Breaking the Waves.
Composer.Missy Mazzoli. Librettist Royce Vavrek. Director Tom Morris. Conductor Stuart Stratford Revival director Sara brodie. Designer Soutra Gilmour. Original lighting designer Richard Howell. Co-produced by Opera Ventures, Scottish Opera, Houston Grand Opera and Theatre National de l’Opera Comique in association with the Adelaide Festival. Festival Theatre. Adelaide Festival Centre. March 13 and 15 2020.
Reviewed by Peter Wilkins.
I have not seen Lars von Trier’s
film about the woman who gives her body to strangers at the behest of her
husband Jan (Duncan Rock), paralyzed by an accident on an oil rig. Her hope in
fulfilling his request is that she may restore his health and with it their normal
loving marital relationship. Bess McNeill (Sydney Mancasola) is a good woman,
loyal, faithful and profoundly compassionate. And yet her compliance with her
husband’s bizarre request drags her into the dark abysss of mental and physical
anguish. Eventually she becomes the outcast, reviled by her mother (Orla
Boylan), sexually abused by random, brutal lovers, castigated by her small,
deeply religious community and cast out of her beloved church. Only her best
friend Dodo (Wallis Giunta) and Dr. Richardson (Elgan Llyr Thomas) stand by her
to the tragic end. Von Trier’s narrative is ideally suited to adaption to the
lofty emotive power of the opera. Composer Missy Mazzoli’s operatic score
reverberates with powerful force, exploding with passion and charting Bess’s
journey from girlish innocence and wedded ecstasy to disorienting distraught
shock at Jan’s predicament and deluded belief in the power of her goodness that leads hre along the path to depravity and
rejection.
Mancasola is magnificent in the
role of Bess. Director Tom Morris’s
demands on Mancasola and Rock to sing while in passionate embrace or struggling
with physical anguish would test the best singers and Mancasola and Rock rise
to the occasion with voices that not only superbly accomplish Mazzoli’s challenging
operatic score but also capture every nuance of emotion. Librettist Royce
Vavrek’s text is sparse, yet effectively gripping in carrying the narrative and
punctuating the moments of heightened emotion.
Mancasola is supported by an outstanding cast,
called upon by Morris and conductor Stuart Stratford to realize the emotional force
of Mazzoli’s composition. There are fine performances from Byron Jackson as Jan’s
friend Terry and Freddie Tong as the unforgiving councilman. In a scene of
sheer violence Sadistic Sailor (Francis Church) and Young sailor (David Lynn)
epitomize the abusive treatment of Bess. The threatening spectre of bare-chested
men is a chilling vision of the sexual degradation that Bess is subjected to.
It is a disturbing image of male sexual oppression. Bess’s innate goodness and
compassion, though severely compromised by her acquiescence to Jan’s selfish
plea, elicits an audience’s deep empathy in the face of her community’s
rejection and sexual abuse.
Von Trier’s dark and disturbing source material
serves Mazzoli’s operatic adaption brilliantly and the orchestra of Scottish
Opera under Stuart Stratford’s baton renders a stirring aspect to the tragic saga.
Mazzoli’s contemporary interpretation is a heart stopping chilling innovation, dynamic in its
composition and thrilling in its instrumental, vocal and performance compatibility.
Breaking The Waves is certain to deservedly take its place as a leading contemporary
opera on the world stage.
