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A journey to the other side
Living the dream: David Stout as Buddha. Picture: David Massey Wagner's Dream Welsh National Opera Birmingham Hippodrome **** AS A title,
Wagner's Dream is perhaps a misnomer as this complex multi-layered opera
by the late British composer Jonathan Harvey, bears only a fragile and
distant echo of anything remotely Wagner. Harvey who was a local lad being born in Sutton
Coldfield in 1939, an area often referred to by those who do not possess
a map as Warwickshire, died in December 2012 aged 73. He was renowned for his experimental approach to
his music developing several of his themes through diverse influences,
including the analysis of sound by electronics. It is no surprise then
that the musical work here is clearly Harvey's Dream rather than
Wagner's. It's a surreal and ambitious proposition where
Harvey imagines that at the point of Wagner's real death from a heart
attack in 1833, he struggles, in his final moments, to conceive the
story of an unwritten work on Buddasim. In so doing it provides an opportunity to explore
the Buddhist faith and the transition of both his creative and spiritual
conscience at the precise moment that his real earthly life is ending. First premiered in Luxembourg in 2006, the WNO,
have re-created the original and delivered an impressive and imaginative
staging of this, Harvey's last work. There is some unique lighting and effects in
order to create the illusion of both the physical and imagined world.
There is even a pre warning of the use of fire, no doubt to prevent a
stampede from those audience members who might believe the theatre is
burning down.
The libretto by Jean-Claude Carriere, neatly
crafts these two worlds into a single view and as we see Wagner failing
in his last hours at the front of stage, the opera he is creating in his
mind appears behind him. There is a clear performance separation as the
opera is both a play and an opera with actors portraying Wagner and his
immediate family and the singers who create the emerging Buddhist opera. The imagined opera is that of a young Girl Pakati,
who to be close to the man she has come to love Ananda, played by
The two stories, that of Wagner's dying moments
and the plight of Pakati, are both anxious and difficult and the score
reflects this as it is irritable and nervous from the start fusing high
note clusters with electronics and ethnic percussion. Throughout there
is little respite from this constant questioning tonality. The singing though is impressive with a
commanding performance from David Stout as Buddha and Claire Booth as
Pakati. Conducted by Nicholas Collon there were moments
when sonically the performance control was lost, principally with the
orchestra overpowering some of the acted lines and at the times when
Wagner and his attendees panic, as he drifts between his differing mind
states, the whole effect seemed nothing but chaotic. There is a lot to take in with the performance
running in a single act at just under two hours given it is performed in
three languages of German , Pali with mantras in Sanskrit, the
complexity of the two hypothetical stories and the scale of the
projection, lighting and staging effects. The separate elements do not always blend as well
as director Pierre Audi intends but the sum total is a challenging
experience that stays with you long after you leave. Jeff Grant
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