Critical acclaim for director Kentridge’s opera Lulu in US
by Jessie Cohen
2015-12-18 06:01:03.0
I HAVE been to the opera once before — to the New York Metropolitan, in fact — where I slept soundly through the third act of some Italian masterpiece whose name I’ve forgotten. Like many people, I saw opera as boring and excluding, but last weekend I was tempted to give it another try.
Armed with popcorn, I slouched into Cinema Nouveau’s sofa-like seats for a one-off screening of Alban Berg’s Lulu, directed by South African artist William Kentridge and broadcast as part of the Metropolitan Opera Season live in HD.
Kentridge is no stranger to the opera, having directed Shostakovich’s The Nose in 2010 and Mozart’s The Magic Flute in 2005. His production of Lulu opened at the Met in November to unstinting critical acclaim.
I warned my partner, who had never been to the opera before, that Lulu is four hours long. "Oh, and it’s in German," I sheepishly added. He was vocally ambivalent, to put it mildly.
When the screen lit up, we were transported to a packed-out, multistorey opera house thousands of kilometres away. The camera swooped towards Sabine Theunissen’s Art Deco set upon which striking imagery by Kentridge is projected, and the show began.
On the surface, Lulu is about a femme fatale who saunters across the stage, barely clothed, like a salacious snake eager to ensnare her next male victim. But it is Lulu’s victimisation, in fact, that is so staggeringly conveyed in this rendition. Kentridge’s ink-drawings of splayed female bodies and leering men with monocles flicker chaotically behind the action, constructing a performance which feels like a modern feminist Frankenstein.
Nowhere is this more apparent than the opening scene in which Lulu appears as a monstrous collage of her colonised parts.
She poses for a portrait by the Painter, played by tenor Paul Groves (who becomes her next husband), standing before us, and him, like an awkwardly positioned mannequin. Costume designer Greta Goiris draws on symbolic Kentridgian imagery to portray Lulu’s chameleon-like capacity to transform for the man at closest proximity. She dons a cylindrical mask of vacant expression alongside a comically large white glove and detachable paper images of a crudely drawn breast and vagina, stuck to her body.
It is the first of many unnerving scenes where the protagonist emerges as a visually fragmented self before her various husbands and lovers who collectively construct and distort Lulu’s identity according to their desired "woman ideal", which she performs in its various guises.
Lulu is played with sensual prowess by German soprano Marlis Petersen, who has performed the role many times already but has announced that this will be her last go. During the interval, the cinema audience is taken backstage with soprano and Metropolitan Opera representative Deborah Voigt to interview Petersen.
Voigt praises the 47-year-old performer for maintaining her physical "prime" and patronisingly assures Petersen that she still has a future in opera. She inadvertently undermines the spirit of the performance and exposes the sexist undertones to the industry where a woman’s worth heavily depends on her physical appearance.
Later, Voigt speaks to mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, who plays Countess Geschwitz — a lesbian character who is infatuated with Lulu — prompting Graham to admit that she isn’t 25 anymore yet manages to wangle her way onto the stage.
When Voigt interviews baritone Franz Grundheber, who plays Schigolch — the ambiguous father/lover to Lulu — she lauds him for having the longest career at the Met. Age and looks don’t seem to figure.
When we emerge from the darkness of the cinema into the bright lights of Rosebank Mall, my partner pipes up: "Can I say I’ve been to the opera now?", adding with a more serious tone, "I mean, does it count?"
There’s no doubt that going to an opera-on-screen does spark feelings of inadequacy. It is awkward to sit silently while the audience applaud on screen and a cinema venue will always pale in comparison to an opera house.
But why shouldn’t it count? Opera-on-screen is not just a moment for an elitist cultural medium to reach a wider audience. It is an opportunity to unshackle itself from a traditional, stiff-necked environment and enter a more colloquial sphere where the everyday punter can unpack the productions in high-definition close-ups in addition to the backstage politics. As Kentridge’s Lulu demonstrates, opera is actually rather enthralling entertainment, well deserving of the intimate and unpretentious cinema auditorium.
Paul Groves and Marlis Petersen in Alban Berg’s Lulu, directed by William Kentridge . Picture: SUPPLIED
I HAVE been to the opera once before — to the New York Metropolitan, in fact — where I slept soundly through the third act of some Italian masterpiece whose name I’ve forgotten. Like many people, I saw opera as boring and excluding, but last weekend I was tempted to give it another try.
Armed with popcorn, I slouched into Cinema Nouveau’s sofa-like seats for a one-off screening of Alban Berg’s Lulu, directed by South African artist William Kentridge and broadcast as part of the Metropolitan Opera Season live in HD.
Kentridge is no stranger to the opera, having directed Shostakovich’s The Nose in 2010 and Mozart’s The Magic Flute in 2005. His production of Lulu opened at the Met in November to unstinting critical acclaim.
I warned my partner, who had never been to the opera before, that Lulu is four hours long. "Oh, and it’s in German," I sheepishly added. He was vocally ambivalent, to put it mildly.
When the screen lit up, we were transported to a packed-out, multistorey opera house thousands of kilometres away. The camera swooped towards Sabine Theunissen’s Art Deco set upon which striking imagery by Kentridge is projected, and the show began.
On the surface, Lulu is about a femme fatale who saunters across the stage, barely clothed, like a salacious snake eager to ensnare her next male victim. But it is Lulu’s victimisation, in fact, that is so staggeringly conveyed in this rendition. Kentridge’s ink-drawings of splayed female bodies and leering men with monocles flicker chaotically behind the action, constructing a performance which feels like a modern feminist Frankenstein.
Nowhere is this more apparent than the opening scene in which Lulu appears as a monstrous collage of her colonised parts.
She poses for a portrait by the Painter, played by tenor Paul Groves (who becomes her next husband), standing before us, and him, like an awkwardly positioned mannequin. Costume designer Greta Goiris draws on symbolic Kentridgian imagery to portray Lulu’s chameleon-like capacity to transform for the man at closest proximity. She dons a cylindrical mask of vacant expression alongside a comically large white glove and detachable paper images of a crudely drawn breast and vagina, stuck to her body.
It is the first of many unnerving scenes where the protagonist emerges as a visually fragmented self before her various husbands and lovers who collectively construct and distort Lulu’s identity according to their desired "woman ideal", which she performs in its various guises.
Lulu is played with sensual prowess by German soprano Marlis Petersen, who has performed the role many times already but has announced that this will be her last go. During the interval, the cinema audience is taken backstage with soprano and Metropolitan Opera representative Deborah Voigt to interview Petersen.
Voigt praises the 47-year-old performer for maintaining her physical "prime" and patronisingly assures Petersen that she still has a future in opera. She inadvertently undermines the spirit of the performance and exposes the sexist undertones to the industry where a woman’s worth heavily depends on her physical appearance.
Later, Voigt speaks to mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, who plays Countess Geschwitz — a lesbian character who is infatuated with Lulu — prompting Graham to admit that she isn’t 25 anymore yet manages to wangle her way onto the stage.
When Voigt interviews baritone Franz Grundheber, who plays Schigolch — the ambiguous father/lover to Lulu — she lauds him for having the longest career at the Met. Age and looks don’t seem to figure.
When we emerge from the darkness of the cinema into the bright lights of Rosebank Mall, my partner pipes up: "Can I say I’ve been to the opera now?", adding with a more serious tone, "I mean, does it count?"
There’s no doubt that going to an opera-on-screen does spark feelings of inadequacy. It is awkward to sit silently while the audience applaud on screen and a cinema venue will always pale in comparison to an opera house.
But why shouldn’t it count? Opera-on-screen is not just a moment for an elitist cultural medium to reach a wider audience. It is an opportunity to unshackle itself from a traditional, stiff-necked environment and enter a more colloquial sphere where the everyday punter can unpack the productions in high-definition close-ups in addition to the backstage politics. As Kentridge’s Lulu demonstrates, opera is actually rather enthralling entertainment, well deserving of the intimate and unpretentious cinema auditorium.
