Martin Crimp on Lessons in Love and Violence at the @hollandfestival: 'The past is a playground, in which I can escape from the rolling news.'

No love without power relations. And certainly not when that love takes place in a royal bedroom. That bedroom is now the setting for a tragic love triangle between a king, his lover and his wife in Lessons in Love and Violence, the third opera by English composer Georges Benjamin and playwright Martin Crimp.

Christopher Marlowe's Elizabethan drama Edward II (1593) was the starting point for this impressive production about the tension between love and political power. From 25 June, Lessons in Love and Violence can be seen six times at the Muziektheater in Amsterdam during the Holland Festival, with the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the composer himself and soprano Barbara Hannigan as leading lady.

Poetry of love

Crimps focused his libretto on the essence of the true story of King Edward II of England (1284 - 1327) and the murder of his favourite lover Piers Gaveston. The latter was feared and hated by the people because of his greed and enormous influence over the king. Because of his obsession with Gaveston, the king neglects his family and his subjects. The country is on the brink of famine and there is a threat of rebellion among the citizens, but Edward just wants to make love and enjoy music and poetry in peace.

When his military adviser Mortimer attacks him on this, the king sings: 'Defer to my friend and adviser Gaveston. Let us spend money on poertry and music. Or would you rather we preferred for our entertainment human blood and the machinery of killing?'[ref] Rather talk to my friend and adviser Gaveston. Let's spend money on poetry and music. Or would you rather we preferred human blood and the machinery of killing for our entertainment?[/ref]

The King genuinely loves Isabel and both his children, but his love for Gaveston is stronger. Mortimer sees all forms of love as 'poison' and accuses him of decadent and politically irresponsible behaviour. When the King, under Gaveston's influence, suddenly decides to banish Mortimer, he sets in motion a series of disastrous events that result in death not only for Gaveston, but also for the King and Mortimer. He is succeeded by his son, who by now has learned his lessons in love and violence. Isabel is backed into a corner and watches hand-wringing as she has lost all her power, while her son restores order to the land.

Dead fish

Hitchcock is nothing like it, it becomes clear to me when I attend a performance of Lessons in Love and Violence at Covent Garden in London on 18 May. Sitting in the balcony is Bernard Haitink, still looking good for his age. The stage has been transformed into a contemporary bedroom, which the audience sees from ever-changing angles during the performance. Hanging on the wall is a giant aquarium with live fish. A few scenes further on, the fish are dead and the aquarium contains only stones, which look like dead coral.

The opera lasts an hour and a half and is made up of seven scenes, served up musically in long, barely interrupted tension arcs, with the impending doom gripping the listener's throat ever more palpably and grimly. The five soloists - King (baritone Stéphane Degout), Isabel (soprano Barbara Hannigan), Gaveston/Foreigner (baritone Gyula Orendt), Mortimer (tenor Peter Hoare) and Boy/John King (tenor Samuel Boden) - live out their roles professionally and with passion in shrill and undulating melismas, expressive dialogues and occasional moments of tender lyricism or sombre musings.

Defenceless

There is more threat than peace, more death than life, more violence than love in the music. But Benjamin's notes at crucial moments also express sincerity and an almost defenceless vulnerability. When Gaveston reads the king's hand, not the sung words but especially the orchestral passages foretell imminent death.

The music as storyteller of an alienating libretto, in which the text is reduced to its naked core. This is precisely why, in its biting intimacy, it takes on mythological significance. This effect is enhanced by the austere set and modern stylised costumes by Vicki Mortimer, the lighting by James Farncombe, the movement by Jospeh Alford and the strong, raw direction by Katie Mitchell, with whom Crimp and Benjamin enjoy working together.

Dead cannot love

Poignantly beautiful and even equally romantic - where the orchestra has been thinned out to two violins and two violas - is the fourth scene, sung brilliantly by Barbara Hannigan, in which she tries desperately to win back the king's love. In vain, as he does not listen to her and is only preoccupied with his anger and grief over Gaveston's murder. 'Then stay in the dark,' she throws at her unattainable husband: 'Play king alone here in the dark. We will leave you the box of toys.'

Another musical highlight is the sixth scene, in which the King is visited by Stranger - a transformation of the murdered Gaveston - and realises he is already dead. 'How am I going to die?', the King asks. 'How?', sings Stranger: 'Don't you see: The Thread is already broken. You are already dead.' The King can no longer feel or think. 'Love me. Burn me. Make me alive,' the King pleads desperately and lonely. Stranger: 'The dead cannot love.'

Infinite tension

That George Benjamin was once Olivier Messiaen's favourite pupil can hardly be heard in his music. His new opera rather conjures up associations with elements of the musical idiom of composers such as Schoenberg and Berg, Britten and Ligeti, but filtered through Benjamin's unmistakable own sound.

When I ask him the morning after the performance why there are no traces of Messiaen in his opera, Benjamin responds delightedly: 'Now you make me very happy! Messiaen wanted to set his students free so that they would develop their own musical language and go their own way. I am not intentionally trying to stay away from Messiaen, but my music depicts a whole different world, both in terms of technique and expression. But I wouldn't have been able to write a single note like that if he hadn't been my teacher.'

Listen

'Messiaen deeply influenced me in many ways. He shaped my inner hearing and made me realise how important it is to be completely clear and precise. "Listen, listen, listen....Listen with precision," he used to say.

'He also taught me a sense of structure and the importance of correct proportions. I don't work with clearly defined melodies, tunes or leitmotifs, but I do make great use of melismas (the 'stretching' of a syllable over a number of notes) and the particular sound of certain instruments. In Lessons in Love and Violence, I colour the psychology of the characters with the warm sound of violas, two harps, basset horn, cymbal and Iranian drums. With number relationships in the structure, harmony, polyrhythms and other techniques, I build a tension in this tragedy that never ends.'

Challenge

Even when he was a boy, Benjamin knew he wanted to compose operas later. But he never managed to find a good libretto writer. Until a friend introduced him to the work of playwright Martin Crimp. 'Because of the exactness of his use of language, that condensed clarity of words and that alienation of his texts, I was immediately sold. I want to be surprised by a text, challenged by the content and the way the story is told. I need that to write inspired music myself.'

'After Into the Hill (2006) and Written on Skin (2012), Lessons in Love and Violence is our third collaboration. Again and again, we have chosen different angles, because we don't want to copy ourselves. Martin and I both don't like mannerisms. It helps that apart from being a writer, he is also a good musician. He is an excellent pianist. We occasionally play piano duets together and when I finish a scene, I send it to him. Then I know Martin will try out my music at the piano, but we hardly ever talk about it. We do talk regularly about the meaning of the play, the psychology of the characters and the interpretation of the words.'

Isolation

Benjamin worked on the score of Lessons in Love and Violence for almost three years, while it took Martin Crimp a year to write the libretto. The fact that, as with Into the Hill and Written on Skin, he once again drew on a centuries-old history is certainly no coincidence. Crimp: 'For me as a writer, the past is a kind of playground, where my imagination can move freely and where I can escape from the 24/7 but rolling news. The past is like a mythological space, which I can occupy. What did the Greek playwrights do other than tell stories from the mythological past over and over again, on which they came up with new variations that were recognised by the audience?'

'Lessons in Love and Violence too is a tragedy, in which a person in a position of power cannot escape his fate of having to die for love, be it love for a man or for a woman. That fate also befalls Gaveston, for whom everything revolves around his love for the king. That is his happiness and his prison, which is why he sometimes bites nails and scratches the wall.'

Seer

'Both the king and Gaveston are lonely and isolated. 'Like you I am the king of a stone palace,' sings Gaveston: 'Like you I am always alone.' Both men are destined to meet, but together they have no real place in this world and their obsessive love affair leads irrevocably to death. The king renounces his marital duties, ignores his subjects and wants to enjoy music, poetry and his passion for Gaveston like a child, which he sometimes expresses in dark and somewhat perverse ways.

The scheming Gaveston is a 'maleficus', meaning not only a man of evil, but also a seer, a wizard with magical powers. At the king's request, he holds his hand over fire without burning himself and reads in the palm of his royal lover's hand the fatal future.'

Dramatic instinct

In Marlowe's play, only the key characters are fleshed out, while, for example, Isabel as a person is not explored, in Crimp's contemporary version of the story, Isabel does come alive. 'I wanted to portray all the characters in the opera on an equal footing. The idea was to create a family of a man, his wife, his lover and his children, who are not perfectly happy but not completely unhappy either. But because of what happens at the end of the first scene, when the king throws out his political advisor on impulse, the shaky balance falls apart. Every character is taught hard lessons.'

'Isabel wants to escape the situation, which has become unbearable. She feels responsible for her children and the people, but can no longer reach her husband. The lessons she has to learn are exceptionally difficult because the moment she accepts that Gaveston must be killed, realising that the starving people see him as the scapegoat, she also becomes involved in the conspiracy to kill her husband. In doing so, she kills her own inner self, after which she vainly makes a grab for power.'

Not for a moment did Crimp doubt that Benjamin would know how to find the right sounds for all these developments. 'When he discovered my lyrics, I myself fell under the spell of his piano music. I too immediately had that feeling that we speak each other's language in a way. I love his music with integrity and know he has a flawless dramatic instinct. I trust him blindly, which is why it takes no effort for me to hand over the lyrics to him. But when I play the piano at home, I don't play Benjamin, I play Bach or Chopin.'

Maleficus

Gaveston, convincingly sung by baritone Gyula Orendt, presents himself in real life on the morning after the performance as an upbeat Romanian singer, who has first immersed himself in the complicated world of contemporary music with his key role in Lessons in Love and Violence.

Singing Benjamin's music requires different qualities from Mozart, one of his favourite composers. Orendt: 'It is very useful for an opera singer to sing a modern work once in a while, which brings new tonalities, different rhythmic patterns and exceptional structural challenges. Benjamin's music demands extraordinary clarity; fiddling or singing on autopilot is unthinkable in his operas. That sharpens you as a singer and I am sure my experience with Lessons in Love and Violence will have a positive impact on Mozart's Don Giovanni, which I will sing next season. My voice remains the same, but its use is very different.'

Home

'Yet even singing Benjamin's opera is less difficult than I thought beforehand, because his transparent music has a convincing structure and you start to recognise the beats after a while. Moreover, Benjamin literally writes to the voices of the singers who will perform his opera. A year ago, he invited us to his house one by one. Then he asks about the strengths and weaknesses of your voice, which he incorporates psychologically and theatrically into his opera.'

'Benjamin is, in my view, a great craftsman and a hard worker. The expressive music he writes is very solid, intelligent and coherent. I admire that. In real life, I don't resemble Gaveston as a person in any way, but I have become fused with his fascinating personality. He has very beautiful and very destructive sides. His penchant for evil is reflected in his greed, selfishness and unpredictability. But his adoration for beauty is genuine and his love for the King is unconditional.'

Good to know

Lessons in Love and Violence is a co-production of Royal Opera House London, The National Opera & Ballet, Staatsoper Hamburg, Opéra de Lyon, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Gran Theater del Liceu Barcelona and Teatro Real Madrid. To be seen at the Holland Festival.