Dame Imogen Cooper, perhaps the greatest living interpreter of Mozart, Schumann and Schubert’s piano works, once stated her artistic ambition succinctly: “Capture an audience through music and take it on a journey”.
Exactly the achievement of British composer, Laura Bowler, with her mind bogglingly challenging opera, The Girl With The Hurricane Brain at this year’s Copenhagen Opera Festival. A worthy successor to last year’s The Yellow Wallpaper, composed by Dani Howard – of “Awesome Weapon” Trombone Concerto fame.
The journey starts in Copenhagen’s unpromising Meatpacking District, and the warehouse premises of the Sort/Hvid – Black/White – theatre. “Theatre”? More an industrial performing space dedicate to the avantgarde.
I’m not sure if I would sign up for all the boundary-breaking works to be found on the roster. Maybe Reaction’s critic would give Gilgamesh a body swerve.
“You arrive on the green carpet in your most extravagant monster couture. There is a world premiere of LOGEN’s long-awaited blockbuster production GILGAMESH . You and your inner furry beast are specially invited to an intimate evening in the company of the abyss. This is VIP. This is blitz-blitz-blitz. This is INSANITY INSANITY INSANITY INSANITY.”
Having unthinkingly consigned my monster couture to the hotel laundry, I entered the warehouse in mere casual kit and encountered festoons of hand painted black and white hanging banners with random, sometimes prolix messages proclaiming the purpose of The Girl – “This is NOT OPTIMISTIC, it is GRIM, and it is GRIT, it is SLOW and it is SWEAT, and so I START DIGGING”. I, as they say in native Glasgow argot, began to “hae ma doots”.
But, Amy Lane, Copenhagen Opera Festival’s Director, Director of The Yellow Wallpaper, also of this seasons’ Longborough Ring Cycle – is there anything this omnivore director doesn’t do? (ed.) had kindly invited Reaction to Copenhagen, so, time to START DIGGING.
The first surprise was to be introduced to Bowler, who was a bubbly advocate for her work, an exposition of the conflicting messages surrounding the issue of climate change, as experienced within a family. My over-simplified synopsis.
Far from the doom-laden proselytiser I had expected. First impressions matter. And mine was that Bowler is driven by insatiable curiosity.
Still, I entered the intimate theatre space with racked seating and an open stage expecting a lecture, but instead was treated to a mind-challenging experience.
The context is a visual universe created through pitch black sand, dripping oil and eco-friendly kombucha leather. I have since decided to grow my own shoes. Camper, farewell!
Nine musicians and four singers (a family and an onscreen news presenter) enter a small kitchen. Bowler’s score places them in a sound world of hurricane forces, sweeping around arguments about the family’s dilemma in a post apocalypse world.
The mother and father are doing their best to “do their duty”, endlessly turning the handle of a complex mechanism that seems to be directed – through a pair of large, hanging car-wash type brushes operated by turning the treadmill handle – towards a clean up operation. Sisyphus had it easier. Dystopia would rate five stars on TripAdvisor compared with this “avoid at all costs” hell hole.
In a corner of the kitchen was a mound of oily sludge, the reminder of the damage done by uncontrolled exploitation of natural resources. At the back, stage right, hangs a screen detailing uninterpretable, but clearly doom-laden, evolving statistics about the climate change predicament. As the news changed the screen clacked up and down.
These were reported on repeatedly by an excitable Tomorrow’s World type presenter. Meantime the daughter, driven to questioning the narrative her parents had overoptimistically accepted from our increasingly frantic and often comical presenter and the authorities, entreated them to wake up from the delusion that trundling that handle – as presently advised – would do any good.
Bowler used the musicians, the experimental ensemble Lydenskab, to great effect. To say that Lydenskab’s string techniques were unconventional would be a considerable understatement. The strings were transformed into percussive instruments, the unexpected sounds grabbed the audience’s attention. The players occasionally left their allotted places and roamed the performing space.
Audience involvement knew no artificial boundaries. In one sequence, an audience member was plucked from the front row to participate in an ironic family dance.
To sit-on-your-seat-and-behave lovers of a conventional production of La bohème all this will sound dire. Anything but. Librettist, Sam Redway, provided a punchy libretto. Melded with Bowler’s tight scoring the impact was enthralling. No dull bits.
Director Katie Mitchell was involved in the prep for the piece. She has a credit as “Libretto Konsultent”. A badge of approval for Bowler. Mitchell’s recent-ish Theodora and Lucia di Lammermoor, at Covent Garden, both reviewed by Reaction, were gob-smackingly involving.
The Girl’s “Instruktion” – Direction – was courtesy of Jude Christian, whose extensive theatrical experience, including London’s Royal Court, helped her deliver an edge of the seat experience. I would love to have been at the blocking rehearsals as Christian melded the itinerant band, that Walter Mitty ‘Glopita Glopita’ contraption, mad screen man and the principal characters into seamless delivery of frenetic action.
There was a difficult boundary between family loyalty and the questioning of the daughter that might have been crossed, but never was. Far more difficult to achieve than a simple descent into violent disagreement. The leavening humour of the hapless presenter was artfully done.
This year, Copenhagen Opera Festival ran from 16 – 25 August. The Festival is choc-full of staged, open air and travelling community events. If any excuse is needed to visit this beautiful Scandi city, make it during festival time.
Five staged performances, seven concerts, nine “events”, community gatherings introducing the public to a wider musical repertoire and the mobile opera bus adventure, Ride! Sing! Repeat! Being clasped unexpectedly to Musetta’s bosom while dawdling over a café espresso would make any journey worthwhile.
I took in two other events during my too-short stay. A recital in Christians Kirke by Opera Talent of 2024, soprano Sofie Lund, and a concert in magical Tivoli featuring American soprano, Angel Blue.
Lund’s voice was rich and direct. Five opera arias, including the haunting (literally) How beautiful it is, from Benjamin Britten’s Turn of the Screw with accomplished pianist, Ulrich Staerk, was followed by a song cycle, new to me. Dyvekes Sange, composer, Peter Heise.
About a girl, facing advances from an unexpected suitor. A wonderful art song experience, up there with Schubert and Schumann lieder. The title of number 3 – What does he want, that man with the chains? – is a bit of a giveaway about what a challenge to her independence the girl is facing. Lund was tear-jerkingly convincing.
Her accompanists in the cycle were cellist, Live Johansson and pianist, Nicolae Kornerup. Lund is a northern soprano to watch. She has the depth of character and dramatic presence to address challenging operatic roles. I think I saw a Salome in the making in Copenhagen.
But I know I saw an American soprano on full throttle when Angel Blue bloused onstage at the Tivoli concert hall that evening. First half, red dress. Second half, blue. Angel has a sense of humour.
Red for opera arias, blue for the Great American Songbook selections. A great catch for the Festival, Blue undertook a Q and A post-concert. Alongside Amy Lane, she was frank about a host of issues. The enthusiastic attendance at the event outran the seats by a multiple of 3. I helped lead an expedition into an adjacent room for more.
Blue rebutted a politically correct question about prejudice – it took her a while to secure American gigs – by musing that perhaps it was because familiarity bred contempt. She judiciously – and with painstaking courtesy – avoided the knee jerk “prejudice” response invited by the questioner. Successful performances in Europe soon saw her heading back across the Atlantic to an enthusiastic home crowd.
She openly admitted to preferring the classical to the more popular “musical” genre. No crossover artiste, Blue. Renée, you’re safe on Broadway.
Then, there was her act of unprecedented generosity at the end of the performance. Blue called out Annika Beinnes from the audience, an aspiring Norwegian soprano who had particularly impressed her during the Festival. Beinnes took to the stage in total shock.
They sang Puccini’s O Mia Babbino Caro as a duet. For Beinnes it was the impromptu career enhancing experience of a lifetime. She sang her heart out. From Angel Blue it was an act of unassuming, unaffected kindness. Deeply affirmative and moving for the audience. To hear how good Beinnes is – and she is stunning – listen to a solo performance here.
One opera, two concerts, and I had only scratched the Copenhagen Opera Festival surface. Fabulous art, innovative delivery, the widest possible engagement of artists and public. A tribute to Amy Lane’s tenure as Festival Director.
After The Girl With The Hurricane Brain, in another conversation with Bowler she asked me, not unreasonably, how I had found the evening? I told her. “Challenging”. Not in any ironic, euphemistic sense. This hardened, rather conventional commentator on opera’s delights was leaving Copenhagen’s Meatpacking District with much on his mind.
Bowler seemed quietly content with the reply. A challenge was what she had intended to deliver. She had honoured the Imo Cooper injunction, captured her audience and taken it on a journey.
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