On “Festen” and forgetting

Festen is the latest opera from pre-eminent British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage, which I have just had the good fortune of seeing during a brief sojourn in London. The three act, 100-minute work follows Thomas Vinterberg’s 1998 black comedy-drama of the same name — a film beforehand unknown to me. Although Turnage’s adaptation is more than enough to arouse interest in the original, when it comes to the Danish screen, Borgen remains at the top of my must-watch list.        

In considering a new opera, there is a kind of quadrivium to critique: the composition itself, the libretto, the work’s performance and its production. In Festen, one of these four parameters is, for my tastes, not as successful as the others.

Of the show and its production, there is little to do but heap praise upon all involved. Allan Clayton, who I last saw in Opera Australia’s staging of Brett Dean’s Hamlet and who now sings the much-troubled Christian, executes his charge with precision. As Michael, the French baritone Stéphane Degout delivers an energetic performance, excellently directed by Richard Jones. Lucy Burge’s choreography is also to be commended, as is Miriam Buether’s set design. The use of simple graphic projections during scene changes is surprisingly effective. Just as optically mesmerising are Linda’s (Marta Fontanals-Simmons) appearances, seemingly from thin air.  

Special praise must go to Rosie Aldridge as Else and Susan Bickley as Grandma, both of whom perform their roles brilliantly. When Aldridge lets out the most harrowing scream upon Helge’s (Gerald Finley) presumed death, it is a scream of many complexities — of grief, regret, embarrassment. Does she love her husband? Does she love her children? This is nuance of the highest order in which Aldridge excels. While Bickley’s is the lesser part, one of the opera’s most poignant moments belongs to her: a lullaby, simultaneously innocent and despairing. Brave to these two bystander matriarchs.

Edward Gardner conducts the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House with alacrity in what is a secure, expressive and full-bodied performance of Turnage’s exciting new score. Turnage himself paints with bold, rhythmic brushstrokes. His material is assured, at times lyrical, at times disconcerting, always well crafted. He is no stranger to quoting previous works — the opening outburst of Anna Nicole, for instance, appears almost verbatim in Hammered Out — and I cannot help hearing in Festen allusions to a much earlier work, Three Screaming Popes. 

There is virtually nothing in Turnage’s score that can be faulted. Noise is used as adroitly as silence, and the orchestral interlude at the opera’s climax is so arresting that I found myself physically grimacing throughout it. Only the most cantankerous of critics might draw attention to those rare moments in which brighter instrumental timbres obscure bass vocal lines, or suggest that those lines themselves are sometimes too rhythmically drawn out, beyond the point of dramatic and phonetic reason. Fortunately, I am no such reviewer.

In particular, Turnage’s choral writing is a remarkable triumph, made so by the composer’s sure command of counterpoint. The chorus has been a casualty of modern opera; Festen throws fashion to the wind, going so far as to contemporise the Cuban conga. With clarity, comedy and alarm masterfully balanced, the massed scenes we hear in Festen are, quite possibly, Turnage’s finest.

This, then, is the black sheep: Lee Hall’s libretto. Here is, for me, a text that in uninterrupted performance is fractionally too long and yet is almost certainly too short to be successfully halved. As I favour an interval, where might extensions then be added, especially as there are whole scenes over which uncertainty already hangs? Take the early exchange between Christian and Pia (Clare Presland). The latter’s past is examined at length, but to what end? We hardly hear from the character again. Christian’s reticence towards intimacy might otherwise have been more succinctly conveyed.

Does the opera require its token sex scene, its profuse cussing?

The final scene, too, seems inappropriate. It goes beyond denialism to present a kind of contrived fantasy. Until that point, everything had felt real, even if stylised. This, though, is a deviation from Vinterberg’s narrative, which Hall confesses to undertaking in his notes, and one that I am not sure is ultimately productive.

At what point does obscenity become gratuitous? Or, rather, cease to advance a work’s dramatic tension? Hall’s libretto forces me to ask these questions. Turnage is no stranger to setting risqué subjects, and Festen is still some leagues distant from Adès’s Powder Her Face. But does the opera require its token sex scene, its profuse cussing? I might be too prudish, and other hills have proven surer footing for battle.

This is an important work, for both the new music and veteran talent it presents, and one that is sure to be revived across the world. How tragic, then, that I should lose my memento of its premiere, my programme, in transit between London and Dubai. And yet — Festen is all about what it means to forget.