George Benjamin is a composer I’ve know about for a long time, but I haven’t really known the music. When I was about 15 I found a CD at an op shop that was originally a promo CD given with a magazine. The CD was a compilation of tracks from newly released recordings. From what I can remember the CD contained track’s from a recording of the Verdi Requiem, a lied by Gustave Mahler, a scene from Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring and a piece by Lutoslawski, among others. All these were very new to me and really opened my eyes up to new sonic worlds I hadn’t been exposed to before. The most arresting piece on the CD was the second of the Three Inventions by George Benjamin. The fresh and subtle music of this piece really intrigued me. It had an extended solo for Cor Anglais (and now that I think about it, this might be where my obsession for the Cor Anglais as a melismatic solo instrument came from) accompanied by a lot of percussion and pizzicato strings. It was an intimate work, a solo voice framed by small bursts of cacophony and rhythmic complexity.
I had a compendium book called something like The Great Composers or The History of the Great Composers, which I devoured cover-to-cover. This little CD put sounds too many names I had read in this book. However, there wasn’t an entry for George Benjamin. His name remained there in my mind, until I got to university and was able to listen to his first opera Into the Little Hill, which has stayed with me since. Though looking back now, I wonder to myself why I didn’t look any further into his work? Especially as I was verging of obsession over Olivier Messiaen, George Benjamin’s teacher.
Now I should say that Written on Skin really isn’t a “rare” opera as it’s received a lot of excellent productions since it’s premiere in 2012 and has been lauded as the first “great” opera of the 21st century. Though, for the purposes of the club as primarily a group of Aussies watching and reviewing work it is rare, because I doubt we will see a production in Australia any time soon, if at all.
I found this piece to be exquisite. It was fascinating, tense and eerily beautiful throughout. The lightness of touch of orchestration is masterful. As Is Benjamin’s handling of the orchestra in the performance, and he’s also conducting it. The singing and acting, came together beautifully and I didn’t feel that one out-shone the other as I often feel in opera. The tension and intention of the performers was gripping throughout. The physical production was also amazing (I watched the world premiere performance at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, 2012). My one issue with the performance was that at times the direction of the performers could have been a little less safe. Sometimes it felt a little stand a deliver, and maybe the direction didn’t necessarily give the singers enough focus as to where to guide their intention, but overall it was really gripping.
What struct me most about the music was the easy of the vocal line, and the clarity of text. Now, the singers employed are excellent, but setting and writing opera in english is notoriously difficult. Comparing the work to Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland from a few weeks back, which had some really awkward and unreasonable text setting, this work was so easy to understand and seemed pretty singable. Where Chin would hold vowels for really long phrases, and have awkward settings of word stresses this piece avoided that so well. And most of the time, text wasn’t elongated, but was sung in a way that resembled speech without losing its operatic feel. A good example of how Benjamin does this is in this video from his next opera (above).
The libretto for the work, by playwright Martin Crimp, is also an excellent piece in itself. It struck me as subtle and full of shadow and light. An incredibly sophisticated structure emerged between the three central characters, and the drama that plays out was intoxicating.
I don’t want to give to much away about the plot, but in the penultimate scene we’re confronted with cannibalism. In writing this now sounds so melodramatic and stupid, but the way it’s written in the libretto it becomes this weird, sad and almost touching moment. That to me is the greatest master stroke in the work, it allows you to watch this grotesque moment and see beyond the taboo into a desperate and sad act of control. The exploration of taboo on stage is such a fascinating to me. This piece touches on not only cannibalism, but speaks to a dominant persons control of someone and if you read into the character of “Boy” which to me suggests he is an adolescent, the power of sexuality, lust and control, something I touched on in my own Orpheus. This work is an essay in tension, manipulation and desire, and I found it thrilling.
Two articles I found really useful in additional reading was this one from the New Yorker and old mate Alex Ross’ amazing blog.