For a venue usually suited to concert works, the minimal staging of Hamer Hall was a surprisingly striking fit for Opera Australia’s latest contribution to contemporary opera. Breaking the Waves is an opera penned by New York post-minimalist composer Missy Mazzoli and Brooklyn-based librettist Royce Vavrek. Conductor Jessica Cottis led Orchestra Victoria and an outstanding cast of soloists along with a 16-voice male chorus. This is a piece of devastating beauty that is violently confronting. It is a pity there hasn’t been more visibility in the promotion of this compelling work, especially considering the calibre of performers involved.
This provocative work is an adaptation of Lars Von Trier’s 1996 equally unsettling film that explores themes of violent patriarchal control, marital sacrifice and the agency of women in male-dominated worlds. Both film and opera tell of the plight of Bess McNeill, a devout Christian woman who lives with her mother in a Calvinist Sect situated in a remote community on the Isle of Skye. A dark journey unfolds following the wedding of Bess to Norwegian oil rigger and outsider, Jan Nyman. The lovers’ marriage is tested to its limits following a tragic accident leaving Jan paralysed. Bess’s absolute commitment to her marriage vows sees her undergo the most heinous acts of violence against a woman imaginable at the hands of men. This provokes questions on the nature of marital devotion and the damaging effect of religious patriarchy on women.
The operatic adaptation of Breaking the Waves has enjoyed critical success following its premiere by Opera Philadelphia in the United States in 2016. Subsequent performances in Edinburgh, Detroit and now in a production from director Anna-Louise Sarks and her team of creatives reveal an appetite for challenging works. Breaking the Waves joins a body of work that frames its lead as the “Woman-as-Christ” figure often depicted in opera. It continues the legacy of a common trope in opera spanning 400 years: Women are repetitively cast as victimised heroines whose transcendental sacrifices reveal deep injustices perpetuated against them by men. For better or worse, such tropes still ring true today for many women across the world.
The score reveals an artistic alchemy rarely seen today in works whose essence is so masterfully adapted from the visual to the musical medium. The near-complete absence of scored music from the film is now filled with a rich score of lyrical contrasts in the vocal and chorus parts that bleed into a mutually recursive relationship with the orchestral music. The richly idiomatic vocal writing for solo operatic voices is refreshing in a world where many contemporary composers seem to place more value on extended techniques and originality as a means and an end unto itself. Mazzoli understands the voice and doesn’t shy away from writing challenging vocal music, but never transgresses the idiom. She crafts a rich interplay of vocal expression with orchestral landscapes in depictions of the jagged coastline of North-West Scotland and the violently frothing and bubbling of the cold North Sea. Landscape and character are interwoven through numerous episodes of sweeping vocal lyricism and soaring string writing. This is contrasted with striking use of metallic percussion instruments, bass drum and brass in the more dissonant moments of the work. Conductor Jessica Cottis leads Orchestra Victoria with a vibrancy that never wanes.
The opera’s focal point is the character of Bess McNeill, performed with complete commitment by American soprano Jennifer Black. Black’s ability to capture the essence of Bess’s childlike, yet powerfully devout inner strength and lyrical sensuousness is expressed in a dynamic tour-de-force performance.
The outsider Jan is sung with great emotional depth by Scottish baritone Duncan Rock. Rock shines in Act 2 as a man tortured by his infirmity, mixing an unnerving stillness with lyrical and dramatic outbursts directed at his wife, who is trying to understand her husband’s outlandish request to pursue male lovers for his health’s sake.
Mrs McNeill is staunchly devout, and at once protective and scornful of her daughter. Soprano Emma Matthews rises triumphant to the challenge of the role, displaying an equally satisfying portrayal of a rigidly protective mother, expressed so characteristically by her powerful lyric soprano voice.
Bess’s best friend and sister-in-law Dodo’s warm-hearted approach to protecting Bess offers a counterbalance to her mother’s stern reprimands. The soothing lines of care and consolation are befitting for a mezzo soprano. Sian Sharp navigates this role with finesse. Both Matthews and Sharp sail over the orchestra with resonant voices that never push.
Tenor John Longmuir delivers a vocally polished performance as Doctor Richardson. Longmuir’s return to national company productions is welcome, particularly for someone who seems a natural fit to play a character that aligns with his own Scottish heritage. Other secondary characters include a resolutely cold councilman sung with a stoic conviction by baritone Kiran Rajasingham, and various small solos depicting unsavoury sailors, churchmen, and a rousing chorus of 16 men under the leadership of chorus master Simon Kenway.
Both the film and opera deal with unsettling themes that may be too confronting for some to endure. Von Trier’s films often perplex viewers in their depictions of the more unsavoury aspects of human relationships as embodiments of social norms that border on offensive. While one could easily dismiss this work as “yet another” opera about the mistreatment of women at the hands of men and accuse the creatives behind these stories as peddling in the “misogynistic spectacle of female destruction”, I would argue that a woman’s perspective on these tropes validates their recurrence in art.
Mazzoli’s Breaking the Waves is emblematic of the need for female artistic agency in a world still dominated largely by men. The social impulse of women to challenge audiences with confronting themes in art and music is important work. Opera Australia’s commitment to “push forward the development of the artform” with works by contemporary artists has culminated a visceral yet moving performance from a composer who delivers a truly transcending operatic experience.
Photo credit Jeff Busby
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Stephen Marino reviewed Opera Australia’s production of “Breaking the Waves”, presented at Arts Centre Melbourne, Hamer Hall on Friday July 26, 2024.
