'My love for opera is rooted in my childhood. Emotions you feel as a young person become almost tangible in opera. While listening, I often experienced a catharsis.' Director Serge van Veggel zooms in with the production Opera Melancholica in on depression and delusion. Starting point is The Fall of the House of Usher by Philip Glass, presented as a form of 'anatomical theatre'. Besides Van Veggel's own Opera2Day, the Scapino Ballet and the New European Ensemble are on stage. The premiere is 29 January at the Royal Theatre in The Hague.
Why the title 'Melancholica' and not simply 'The Fall of the House of Usher'?
'We are always looking for ways to present opera in a special way, including from the repertoire itself. In this case, we take our audience into an anatomical theatre of the psyche. We are welcomed at the start by the medical director and given an explanation of how this works. In his anatomical theatre, you can look inside people's minds and experience what goes on inside someone.'
'In this, we follow the principle of the so-called folie-à-deux. When you are locked in a room with someone, say someone with psychosis, you start seeing what they see. Only in this case, we do it with the visitors of the show, a thousand people at once. In our anatomical theatre, we present the case of Roderick Usher. He is the protagonist in The Fall of the House of Usher of Edgar Allan Poe on which Philip Glass based his opera. So we are all going to look into Roderick's mind.'
Will the opera be performed in its entirety, or have adaptations been made?
'We are performing it in full, but there is also something around it. As you enter the anatomical theatre, the musicians play chamber music by Philip Glass that expresses melancholy. This walk-in music is part of the performance and lasts about half an hour. At the same time, you will hear texts that high school students have written about melancholy.'
'Also sounds the "Bed aria" from the opera Einstein on the Beach (1976) which provides a nice link to the opera itself. It is a vocalise, a piece without lyrics in which a soprano sings only vocals, ah-ha-ha. In The Fall of the House of Usher (1987), Philip Glass treats one of the roles exactly like this. Madeline, Roderick's sister, also sings only vocals.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKjFgobgPRg
On several occasions, you have focused on human melancholy/delusion. What draws you to this subject?
'My love for opera is largely rooted in my own childhood. You have so many feelings as a child and teenager, including dark ones, you have to put them in something. On my first visit to an opera, all that became almost tangible, an overwhelming experience. Opera is a way of making emotions tangible, giving them a form. When I listened to the music, I invariably experienced a catharsis.'
'Later, when I started making my own opera, I discovered that I could lose a lot in all the processes involved in realising such a production. I feel akin to the English scientist Robert Burton (1577-1640), who spent almost his entire life working on one book, The Anatomy of Melancholy. He suffered from depression and wrote that this was a way of dealing with it. I recognise that.'
Human delusions and fears are of all times, do you draw parallels with our current times?
'Very much so! Melancholy used to be the description of everything to do with depression and madness. We begin our anatomical theatre of the psyche with the medical director. He tells us what is happening and goes deep into the melancholy we experience in our time. - So do the people individually in the room. According to the Trimbos Institute, one in five people experience depression at least once in life.'
'A million people are on pills. So it is a real social problem that the medical director addresses in the first half of the show. So we involve the audience directly. And once everyone realises: this belongs to all of us, it's very close, we present the case of Roderick Usher. He is hypersensitive and sickly, a melancholic at heart. By entering the anatomical theatre with him, his suffering becomes palpable and recognisable to all of us.'
Scapino Ballet's Ed Wubbe choreographed this. How did you work together?
'I had responsibility for the dramaturgy, the overall narrative of the play. Ed concentrated on the form. He is a great choreographer and I am always on the lookout for new forms, from which I can learn something new myself. When Ed came to Opera2Day, it clicked immediately, probably because our companies have shared values. We both want to explore depth but also bring the audience along. Ed thought about how we translate the action into movement, I drew the overall line; it was really a fifty-fifty collaboration.'
'There is ultimately only one dancer on stage. There are three main roles in the opera: Roderick, William (the narrator) and Madeline. Roderick and Madeline are twins. At least, Poe leaves it a bit in the vague, you can put all kinds of things in there. In my performance, Madeline is an imaginary twin sister. Philip Glass sets her as a soprano, but gives her no words to sing. Yet with only exclamations on ah-ha-ha... she sounds very emotional.'
'I imagined Madeline to be just a voice in Roderick's head. So we never see her sing, only hear her from behind the scenes. To still give her a physical appearance, her role is embodied by a dancer. Thus we make that immaterial voice visible in the physical presence of the dancer.'
'Sometimes there is a duet between Roderick and Madeline and at those moments Ed also includes the singer. Not to make him a dancer but rather to create an interesting interplay between a singer acting and a dancer who brings a different quality to her body purely by how she moves. That works beautifully.'
You work with the New European Ensemble. What do you appreciate in them?
'I think they are a delightful ensemble because together they know how to make a huge sound. We previously did together Dr Miracle's Last Illusion (2016) and Hamlet (2018). For them, music, or rather the expressiveness of music, comes first. This is largely due to founder Emlyn Stam, who does a lot of research into performance practices. I have learned an incredible amount from that. In particular, that the score - especially if you go further back in time - is much more like an intermediate step rather than an end point within music making.'
'The score was often just a tool from the composer's point of view and the musician was free to use it. Especially around 1900, the period of our earlier productions. But even with this opera by Glass, I notice that for them the score is not an end in itself but a means. That's why I love working with them so much. They are real live animals, the music is always alive!'
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