Frenzied heroine in opera Hanna Kulenty

An opera about multiple personality syndrome, is it possible? Polish-Dutch composer Hanna Kulenty (b. 1961) and Canadian librettist Paul Goodman (b. 1955) ventured out and garnered high praise with The Mother of Black-Winged Dreams. This opera will have its Dutch premiere next Saturday, 6 August, during the NJO Music Summer, in a co-production with Dutch National Opera Academy.

Frenzied heroines, mainstream opera literature is teeming with them. Usually the ladies go mad with heartbreak, a typically romantic theme that contemporary composers are no longer comfortable with. However, the subject of madness itself did not disappear. In 1986, for instance, British composer Michael Nyman wrote his opera The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, based on the book of the same name by Oliver Sachs. The title speaks for itself and for once the protagonist is not a woman, but a man.

Destructive forces

Ten years later, they presented Hanna Kulenty and Paul Goodman their opera The Mother of Black-Winged Dreams. In it, protagonist Clara struggles with her inner, destructive forces. These this time take root not in an unhappy love, but in a soggy, perhaps incestuous background. Which, incidentally, is not made explicit.

When Clara can no longer control her demons, she finds herself in a bizarre, closed-off world, in which the Click & Scissors sisters become the personification of her inner voices - in four offshoots.

Seemingly harmonious, these five personalities live together in a cute house, until the diabolical Woodraven turns up, trying to drive them apart. He pits them against each other, alternately flirts with one and the other and participates in their games, which gradually take an increasingly gruesome and even cannibalistic turn.

Claustrophobic atmosphere

The audience is irrevocably drawn into this dark world. Music and text are one; the many repetitions and unfinished phrases create an incantatory, claustrophic atmosphere, where emotions run high. But although the opera ends with murder and mayhem, whether Clara is now lost for good, or has instead conquered her tormentors, remains in the balance.

'It is a bombardment of image and sound, of extraordinary intensity,' wrote a German newspaper after the world premiere at the 1996 Munich Biennale. Subsequent performances at the Hamburg State Opera were in no time sold out. The opera appeared to be "fast becoming a cultpiece to become,' as another magazine noted. A performance series in Poland in 2010 was also well received.

Actually strange that it had to take another six years for this extraordinary opera to have its Dutch premiere. Although Hanna Kulenty was born and raised in Poland, she also studied with Louis Andriessen at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague and has lived alternately in Arnhem and Warsaw for over two decades. So kudos to the NJO Muziekzomer for embarking on this bold venture.

Special location

With a special opera comes a special location, the organisers thought, and went looking in pitch Apeldoorn. Eventually, they found an abandoned factory hall on the Zwitsal grounds, where the ointment manufacturer ended its activities in 2011. Here, young singers from the Dutch National Opera Academy and musicians from the NJO Summer Academy, led by Clark Rundell, will bring this highly charged production to life.

Javier López Piñón will direct and Rieks Swarte will design the set. As he is used to doing, he will try to achieve maximum expressiveness with minimal means. I previously wrote about his production here Peach of immortality, in which he evokes the dwellings in the Amsterdam Rivierenbuurt with drawn and filmed images.

House represents identity and security

Also in his design for The Mother of Black-Winged Dreams Swarte gives houses an important role, whether physical or drawn. 'Those houses represent the identity of the person and also give an atmosphere of security,' he says. He calls the empty factory halls ideal for this opera and wants to make the most of the possibilities of the various open spaces.

I spontaneously took a look around the Zwitsal grounds last week, where I happened to find Swarte, working on his decor. He immediately offered me a short tour, which I filmed with my smartphone.

I hope you will become as curious about his staging as I am, and look forward to seeing you at one of my introductions at The Mother of Black-Winged Dreams, from 6 to 12 August. They will take place at lunchroom Phoenix, opposite the hall on the Zwitsal site where the opera will be performed.