only happening in gardens when you actually observe them – impelling the notorious divorce of hirsute PM, BoJo from the trusting British people during Covid lockdown in 2020. 

The latter, the story of lubricious events surrounding the notorious Court of Session divorce of the Duke and Duchess of Argyll in the 1960s.

At least the Duchess of Argyll did not require to appoint an independent apparatchik to confirm whether or not she had been in close proximity to a headless man. She was perfectly capable of recollecting her whereabouts at the time. 

Prime Ministers are, au contraire, busy people who cannot necessarily be expected to recollect whether they are coming, going, or have been to sober work-related events or even Tesco-booze-fuelled garden parties in their own backyard. Needs an expert investigation and can’t possibly recall until the report’s available. 

Norwegian director, Anne Sewitsky (no, she directed the TV docudrama, not PMQ’s, idiot) was widely credited as ploughing virgin territory, ignored for nigh on 60 years when she happily lit on the Argyll drama for her mini-series.

Reviewers seem to have forgotten completely that composer Thomas Adès latched onto the vibrant imbroglio as the theme of his very first opera, Powder Her Face, as long ago as 1995. And what a scandalous opera it is, highlighting all the lurid bits of the Duke and Duchess of Argyll’s court case from the start.

So, appetite whetted for all things scandalous Argyll by the spellbinding portrayal of the former Margaret Sweeney – played by pert Claire Foy – I went in search of a musical version of Margaret’s story. Time to revisit Powder Her Face to get more insight into the graphic bits. 

There is an interesting 2019 Ópera de Cámara Teatro Colón production, currently available here. Full versions like this are hard to find.

The only Argentinian shortcoming is that it is sung in impeccably incomprehensible English, but without surtitles. That said, it’s probably a mercy that the graphic scenes of fellatio – no headless men here – and gratuitous buggery are viewed without the benefit of unnecessary explanation. 

Back in 1995, Classic FM banned the transmission of the accompanying music. That good.

Adès hails from the rank of composers who love to deploy shock and awe in their scores. His musical style is a full-frontal attack. 

The conundrum is that while his works are often difficult to listen to – the clicking, banging, shattering discords and blaring brass seemingly more at home in NKVD torture chambers – the impact of the whole is often intriguing. That is if listeners survive to tell the tale.

I side with Elaine R Barkin, the American composer and music commentator who wrote in 2009 of Adès’ style thus:

“Mr Adès, a chutzpahdiker (she invented the word – good on her!) virtuoso, possesses an uncanny ability to make-keep everything both clean and dirty: even amidst the clutter and clangor all sounds to be audible. Tangled and untangled; sweet and nasty; sleazy and genteel; a surfeit of bipolarities.

Music’s past and present recalled; classical (of all eras), music hall, dance, pop, jazz, blues, disco, rock, avant garde. A diverse repertoire of ensembles and genres: orchestral, opera, chamber, secular, profane, choral, et al.”

I couldn’t have put it better myself. So, I haven’t tried.

And so it is with Powder Her Face. The libretto was provided by Philip Hensher, English novelist, critic and dramatist. He is a pillar of the LGBT movement, though there is little conventional LGBT prurience about heterosexual activity in evidence in this opera.

Hensher seized the opportunity to create the first onstage blow job in opera history and twisted the Margaret Argyll story away from fact and towards expressionism. Watch A Very British Scandal for a historical account, then follow up with Powder Her Face as an attempt at a psychological explanation.

Margaret is transformed into a comic, tragic figure, a nitwit always on the verge of being evicted from her hotel room for non-payment of the escalating bill. The libretto may read like a cheap porno-flick script but add the music and it becomes emotionally compelling.

Adès blends seductive stretches of 1930s melodies into the chaotic soundscape. His clashing discords are the sounds of Margaret’s bonkers world of castle restoration, searching for Armada gold and attacking anything in trousers along the way, falling apart. 

The mirror in which she powders her face is finally shattered. At least, that’s my reading of the title.

The Duchess is portrayed as the victim – sometimes willing – of male cruelty. Adès has taken more than a few leaves from the book of Alban Berg’s Lulu, another work using theatrical exaggeration to illustrate a slump from tormented reality to total self-destruction.

The opera is dramatically weakened by sketching over the ghastliness of Ian Campbell, the 11th Duke, and portraying Lord Wheatley, the judge who presided over the infamous Court of Session case as a Beyond the Fringe parody of the justice system. 

His lengthy judgment stands as a searing condemnation of the 1960s slide to hedonism. A last judicial stand against the erosion of traditional values from a Scottish, Catholic judge.

To truly understand the decline and fall of Margaret needs a fuller explanation of the execrable behaviour of her money-grubbing, substance-abusing husband and the devastating po-faced Wheatley verdict. 

More importantly, it would have made better opera. Adès and Hensher aimed at easier behavioural targets.

As a readily staged chamber opera, Powder Her Face pops up in the repertoire frequently. Irish National Opera, 2018, Gerhart-Hauptmann-Theater Görlitz-Zittau, 2017 (Wow! I wonder what they made of it in Zittau, the boondocks of southeast Germany, pinched between the Czech Republic and Poland), English National Opera, 2014, and Opera Philadelphia, 2013.

Apropos of nothing at all, I met Margaret, Duchess of Argyll in the mid-1980s. It was a long conversation. I think I said, “hello”. The occasion was an evening of buffoonery at a St James Club dinner hosted by one of those societies selling Lordships of the Manor to the gullible. 

To add credibility to the spoof titles on sale they had invited a real Duchess to grace the top table as principal guest. As the bizarre proceedings drew towards a close a menu was circulated for attendees to sign as a memento of the occasion for the lady du jour, Margaret. 

She scrutinised the completed document intently. After a frantic whispered exchange with the host, he stood up and pompously intoned, “Her Grace wishes that the person who signed the menu “XXXXX, Duchess of Drumnadrochit”, please identify themselves. There is no such person.”

I thought it refreshing that whatever slings and arrows which had been thrown at her in the British – and global – media Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, was still feistily intent on preserving what was left of her dignity. 

Unsurprisingly, Adès left his opera until after the Duchess’ death in 1993, taking the view that lawsuits from beyond that grave would stand little chance of success. 

If he still savours scandal as operatic theme – as I hope he does – Adès must be sharpening his composing quill, seeking the librettist services of Sue Gray and preparing to launch Whitewashing my Lockdown Party, a story of Britain’s entitled, hubristic political elite. 

Representing the sound of discordant reality sinking into the minds of the 53 Tory MPs needed to write to the 1922 Committee and bring this ignoble saga to a head, is right up the Adès street.