Opera? Great music, terrible plots

What author in his right mind would ever take on the job of writing a libretto for an opera?

You labour to craft some decent lines, only to have the composer fling them back with the instruction “Too short!'' or (more likely) “Too long!'' Your most subtle lines have to be junked, to accommodate opera's need to be vivid, immediate and simple.

Finally, when the creation on which you've expended so much care is revealed in the opera house, it's drowned in the heave and swell of the voices and the orchestra.

And yet the surprising thing is how many authors seem willing to give it a try. In opera's heyday, when new works opened every other week, librettos were churned out by specialist hacks who did little else.

But these days it attracts top-drawer writers. David Harsent, Vikram Seth, Russell Hoban and Simon Armitage have all written librettos.

The latest is Ian McEwan. His libretto for For You, the opera he has written jointly with composer Michael Berkeley, was unveiled on May 31 when it was given its world premiere by Music Theatre Wales.

Lack of real interest

Why did he do it? McEwan is a bit cagey about this. The obvious answer, which many writers would give — “Because I adore opera'' — is not forthcoming. “Well, there are certain pieces I do rather like,'' he says reluctantly, “but I think operas rather suffer from uninteresting plots.

It's precisely the lack of real interest in what's said or what happens that's often the major problem.''

All of them? “Well, I suppose some contemporary pieces such as Wozzeck and Lulu are interesting, much more than The Magic Flute or Cosi.''

McEwan set out to emulate their combination of intensity and truthfulness. “I wanted something in a basically realist mode,'' he says, “but heightened musically.''

McEwan and Berkeley had already written one piece — the oratorio, Or Shall We Die?, premiered as far back as 1982. Why such a long wait for their next collaboration?

“It's my fault, really. Fifteen years ago Michael was saying, ‘We should do an opera', and I would say, ‘Yes' but do nothing about it and just drift into another book.

"We looked at a story by Melville, and a Swedish novel, but the theme we kept coming back to was sexual obsession, we thought this made a good plot.''

So far, so traditional — there's nothing like a bit of sexual obsession to get a composer's juices flowing. But McEwan brought something less familiar into the mix.

“The other element I wanted was overweening artistic self-regard. It's the notion that the creative artist lives by different rules, which I think is a disastrous notion, and a foolish one, because it suggests a lack of connection to other people.''

Charles Frieth, the central character of For You, displays that fault to a nauseating degree.

He's a successful composer, conductor and compulsive womaniser, in a fever of anxiety over the imminent premiere of a new work, and obsessed by the thought that his creative powers are failing.

Everyone takes the flak; his invalid wife, his long-suffering secretary, and his devoted Polish housekeeper Maria.

She seems subservient, but as Charles's life falls to pieces and cracks appear in his preening self-regard, she'll prove to be anything but.

So are we in for an expressionist domestic hell, with tortuously sung insults and recriminations mingled with the sound of flying crockery and shrieking clarinets? Not exactly.

It becomes clear that McEwan's severely realistic take on opera isn't quite as severe as it seems.

“I'm disappointed by operas in which no one appears to sing together,'' he says. “It seems a fantastic waste of a resource.

"I love it in operas like The Barber of Seville when several characters are all singing at cross purposes and you can't hear a damn thing anyone is saying, but glorious music is coming out of it. I wanted to give Michael the opportunity to do something similar.''

I point out that this is hardly a feature of realistic theatre. “Well, I don't know. In life, conversations are a kind of duet.''

What about the formalism of his words? “Yes, there are a lot of iambic pentameters,'' he admits. “I held myself to no particular metre, if a scene came to life in lines of five feet, then at other times four or even three feet, I didn't mind.

"I thought of myself as writing measured prose. I wasn't hearing melodies, but I was always thinking, ‘This has got to be sung.'?''

Eventually McEwan comes clean. “It's true my first thoughts about opera were about realism, but these were all steadily undermined by the form itself.

I realised I could afford to be cool with the characters because Michael's music would bring a warmth to them.

And the presence of music encouraged me to heighten the words a little. ... These days a libretto has to be intrinsically interesting, it can't just be a coat-hanger for fabulous music and sublime emotional moments.

There has to be some engagement with the complications of human life as it is now.''

Literary Librettists