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Certain composers have suffered rather weird fates, from Lully's lethal foot infection--he jabbed it while beating time--to the accidental shooting of Anton Webern (or was it a
murder conspiracy?). That fact is just one of the many seeds that have germinated into the fictional case (re)presented in
Rosa: The Death of a Composer, the first in the ongoing series of collaborations between leading Dutch avant-garde composer
Louis Andriessen and director-librettist
Peter Greenaway. The result is a Chinese box-like dramaturgy, many-tiered, self-referential, and frankly too complex to summarize handily but which involves hippophilia, an abusive relationship, geometric obsessions, multiple nudity, old-fashioned Westerns, and art's slippery, illusory nature. Greenaway has in fact created a film from the original 1994 stage production--but even without its stylized bleed of visuals and streaming text, the bizarrely arresting quality of this one-of-a-kind opera comes across on Nonesuch's premiere recording. Andriessen's score is a fascinating melange of nervous minimalism--preempting the style's tendency toward predictability--fierce Stravinskian rhythmic displacements, frosty harmonies that gather like a miasma, and half-jazz, half high-opera vocalism. Most impressive of all is how Andriessen avoids the kind of standard-issue postmodern pastiche that's the usual payoff but instead actually creates a believable sound world for the story's unique mix of parody and menace. Longtime Andriessen interpreters
Reinbert de Leeuw and the
Schönberg Ensemble give the score a biting, disturbing edge, while
Marie Angel surmounts the outrageous demands (not just vocal) made on her without faltering. The anti-romantic Andriessen is a seriously undervalued composer--he lacks the star power of
Glass or
Reich--but his intensely probing visions of music and its place in culture (as in
De Materie) open labyrinths of discovery.
--Thomas May
It has been six years since Rosa was premiered by Netherlands Opera, during which time Louis Andriessen's musical language has continued to evolve and provoke, not least in his third stage work, Vermeer. Yet this recording is much more significant than merely by way of catching up, as the impact of the piece, and its significance in the composer's output, should not be underestimated.
Conceptually, Rosa starts from the opposite pole of Andriessen's earlier, full-length stage work, De Materie. That involved taking what are essentially metaphysical ideas and giving them dramatic tangibility. The present work derives from a scenario which would closely resemble a Hollywood ‘B' movie, were it not for Peter Greenaway's expansion of narrative implications and blurring the conventions of cause and effect. As the chorus remarks at the beginning of scene 9, ‘Was Orpheus really slaughtered?'; followed by what is perhaps the summatory line of the whole piece, ‘Who would ever want to kill a composer?'
Actually, several other murdered composers feature, or are referred to, in the course of Rosa, or rather Greenaway's film version, including Webern and the ubiquitous John Lennon. We meet the double act of Alcan (sic) and Lully in two later scenes, who shadow the Investigatrix looking into Rosa's murder, sifting out the coincidental and circumstantial clues from those most likely to confirm a conspiracy. And the nature of this conspiracy? That isn't the work's business to answer.
Andriessen's immersion in (good old-fashioned?) socialist theatre is frequently apparent. The employment of just five singers to take on 11 roles, plus a chorus to add that timeless ‘Greek' formality, has Brechtian alienation written all over it; as does the growing sense that we're not supposed to empathize with, let alone feel pity for Esmeralda, Rosa's much-abused (in all senses) mistress, whose envy of the love he shows for his encased horse will be countered by her being stuffed into the carcass and burnt, with his corpse astride the animal. But then, those familiar with Greenaway's films will already have anticipated a properly cathartic denouement.
Musically, Rosa is much more dramatically integrated than De Materie. The Overture, with unison sax and electronic keyboard lines snaking across a string and synthesizer backdrop, is pure Andriessen, though the harmonic dimension expands as the theatrical drama intensifies. The final three scenes (tracks 5-7 on the second disc), while eschewing outward emotion, have a dramatic potency new to Andriessen's work, the dynamic terracing and rhythmic grooves creating a physical impact that the scenario seems intent on denying. This massive accumulated energy is then dispersed by the rap of the Index Singer's pay-off, funkily realized by Phyllis Blandford, and confirmation that Andriessen's response to contemporary urban pop is much more acute than his American contemporaries.
A strong cast is fully attuned to Andriessen's requirements, notably Lyndon Terracini's mock-heroic Rosa, and Marie Angel's supplicatory Esmeralda, with Miranda van Kralingen properly grating as the Investigatrix. Reinbert de Leeuw gets formidable precision and velocity from the Schönberg and Asko ensembles, with a recording that similarly pulls no punches. Rosa is no more a source of easy answers than it is of enjoyable listening, but its combination of impact and intelligence make it a compelling experience.
Graham Simpson
