Cicely Herbert reviews The Minotaur by Harrison Birtwistle at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden As one whose first operatic experience was as a teen-aged usher who stood through two entire Ring Cycles, and never looked back, (I learned from Gluck what such an action can lead to), I believe that a visit to the opera can be a profoundly powerful and liberating experience.
The production of Harrison Birtwistle’s Minotaur at Covent Garden can be considered a triumph. The vocal lines in Birtwistle’s new composition are easier on the ear than for any previous work of his that I have heard. Much of the orchestral sound is beautiful, almost delicate, with some extraordinary textures. In this production, conducted by Antonio Pappano and directed by Stephen Langridge, the overture is accompanied by a deeply disturbing video installation of a swelling, threatening, moonlit sea, the surface of which never quite breaks. It is both a thrilling and terrifying start to the opera, and sets the mood for the tragedy that unfolds as the sacrificial ‘innocents’ land on Crete and we watch them descend with Theseus into the Labyrinth. The libretto is by the poet, David Harsent, who has collaborated with the composer several times in the past. The words in a sung performance are not always readily audible, and a wise decision has been made to use surtitles for the English text. Purists who object to the use of surtitles will doubtless complain, but I found that this assists one to follow the nuances of a story, and greatly increases one’s involvement in the proceedings.
Birtwistle’s take on the myth is not the usual one, for here, it is the beast hidden in the depths of the Labyrinth, the Minotaur himself, and not Theseus, who is the focus of the story. Freud is said to have likened the human brain to a labyrinth and psychoanalysis could be regarded as the process which sets out to destroy the Minotaur, the beast within. The Greeks knew a thing or two about the power of theatre – a place where groups of disparate people, each with concerns and troubles, hidden emotions, secret shames, joys and fears, are brought together in a shared and cathartic experience. The night I saw The Minotaur, the audience left the Opera House elated, having spent an utterly absorbing three hours, united as witnesses to a major theatrical and musical event, one which may well, in time, come to be regarded as a milestone in operatic history.
The day that our ‘World Leaders’ stop to consider whether acts of vengeance can ever solve the human predicament, they would do well to remember the warning words of the operatic heroine, Ariadne, at the start of the opera, as she follows the progress of the black-sailed boat, carrying its load of sacrificial victims to their certain death:
Blood calls for blood, a debt that's never paid Betrayal never forgotten or forgiven ...a lust that still festers
The shape of a theatre, with the stage and auditorium, forms a space within which the protagonists, performers and audience alike, are able to unite in a dialogue about the human condition, often profoundly instructive, and sometimes lifechanging. The morning after my visit to the Opera House, I sat at a Quaker Meeting, in another kind of circle, where, instead of encompassing the Minotaur’s tragedy, my gaze was directed to a simple wooden table on which stood a bowl of spring flowers. The heart that had raced with the destructive power of the Minotaur the night before, was stilled to a steady beat.
Cicely Herbert is one of the trio who founded and continue to run Poems on the Underground. Her poetry collection In Hospital (Katabasis 1992) describes her stay in London University College Hospital after a road accident in which she nearly lost a leg.
Review of The Minotaur by Harrison Birtwhistle at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden