Concert review | Yöhehkuinen’s terrible work kept the audience in agony

Contemporary opera

RSO festival. George Benjamin’s opera Written on Skin at Musiikkitalo on 10.11. Libretto by Martin Crimp. Directed by Benjamin Davis. Lauren Snouffer, soprano, Iestyn Davies, countertenor, Mark Stone, baritone, Judith Thielsen, mezzo-soprano, Nick Pritchard, tenor. Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by George Benjamin.

of George Benjamin opera Written on Skin is a beautiful and terrible night-glow work. It kept the Musiikkitalo audience in agonized suspense for an hour and a half.

The piece is based on a Catalan troubadour of Guillem de Cabestaing (1162–1212) to the legend told. In it, the Lord of the Castle hires a young artist to create an illustrated book as a sign of his power. The beautiful Linnanruva Agnès falls in love with the artist. The lord of the castle’s jealousy flares up, he kills the young man and feeds his heart to his wife. The wife commits suicide.

The topic is also familiar from other old stories.

Written on Skin actually means medieval illustrations painted on parchments, whose strangeness, boldness of colors and abundance of shapes fascinate Benjamin.

However, it seems that Benjamin wants to write his opera for the skin of his listeners as well. The music is full of ringing pinpricks, sharp cuts and whiplashes, which you experience as physical tactile sensations on your skin.

Written on Skin is an original mixture of hot and cold, distant and close, metaphysical and concretely violent and raw expressionism.

It could be used as a point of comparison Kaija Saariaho A distant lovewhich is also a medieval fable. A distant love the pace is extremely slow, while Benjamin’s opera has a feverish, frantic pulse. A distant love tells of a great longing, Written on Skin on the other hand, from erotic desire, cruelty and jealousy.

Benjamin’s the opera bursts and fizzes with fantastic details, timbres, motifs and rhythms. From this mosaic and puzzle, Benjamin, who led the show meticulously and enthusiastically, built a skilfully organized large painting with tight dramatic tension.

The vocal parts and the orchestra are equally important. The orchestra anticipates or reacts to the story’s twists and turns and paints a brooding and suggestive, explosive atmosphere.

by Martin Crimp the speech rhythm of the libretto is usually fast and full of questions. There are many lines of one and a few words. English speech and conversation give the vocal expression its characteristic hectic and questioning look. Poetry also breaks out.

Love-starved Agnès’ lines grow into lyrically anxious cantilenos. by Lauren Snouffer the beautiful soprano in the ball glistened enchantingly.

Representing the Artist, the Son and one angel Iestyn Davies the countertenor often soared in strange, as if other-sex, heights. What makes it even more strange is that the Boy, when saying his line, may also speak of himself in the third person, thus dividing himself into subject and narrator.

As grand and booming as a baritone by Mark Stone The lord of the castle was, he too had his sensitive moments. Linnanherra has a coolly submissive attitude towards his wife, but Poika seems to arouse his lust. It could also be one of the reasons for Poja’s murder.

The orchestra the expressionistic murder interlude is probably the most brutal in the history of opera.

The lord of the castle is a manifestation of violent toxic masculinity, which is opposed by the opera’s three angelic characters. The angels appear to be heavenly eco-rebels who want to cancel air traffic and eliminate Saturday parking at markets.

Cuts to modern times create their own irony and humor. Opera has many levels, which is why following its fast and intermittent rhythm is also an intellectual challenge for the audience.

An ordinary couple of our time is Agnès’s sister Marie and her stupid husband John. Marie goes grocery shopping at the mall, and John collects flight points. Marie has sick sexual fantasies. The lord of the castle calls Marie a whore.

All the soloists were excellent.

Opera respites are its three translucent and calm tonal images called miniatures. Mandolins rattled in the first, viola da gamba chirped pizzicatos in the second, and in the third a glass accordion vibrated in the starry night sky as Agnès jumped from the balcony at the end of the opera.

The soloists sang in front of the orchestra. Director Benjamin Davis had used simple means to make the characters of the story into living people.