Fatal Attraction, the opera?

Opera demonises and punishes its most passionate women so often that I can't help wondering when they'll bring on the boiled bunny-rabbit. In today's Independent I've been musing a bit about whether there was a musical Hays Code lurking in the opera world of the 19th century. Verdi's consumptive courtesan is back at the Covent Garden from Monday. Meanwhile, if anyone fancies collaborating on the creation of Fatal Attraction, The Opera, do give me a shout..

Meet "Max" next week at Kings Place

Kings Place from 7-9 October is hosting a festival entitled Notes and Letters, a super example of the type of event that has really put this doughty venue on the map. Music and words meet and mingle ina panoply of intriguing events - you can see the full programme here.

On Sunday 9 October at 12.30pm I will be in the interviewer's chair to talk to Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, aka "Max", about the focus on myth and madness in his music. Come along and meet this astonishing composer (pictured above), whose output as listed on his website runs to a cool 54 pages and ranges through everything from Classic FM favourites such as Farewell to Stromness to the stunning inventions of Eight Songs for a Mad King, operas, masses, the series of Strathclyde Concertos, heaps of chamber music and a slew of symphonies, including an Antarctic Symphony that is still waiting to be recorded.

Here's an extract from Eight Songs for a Mad King...the sort of piece that can make you feel like a child with a clock, itching to take it apart and find out how it works and how it fitted together in the first place, without necessarily having a clue about how you might build it yourself.

Bach to basics

Saturday Bach time again, and here's a masterclass with Andras Schiff to show us how.

The Passenger speaks

In the JC this week I have an interview with Zofia Posmysz, author of the semi-autobiographical novel on which Weinberg's The Passenger is based. She is quite remarkable: poised, radiant, eloquent and forgiving. Read the piece here. I'm going to see the opera tomorrow.

The interview contained more interesting material than there was space, so here is one of the out-takes, which was not directly relevant to The Passenger, but will be of great interest to anyone who is preoccupied, as I often have been, by Alma Rose - Mahler's niece - and the Auschwitz women's orchestra that she conducted.

JD: Did you have any contact with the Auschwitz women's orchestra?


ZP (via interpreter): "Yes, I did. It was when Alma Rose started conducting the orchestra that it gained some sort of status and quality. She searched among the prisoners – they were very educated people, professors, artists, all sorts. She looked for prisoners who had a musical education – for instance, there were two excellent, wonderful singers, they were Hungarian Jewish. And since I was working in the kitchen and I had access to some of the products there, I would sometimes go to the orchestra block and take them something. 


"I had a friend who’d helped me along in the past, helped me survive through some of the hard labour outside the camp at first, helped me persevere another 15 minutes and then another 15 minutes; this friend was a violinist and I managed to persuade Alma Rose to consider taking her into the orchestra. She said: "Let her come, but I have to listen to her." And I told my friend: "Listen, I’ve found this fantastic thing for you. You can play in the orchestra and it will give you a chance to survive." She was so thin by then that she was on her last legs. And to my great surprise and regret, she said: "Am I to play here for those people?" To this day I don’t know what she was thinking about. What happened was that there was a ramp that led to the gas chambers and the crematorium, and the orchestra had to stand by the ramp and play these tunes for the transports so that people didn’t know what was happening at all - it was a deceit. I don’t know whether my friend didn't want to play for the people in this situation, or in the concerts for the SS men. Either way, she didn’t agree. A few months later she died."

Kafka at the ballet

Here's my piece from yesterday's Independent about Arthur Pita's new dance theatre work based on The Metamorphosis by Kafka. One day Edward Watson awoke to find that he had been transformed into a giant insect.... It's at ROH2 all this week.

The Metamorphosis is the book of the moment. I've been in Paris for a couple of days to do an interview and while there I also met up for tea and tarte aux framboises on the Place des Vosges with Mikhail Rudy (he of The Pianist and the animated Kandinsky Pictures at an Exhibition). His next collaborative project, due for premiere in Paris in March 2012, is based on...yes, The Metamorphosis, and will involve film projections by the Quay Brothers to a selection of Janacek piano music. Meanwhile he's bringing Pictures to the UK in November - performances in Southampton (17 Nov) and at the Wimbledon Festival (19 Nov). Well worth the train ride, imho.

Meanwhile, my interviewee - an intergalactic opera star - talked to me for two hours, then sent me home with a red nose. That is a first. I hasten to add that it's made of foam. It is now perching on my desk lamp, smiling at me (in a manner of speaking), while I think of his unforgettable performance as Werther earlier this year.