The last thing you want to do is Picture a day like this. Sir George Benjamin’s new opera, premiered at the Aix en Provence Festival and coming to the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Theatre for a run from 22nd September until 10th October is a heart wrenching and often bizarre experience. 

Picture a day like this tells of a woman whose baby is dead. She is encouraged by women who never emerge from the background to wrap the corpse in silk prior to burning. What society does that? The woman – who is never named – refuses to believe her child cannot live again. If plants can sprout from barren ground, why cannot her child be reborn?

The mystery women, who flit in and out of the background tell her the child has a chance to live. “Find one happy person in this world and cut one button from their sleeve. Do it before night and your child will live.”

Is this promise true? Is the challenge impossible? Will there be a happy ending?

The ultimatum plot in opera is not unknown. Turandot (Puccini’s Turandot) sent her courtiers on an all-night quest to discover the name of her lover – Prince Calaf – on pain of death if they failed. Is Benjamin going to give us a new World Cup aria, Nessun Button?

Spoiler alert. No, he isn’t. But after a series of promising encounters with people who seem happy, but on closer inquiry are clearly bonkers, the miracle seems to have been pulled off and the woman finds her “bright button”. No, wait for it. The reveal is at the end.

The piece is about a voyage of self-discovery and shattered illusions. The encounters the woman has on her journey are bizarre set pieces, each enthralling and visually beautiful in its own way. First, she encounters a couple making luxuriant love on a mat. They are totally bound up in each other. They are happy. 

But the man invites the woman to join them in love making and then reveals he also sleeps with Anne, Clara, Michelle and Amandine – his current lover’s best friend – Charles, Antoni and worst of all, the girl from the coffee shop. He calls it “polyamory” and is told by his lover to “take all your f…ing polyamory and go to hell.” Hardly happy then! 

Next, we have the man in the glass case holding a bunch of dying flowers and wearing a suit enspangled with 35,000 buttons he has made himself. At least he has buttons to spare. He is an artisan and happy in his buttons. But he reveals slashes of self-harm on his left arm and rope burns round his neck. He is a drug addict and far from happy. 

Then comes the comic turn of a self-infatuated composer and her “PA”. She is introduced taking a call. Tokyo is on the line, or is it Rome? With five brilliant symphonies to her credit, she is the composer du jour. But is she? She has no time for conversation and “takes no questions”. She turns out to be completely insecure and terrified that she may, after all “be banal”. No button here.

So far, so bad. When a rich art collector hoves into view there are grounds for optimism. But he wants to add the woman to his collection, which he is forced to keep behind bars. He is alone and offers the woman a home. “I will only look at you”. She is to be part of his collection. The woman demands “the door” to escape. Weirder and weirder.

The man introduces the next character, Zabelle, with whom he has clearly had a relationship. She owns his carpets. Zabelle now lives in a make-believe world created by stunning special effects. Underwater? Certainly surreal. Maria Christin Soma, the set designer has delivered a pull out all the stops other world. It really is magical.

It is Zabelle’s paradise. Hers is the last name on the woman’s list. There must be happiness here. Maybe leaving the art collector behind and dumping the carpets has done the trick for Zabelle. Rose gardens are better than carpets.

But there is a sense that in confronting Zabelle, the woman is facing herself. Their exchanges are too intimate for them to be complete strangers. Zabelle tells the woman to “Picture a day like this”. Her bright day gives way to starlight and men try to force her metal gates and occupy the park. 

When Zabelle, confronted by the men drops her baby, he is cold, “doesn’t seem right”. She finally confesses “I am happy, but only because I don’t exist”, throws the woman the button she craves and fades from the stage. 

Benjamin and his librettist Martin Crimp have three operas to their credit, Into the Little Hill, Written on Skin and Lessons in Love and Violence. All have attracted critical acclaim. Musically, Picture a day like this finds Benjamin deploying all his atmospheric skills. Luscious harmonies give way to clashing atonality as the true characters of the people on the woman’s list emerge. 

Crimp’s libretto is taught, often tragic and frequently funny. Jibes are woven into the bleakness. Marianne Crebassa, the French mezzo-soprano who sings the woman does a fine job but shows surprisingly little anger. What’s going on? She is being put through hell with this damned list. Crebassa is too refined. Lacks the rough edges needed for this role to truly fly.  

At Covent Garden the role of the woman will be taken by Ema Nikolovska, a BBC New Generation artist. The Macedonian/Canadian mezzo is already acknowledged as having a high sense of drama and “being a tour de force of terrifying skill”. I have a sense she will define the role of Benjamin’s “woman”.

Watch her singing Schubert’s Der Zwerg and you will discover her eyebrows alone muster more power than the combined forces of the Wagner group. Nikolovska will be the force to reckon with this opera demands.

Picture a day like this delivers bleakness, I think the intention of composer and librettist. And also a timely warning about the dangers of self-deception and the need to question often alluring first impressions. Those glitzy photos on social media seen on days like this, any day, may be disguising a more sombre reality. Always scratch the surface.

The woman catches the button thrown by Zabelle. She returns to where she began, the small child bed where her child lies still and confronts the women who now cruelly tell her the book of the dead cannot be altered after all, “punched through with human thread”. 

The woman smiles. She proffers Zabelle’s button, “The bright button in my hand”, but the light of understanding slowly dawns in her eyes. She has lost. The scene fades to black.    

And Another Thing!

More from the fearsome twosome, Eliza Thompson and Selina Cadel, moving forces behind OperaGlass Works, whose filmic masterpiece, Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw is about to be followed up with their film version of Verdi’s La Traviata.

Eliza updates me, before she delivers her donation punch:

“We are about to start our 4th week of rehearsals for our film of La Traviata. It is proving to be very thrilling indeed. Roddy Williams is going to be a magnificent Germont, as are Susana Gaspar as Violetta and Thomas Elwin as Alfredo.

We have seven dancers from Matthew Bourne’s Company joining us soon…they guide us through the film. The creativity in the room is palpable and we are both excited by it.

We are doing well with our fundraising, but we do need more to complete phase 2 of the filming, which includes recording the orchestra and doing the edit. Anyone who contributes towards our project will of course get a credit on the End Roller.”

I’ve already coughed up. What about you? This project simply has to happen. You don’t need to be a high roller to be an End Roller. 

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life