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___________ |
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Vol. III |
No. 12 |
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issue no 31: November/December 2006 |
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Revised for transfer from www.irishdiaspora.net
to www.oscholars.com February
2009 |
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To the Table of
Contents |
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'MAD, SCARLET MUSIC' |
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A monthly page dedicated to
Oscar Wilde and Music, compiled by Tine Englebert. Additionally, we will be looking at
some of the other operas of the period, or inspired by it. |
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To go to other pages of Mad,
Scarlet Music, click as appropriate: |
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Before July 2002,
‘Mad, Scarlet Music’ was incorporated in the main pages of THE OSCHOLARS. |
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Click |
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I.
De Profundis
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There
are a number of settings of De Profundis, including one by the
Belgium-based American composer Frederic Rzewski. As far as we know, this has not been
recorded, though the score can be obtained from Maestro Rzewski’s agent, Esther G. Freifeld esther.freifeld@systech.be |
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With kind permission, we publish here Frederic Rzewski’s
Notes. |
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Frederic Rzewski: Notes on De Profundis
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My composition De Profundis was inspired
by Luke Theodore, an old friend from the Living Theatre to whom the piece is
also dedicated. Luke went out to San
Diego in the early 80’s to start his own theatre. When I visited him in 1984 he was
performing a play he and his group had put together on the subject of
prisons. It included some material
from the Living Theatre’s ‘Frankenstein’ and a very lyrical and moving
reading of episodes from Wilde. I had
read the book, but in Luke’s performance I was struck by the power of the
writing. |
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In 1989 the filmmaker Larry Brose asked me to
write a piece for the pianist Anthony de Mare that could serve as the basis
for a film. I knew Tony’s abilities
both as pianist and actor. Remembering
Luke’s performance of the Wilde texts, I suggested these as a possible
source. All of us as well shared an
interest in the politics of sexuality; and this aspect of Wilde’s story
seemed as lively now as it was a hundred years ago. The project took some time to get under
way, but the piece was finally written in the summer of 1992. Since then it has been performed by a
number of pianists, gay, straight, male and female. All of the different interpretations which
it has received so far have been original, interesting, and different from
each other. The music demands a
combination of virtuoso technique and a total lack of inhibition on stage,
thus virtually guaranteeing that no mediocre or conventional performer will
dare to go near it. |
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De Profundis is a 30-minute composition
for piano solo, in which the pianist recites a text consisting of selected
passages adapted from Oscar Wilde’s letter to Lord Alfred Douglas, written
during the author’s imprisonment in Reading.
The piece could be described as a melodramatic oratorio, in which
eight sections with text are preceded by eight instrumental preludes. It was written in the summer of 1992 for
the pianist Anthony de Mare, in memory of Luke Theodore. |
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The text is as follows: |
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1. People
point to Reading Gaol, and say, ‘That is where the artistic life leads a
man.’ Well, it might lead to worse places.
Mechanical people to whom life is a shrewd speculation depending on
calculation always know where they are going, and go there. They start with the ideal desire of being
the parish beadle, and they succeed in being the parish beadle and no
more. A man whose desire is to be
something separate from himself succeeds in being what he wants to be. That is his punishment. Those who want a mask have to wear it. But with the dynamic forces of life, it is
different. People who desire
self-realisation never know where they are going. They can’t know. To recognize that the soul of a man is
unknowable, is the ultimate achievement of wisdom. The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the
balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven
heavens, there still remains oneself.
Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul? |
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2. We are
the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns
whose hearts are broken. We are
specially designed to appeal to the sense of humour. On November 13th, 1895, I was brought down
here from London. From two o’clock
till half-past two on that day I had to stand on the centre platform of
Clapham Junction in convict dress, and handcuffed, for the world to look
at. When people saw me they
laughed. Each train swelled the
audience. Nothing could exceed their
amusement. That was, of course, before
they knew who I was. As soon as they
had been informed they laughed still more.
For half an hour I stood there in the grey November rain surrounded by
a jeering mob. For a year I wept every
day at the same hour and for the same space of time. In prison tears are a part of every day’s
experience. A day in prison on which
one does not weep is a day on which one’s heart is hard, not a day on which
one’s heart is happy. |
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3.
Morality does not help me. I am
a born antinomian. I am one of those
who are made for exceptions, not for laws.
Religion does not help me. The faith
that others give to what is unseen, I give to what one can touch, and look
at. Reason does not help me. It tells me that the laws under which I am
convicted and the system under which I have suffered are wrong and
unjust. But, somehow, I have got to
make both of these things just and right to me. I have got to make everything that has
happened to me good for me. The plank
bed, the loathsome food, the hard ropes, the harsh orders, the dreadful dress
that makes sorrow grotesque to look at, the silence, the solitude, the shame
- each and all of these things I had to transform into a spiritual
experience. There is not a single
degradation of the body which I must not try and make into a spiritualising
of the soul. |
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4. I have
no desire to complain. One of the many
lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will
be what they will be. Suffering is one
very long moment. We cannot divide it
by seasons. We can only record its
moods, and chronicle their return.
With us time itself does not progress.
It revolves. It seems to circle
round one centre of pain. For us,
there is only one season, the season of sorrow. The very sun and moon seem taken from
us. Outside, the day may be blue and
gold, but the light that creeps down through the thick glass of the small
iron-barred window is grey. It is
always twilight in one’s cell, as it is always twilight in one’s heart. And in the sphere of thought, no less than
in the sphere of time, motion is no more. |
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5. We who
live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to
measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments. We have nothing else to think of. Suffering is the means by which we exist,
because it is the only means by which we become conscious of existing; and
the remembrance of suffering in the past is necessary to us as the evidence
of our continued identity. Between
myself and the memory of joy lies a gulf no less deep than that between
myself and joy in its actuality. So
much in this place do men live by pain that my friendship with you, in the
way in which I am forced to remember it, appears to me always as a prelude
consonant with those varying modes of anguish which each day I have to
realise; as though my life had been a symphony of sorrow, passing through its
rhythmically linked movements to its certain resolution. |
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6. The
memory of our friendship is the shadow that walks with me here: that seems
never to leave me: that wakes me up at night to tell the same story over and
over: at dawn it begins again: it follows me into the prison yard and makes
me talk to myself as I tramp round: each detail that accompanied each
dreadful moment I am forced to recall: there is nothing that happened in
those ill-starred years that I cannot recreate in that chamber of the brain
which is set apart for grief or for despair: every strained note of your
voice, every twitch and gesture of your nervous hands, every bitter word,
every poisonous phrase comes back to me: I remember the street or river down
which we passed : the wall or woodland that surrounded us, at what figure on
the dial stood the hands of the clock, which way went the wings of the wind,
the shape and colour of the moon. |
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7. The
gods are strange. It is not our vices
only they make instruments to scourge us.
They bring us to ruin through what in us is good, gentle, humane,
loving. Love of some kind is the only
possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is
in the world. If the world has been
built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other
way could the soul of man reach perfection.
Far off, like a perfect pearl, one can see the City of God. It is so wonderful that it seems as if a
child could reach it in a summer’s day.
And so a child could. But with
me and such as me it is different. |
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One can realise a thing in a single moment, but
one loses it in the long hours that follow with leaden feet. We think in eternity, but we move slowly
through time. And how slowly time goes
with us who lie in prison I need not tell again. |
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8. I hope
to live long enough and to produce work of such character that I shall be
able at the end of my days to say, ‘Yes! this is just where the artistic life
leads a man!’ For the last seven or eight months, in spite of a succession of
great troubles reaching me from the outside world almost without
intermission, I have been placed in direct contact with a new spirit working
in this prison through man and things, that has helped me beyond words: so
that while for the first year of my imprisonment I did nothing else, and can
remember doing nothing else, but wring my hands in despair, and say, ‘What an
ending, what an appalling ending!’ Now I try to say to myself, and sometimes
when I am not torturing myself do really say, ‘What a beginning, what a
wonderful beginning!’ |
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II. Salome: Productions
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Richard
Strauss |
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1. Opéra de Nice
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Co-produced with Esplanade
Opéra de St Étienne |
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Orchestra Philharmonique de
Nice |
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Chœur de l’Opéra de Nice |
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20th, 22nd, 24th 26th May 2006 |
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2. Lyric Opera,
Chicago
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21st, 25th, 29th October; 3rd, 6th, 11th,
14th, 18th, 21st November 2006 |
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3. Bayerische
Staatsoper, Munich, Germany
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27th, 30th October; 3rd, 5th November 2006.
[Information assembled by Tine Englebert, Lucia Krämer and the
Editor.] |
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4. Salle Pleyel,
Paris
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Orchestre Philharmonique de
Strasbourg |
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29th
May 2007 |
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M.Albrecht |
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III. Der Zwerg (The Birthday of the Infanta)
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Alexander von Zemlinsky |
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Theater Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany |
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2nd, 10th, 16th, 25th December 2006 |
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THE PROGRAMME NOTE |
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Alexander Zemlinsky based his opera Der Zwerg
on the fairytale The Birthday of the Infanta by Oscar Wilde. Georg C. Klaren’s libretto departs
considerably from Wilde’s original, portraying the characters not as
childishly naïve fairytale creatures, but imbuing the piece instead with a
reflective, intensely psychological note. Der Zwerg is not only the
tragedy of an ugly person, but a drama about the interaction between artist
and society, about the failure of a dreaming aesthete to meet the demands of
societal reality. |
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In a Spanish courtyard, final preparations are
underway for the birthday celebration of the young Infanta. Donna Clara is
given a dwarf as a surprise gift, one perfectly suited to palace life: a
singer who elicits mockery and amusement due not only to his size, but his
ugly appearance as well. The dwarf, who has never seen himself in a mirror,
thinks he is beautiful and well-formed, misinterpreting the laughter as
friendship. He falls in love with the princess, undertaking daring adventures
for her in his fantasies. Out of curiosity, Donna Clara plays along with his
dream, but is horrified when it crosses over into reality and he attempts to
kiss her. Despite this, she gives him a white rose and promises him the first
dance. It is only a game for her, but the dwarf once again misinterprets her
actions as a sign of love. When by chance he sees himself in a mirror and is
confronted with his true appearance, he is devastated. Desperately he clings
to his illusion, but the Infanta refuses to disavow his ugliness. Faced with
the truth, he can no longer go on living and dies. |
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IV. Singing
Salome
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In last month’s edition, we began to compile a
list of those who have sung Salome, with the intention of adding to it
subsequently and expanding it with dates and a bibliography. With the same intention, here is an initial
list of those who have sung Herod. |
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Beyond the Wilderness
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A glance at some of the other
operas with which Wilde’s contemporaries (and sometimes Wilde himself) would
have been familiar; and those that derive from the works of the period. |
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Dayer / maeterlinck
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Les Aveugles |
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This opera by Xavier Dayer, who also wrote the
libretto from the play by Maeterlinck,
received its world première at the Théâtre Gerard Philipe in St Denis
on 19th August. It was directed by
Marc Paquien, with musical direction by Guillaume Tourniare with soloists
from the Lyric Workshop of the Opéra national de Paris (Diana Axentii, Jason S. Bridges, Elisa Cenni, Yun
Jung Choi, Ivan Geissler, Igor Gnidii, Marie-Adeline Henry, Hye-Youn Lee,
Bartlomiej Misiuda, Joel Prieto, Ugo Rabec, Letitia Singleton) . The music was played by the Cairn Ensemble: Cédric
Jullion (flute), Jérémie Maillard (cello), Sylvain Lemêtre (percussions),
Ayumi Mori (clarinet), Christelle Séry (guitar). |
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Scénographie Gérard Didier - lighting Dominique Bruguière assisted by
François Thouret - costumes Claire Risterucci – make-up Cécile Krestchmar. |
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Lost in a forest, six women and six blind men
begin to sing to combat the agony which assails them. This young composer from Geneva is faithful
to the play, where a poetic and mysterious universe borders dream and
reality. The opera was commissioned by
the Lyric Workshop of the Opéra national de Paris in collaboration with the
Théâtre Gérard Philipe de Saint-Denis and in partnership with the Saint-Denis
Festival and the Francofffonies Festival,
the francophone festival in France. |
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Debussy / Maeterlinck
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Pelléas et Mélisande (version originale pour
piano) |
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7th, 9th, 11th, 14th November
2006 |
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Auditorium du Musée d'Orsay, Paris |
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Pelléas and Mélisande |
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A new production had its
première on Friday, 17th November at the Theater am Goetheplatz, Bremen,
Germany. (Information kindly supplied by Lucia Krämer.] |
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Pelléas et Mélisande |
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26th,
28th, 30th January 2007 |
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Opéra Toulon, Toulon, France. |
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VI. CorrectionS & UPDATES
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1. Tim de Brie
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In an e-mail dated 13th October 2006, Tim de Brie
informs us that on our website page |
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The new link is http://composers-classical-music.com/p/PapandopuloBoris.htm. We are happy to draw readers attention to
this. |
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2. Diane Irvin
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Diane Irvin is the compiler and producer
of a CD of Wildëan music, with a complementary booklet, which we commended
some years ago (To Oscar: A Collection of Æsthetic Melodies) –
eighteen songs, most of which were composed in 1882. She writes that she is no longer
printing out the booklet but including it in PDF format on a second CD with
orders. It comes with a copy of ‘Acrobat’ in case purchasers don't have it
for viewing on their computer. It can
then be printed it out if so desired. |
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All information can be found at http://threecatsgraphics.com/to_oscar.htm. We are very pleased that Ms Irvin is
keeping this in circulation. |
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To the Table of Contents |
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