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Giving a voice to the unheard
Errollyn Wallen has given Manon a voice. Picture: Brian Tarr
WE'RE all sitting in a basement studio
huddled round a piano and a table. Three women are singing their hearts
out and there is hardly pause for breath. As the music and singing reaches its climax there
is a sudden silence broken only when composer Errollyn Wallen lets out a
sigh and says: “Phew, that was intense.” ‘That’
is Errollyn's latest opera
Anon, an
ambitious project which has seen her working with Welsh National Opera
to create a new work inspired by the Puccini opera
Manon Lescaut.
Based on the 18th
century book by Abbé Prévost, Manon Lescaut tells the story of a woman
whose search for love leads her to break the strict moral codes of her
time – with disastrous results. The opera is being performed by WNO as
part of their spring season – and it has inspired this new work. WNO Youth and Community director Rhian Hutchings
explains how Manon evolved into Anon: “We took the subject matter
from the original opera Manon,” she says. “Then, together with Errollyn,
we pulled that story apart and looked at how we could explore its
subject matter in the present day. It is the story of a woman who makes
a decision, in this case to go off with a man, and the huge consequences
it has for her life – and her death.” The team were also working with Birmingham-based South Asian arts organisation Sampad who immediately saw its relevance. “We met with Piali Ray, director of Sampad, and she said 'that sounds like a contemporary Indian story' and that was when we realised how powerful it would be today,” adds Rhian. Working together with Sampad, Rhian and Errollyn
held a number of workshops with young women in and around Birmingham,
visiting Tipton Sports Academy and Newman University. “We wanted a
contemporary up-to-date story and when we spoke to these young women we
realised that the story was
just that,” says Rhian. “They were talking about how you make a
decision to do something and how it impacts on your whole life. But we
also realised from these discussions that the subject took on a much
wider element than simply being an Asian story – this was a story for
all young women whatever their background.”
The group also interviewed a group of
Birmingham-based female sex workers and then created the basis of a
story. “Much of the text of the opera is actually the words spoken
by some of these women – they are real stories,” says Rhian. “What
Errollyn has done is bring them all together into one story. And it is a
very powerful story. I'm really interested to see how audiences will
react to it as we haven't shied away from it. What we want to have is
engagement and discussion with a lot of young adults about a very
contemporary issue and this is what opera is about. Opera is able to
approach these subjects with a kind of poetry but it makes it no less
hard-hitting. And the woman Manon becomes nameless.” “We were travelling back from Birmingham to
London after one of the workshops and we were talking about having all
these different stories in the opera and whether the stories would merge
and the audience should be uncertain of who was saying what at certain
times,” recalls Rhian. “I said 'it's almost like they become anonymous
voices' and Errollyn just went 'That's it, the name, Anon'. It just
fitted perfectly.” Errollyn, who received an MBE for services to
music in 2007 and picked up the Ivor Novello Award for Classical Music
in 2013, admits that she wasn't initially attracted to the story of
Manon. “Initially I was reluctant,” says Errollyn. “In fact I
wasn’t sure about the idea and didn't know what I could do with it. I
read the novel and it struck me that Manon doesn't get to even speak.
The brief from this project was to write an opera about the exploitation
of young women across the world. The more I spoke to people, including
the other women involved in the opera, I realised we all had stories to
tell. Every day you read in the news about women being trafficked or a
woman being abducted or stories of ‘honour killings’, female genital
mutilation, and on and on. I realised how relevant our opera is. Talking
to young women in Birmingham confirmed that.” Errollyn continues: “What really helped me
develop the story was when we did some workshops with Tipton Academy and
Newman College. I was presenting scenes and dilemmas from Manon
Lescaut and then asking them 'what would you do? It was basically
story-telling and they would come back in twos and threes and they would
say 'we would do this or this'. And it was just the vivid way they told
me – it just got me realising that there was a lot in that original
story.” “By setting these dilemmas and scenes in modern
times we were exploring each person's culture because that influenced
what they would do. So we looked at what happens to a young teenager who
runs away from different cultures and different religions – and what
would happen. I realised that question could carry on into the libretto.
The question 'what would you do?' had to be at the heart of it.” Speaking to female sex workers in Birmingham
brought another element to the story. “We were very lucky because they were anonymous
and they could be very open and honest with us,” recalls Errollyn.
“There were three of them and they were all
bright
women but they looked ill and tired. They all came from families where
for generations there had been different types of abuse, different types
of neglect. You saw that their options were limited. They had all left
school early, didn't really know where they were going and they had
slipped into this world due to a manipulative older man – all of them.
Then they somehow got into drugs, it was actually crack which got them
onto the streets, and were caught in a cycle they couldn't get out of.
But then their parents were in these cycles too.”
After all these workshops and discussions
Errollyn had a rich collection of stories and experiences to condense
into a 40 minute opera: “From all of this the libretto and opera kind of
wrote itself really. Once I found the language of the piece, odd lines
and images would come to me. The piece is lots of very short scenes put
together but it does have one clear story which starts and ends in the
same place. I decided I wanted really stripped back the text to be very
sparse and not descriptive at all. So you could just present the scenes.
It is more about showing situations. Once I set the words to music that
sparseness became a sea of emotion, atmosphere, tension and drama. That
is what music does to words”. Unlike the original novel in which Manon is a
silent victim of circumstances, surrounding by men who tell her story
for her, in Anon there are only women's voices – the three
sopranos Sara Lian Owen, Claire Wild and Joanna Foote and two female
actors. “We've turned the novel on its head and we've
given Manon a character,” says Errollyn. “The novel was hugely
popular at the time but it is written from the male perspective – our
opera looks at situations from the female perspective.” Errollyn worked collaboratively with director
Wils Wilson, music director Stuart Wild and the three singers and actors
in a series of workshops through the late summer and autumn. Errollyn
continues: “At the first workshops in some cases I just had the libretto
for some scenes and hadn't written the music for them. For some of it we
would improvise the drama and that really helped me – I got to keep that
picture in my mind.
“Working with the performers in a workshop
setting means you can go home and see them in your mind's eye and then
you can go back to the workshop and revisit it. For me it is all in the
voice. You should still be able to experience everything without lights
and scenery. Then the opera works. And the first voice workshops really
helped because every singer is different. The word 'soprano' doesn't
really mean anything as every voice has different colours, different
textures and different timbres. All three of our sopranos are very
different.” When Anon is staged in Birmingham Errollyn
is planning to share it with the girls and women who helped her create
it: “I was so inspired by them. They just helped me. I remember talking
to the Tipton girls and I thought 'I just have to do this' and suddenly
it was easy.“And one of the things we all found interesting, including
the women we were talking to at the beginning, was that they didn't know
opera could do this. That it could tell a story like this, something
from the real world today.” Which is also what attracted the singers to the
project. Joanne Foote says it is amazing how far Anon has come
from Manon: “In verismo opera such as Manon you often tend to find that
the women are very two dimensional characters. They run off with a man
and then they die of consumption. But here the women have so much more
to them.” And Claire Wild adds: “What Errollyn has done is to give Manon
a voice.” Now the project looks set to ask other young
women and men for their responses to the story. “We will be
performing Anon in Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Cardiff and
Bristol,” says WNO Youth and Community producer Åsa Malmsten. “It will
be for audiences of people aged 16 plus and we would like to show it in
colleges to some invited audiences but also at venues like the Mac in
Birmingham to the general public. “Our aim with Anon is to raise awareness
of issues which generally remain hidden. And we want to provoke
discussion about them. Our aim is to hold question and answer sessions
at the end of each performance to look at some of the issues that have
been raised. It would be great if some of the people in those audiences
are also encouraged to come along to see WNO perform Manon
Lescaut as well but our main focus here is to bring that story into
the modern day and to examine the many issues around the exploitation of
women today.” Anon is performed on Wednesday 26 March at 4pm
and 7pm at mac in Birmingham. 0121 446 3232 and
www.macarts.co.uk |
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