Opera no 167
Benjamin: Written on Skin
Soloists
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
George Benjamin
This was a genuinely impressive opera - one of the most notable in this part of the project. I don’t think that I have heard any of George Benjamin’s music before. Somehow he got overlooked in last year’s project but I am sure that I will now want to explore more of his work.
What impressed me particularly was the very idiomatic vocal writing. There has been a tendency in late 20th century and beyond opera to think of voices in almost instrumental terms and to treat them as an adjunct to the orchestral texture. That can produce some remarkable effects of course, as I have commented on several times in the project, but it can also created some ugliness and insensitivity to the words. Here by contrast I felt that that opera was really about the voices and the text. That’s not to say that there weren’t some remarkable orchestral effects - the use of the viola da gamba and glass harmonica were particularly notable, but it was the voices that mattered. Benjamin was happy to write real melodic shapes and to allow the use of voices in genuine ensembles. The duet between the soprano and counter tenor at the end of Act 1 was sensuous and absolutely gorgeous. It reminded me, perhaps unexpectedly, of Purcell. Not that it sounded anything like Purcell, but the setting of English speech and the pure beauty of the vocal line did seem to stretch right back to Purcell.
This was a real discovery. Nothing about it seemed forced or done purely for effect. It was a work of great depth and invention yet at the same time seemed completely simple and straightforward. The ability to do that is a sign of a composer at the very top of his game.
