Some figures in the artistic world seem to
have enough talent to fuel four ordinary beings. One such is the utterly
remarkable George Enescu: composer, pianist, violinist, conductor and teacher,
assuredly the most celebrated musician ever to have come out of Romania. His
life is worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster, riven with personal tragedy, closing
in exile. And his opera Oedipe, which he considered his masterpiece, is only
now to be staged for the first time at the Royal Opera House, 80 years after
its world premiere.
Enescu was born in 1881 in a Romanian
village named Liveni, which has since been renamed after him. Aged three he was
captivated by the sound of the violin and the folk music of his native land. He
soon emerged as a child prodigy and at the tender age of seven was sent to
study music in Vienna. Later he headed for the Paris Conservatoire, where he
became a composition pupil of Jules Massenet and subsequently Gabriel Fauré; his
Romanian Poem was performed at Paris’s Concerts Colonne when he was 17.
At first he divided his time between Paris
and Bucharest. In the latter, the young musician became a favourite of Queen
Elisabeth of Romania in her guise as the poet and patron Carmen Sylva, and he set
some of her poems to music. In the former, his violin students numbered such
then-budding stars as Yehudi Menuhin, Ida Haendel, Ivry Gitlis and Arthur
Grumiaux. Menuhin
declared: “To me, Enescu is the most extraordinary human being, the greatest
musician, and the most powerful influence someone has ever had over me.”
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| Enescu. Photo: http://festivalenescu.ro/en/george-enescu/ |
As for influences on Enescu, these were exceptionally
varied. He was fortunate enough to be born into a turbulent time in musical
creativity; composers everywhere were seeking a new individuality, often to
free themselves from the overwhelming impact of Wagner. This was especially
true in Paris, where Fauré encouraged his pupils to find musical voices that
were uniquely their own.
Enescu was no exception. His music bears hints
of Wagner, but also of Debussy and of the distinctive harmonic and rhythmic
language of Romanian folk music; and his technical mastery of his instruments
led him to challenge his performers mightily in that department. His
compositions, including the Romanian Rhapsodies, giant symphonies and some
intense, startlingly original chamber music and piano works, pack a punch with their
ceaseless flow of ideas.
His magnum opus, though, was Oedipe, his
sole opera: an ambitious, larger-than-life musical canvas that follows the life
of Oedipus from birth through the Theban tragedy to a transcendent final death
scene. It incorporates myriad styles: melodrama-like declamation rubs shoulders
with almost filmic scene painting and shimmering impressionistic effects akin
to Debussy. There’s even one note on the musical saw, representing the death of
the Sphinx.
So where has Oedipe been all our lives? And
where was it all of Enescu’s? It was as early as 1910 that the composer,
mesmerised by a performance of Sophocles’s Oedipus Tyrannus in Paris, conceived
the idea of basing an opera on it. The first performance, though, did not take
place until 1936.
Leo Hussain, the British conductor who makes
his Royal Opera House debut with the work, suggests that this long creation
period was a complex affair. “Partly it was a difficult piece for him to write
because he knew he wanted it to be his masterpiece,” he says. The orchestration took nine years to
perfect. “I get the impression it was
written very fast, but finished very slowly, with Enescu refining, adding,
taking away, and obsessing about it. And he was also a very busy man!”
This multifaceted and sometimes turbulent
opera is dedicated to the equally multifaceted and turbulent love of Enescu’s
life: Maria, Princess Cantacuzino via her first marriage. Her tale is laden
with suggestions of mental instability, infidelity and, following an affair
with the philosopher Nae Ionescu, a suicide attempt in which she poured acid on
her own face. She and Enescu married, after a lengthy on-off relationship, the
year after Oedipe’s premiere.
Ultimately Enescu was caught up in the
violent tides of the 20th century’s progress; this may account for
Oedipe’s wider neglect, since a premiere in 1936 was hardly ideal timing with
World War II imminent. He spent the war years in Romania, but in 1946 left for
Paris to escape the new communist regime. After suffering a stroke while
conducting in London in 1950, he lived thereafter in the French capital, where
he died in 1955. The story goes that Maria had to prevent Romanian secret
agents from kidnapping his body to take to Bucharest as part of the country’s
heritage.
Now it is time to see whether this astonishing work can establish itself here. And with a tried and tested production by Alex
Ollé and Valentina Carrasco of the Catalan company La Fura dels Baus, and an
all-star cast including Johan Reuter, Sir John Tomlinson and Sarah Connolly, to
name but a few, it should have its best possible chance. “It’s a hard-hitting
story, a huge challenge and a great night in the theatre,” Hussian declares. “I
can’t wait for everyone to see it.”
Oedipe,
Royal Opera House, from 23 May. Box office: 020 7304 4000
UPDATE: I went to the opening night and here's what it was like.
