Aix Festival
Elise Ortega | Aix-en-Provence Festival, 13.09.13
EO How did you discover Julio Cortazar’s short story?
VM I was living in Amsterdam at the time - this was ten years ago - and a friend had sent it to me in its original Spanish version. When I first read it I thought: "This makes no sense" and I assumed it had to do with me not being fluent in Spanish. But I had actually understood it - the strangeness was all in the text. And it has stayed with me ever since, but just as a text I was very fond of.
EO What moved you in his short story?
VM The most striking element of this story is of course the syblings' reaction to the invasion. The fact that they don´t leave means they find this situation - sharing their house with an unknown entity - preferable to an escape. And this means they´re either not afraid of the invader(s) or that there´s something far worse outside. Both hypotesis are quite interesting and unsettling: if they´re not afraid then perhaps the whole thing is nothing but a terrible dream or a dellusion, and we thus find ourselves silently witnessing a self-destructive, pathological shared behaviour; on the other hand, if there is indeed a presence in the house and they´re too afraid of what´s outside to leave, what on earth could it possibly be?
EO What is your interpretation of the short story?
VM Although there can be a political interpretation to it, I feel more drawn to a phsycological reading. This story certainly taps into issues I´m very interested in: the complexities of intimate relationships, alienation, and more importantly, the way fear - in all its degrees - can shift from a defense mechanism into a paralysing disability.
EO Do you think the protagonists are stuck in the past?
VM I think they are certainly trapped in their own lives, suffering from the 'boiling frog syndrome', which is a rather silly aneccdote I quite like: the premise is that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. This process of losing touch of the water´s temperature, of how self-destructive our behaviours can become, is something that truly fascinates me.
EO Do you have this feeling with your own life? Not being aware?
VM I think most people have, to a certain extent and at a certain point in their lives, experienced the feeling of being trapped in a certain situation - I certainly have. This unrestlessness, which can ultimately trigger very positive changes in your life, can sometimes degenerate in terrible spirals of bitterness and alienation, which are as disabilitating as a physical disease.
EO What made you want to compose this opera?
VM I was going over different texts to present, and this one struck me for its theatrical potential. The plot is very simple and mysterious: two people trapped in a house by themselves. This gives a lot of room to play around. I think reduction, austerity stimulate creativity. And there's a lot of that in Cortázar's short story.
EO What inspires you outside of the music field?
VM I am very fond of Samuel Beckett´s and Harold Pinter’s plays. The innate violence and despair contained in human relationships is, I think, is at the core of their work. Although Beckett´s settings are usually post-apocalyptic no man´s lands, so I guess Pinter´s domesticity would have a more direct link to this piece. I´ve always been impressed by his pairing of violence and intimacy, and by the way he manages to create an atmosphere of terrible menace through apparently banal dialogue.
EO How did the project started?
VM There were different stages in the project: I started thinking about this as a sketch and presented it two years ago and then it sort of stayed there. The actual composition of the piece was very fast. I got Sam’s libretto in November - in opera you do have to work from the words - and I started composing in December. It was very short and very intense, composing for at least ten hours a day, every single day for 6 months.
EO How did you work with Sam Holcroft and Katie Mitchell?
VM We met last year, and the first thing we did, also with Lindsey Turner (dramaturge), was to decide which angle we´d like to approach this story from From the beginning, it was clear for me the political element shouldn´t be addressed, I was more interested in tackling its phsycological implications.
EO Did your interpretation lead the work?
VM When Katie and Sam arrived at the project they were interested in knowing what angle I felt it was the right one, because I’d been busy with it for a while - that was the starting point of our collaboration. Having chosen a path, I then worked almost on a daily basis with Sam: at first she would send me bits of text – until she understood what I responded better to. We would talk very frequently, mostly for editing. Sam was very generous in that aspect, truly open to collaboration. Later on, at the first rehearsal in June, Katie did something quite interesting: she wrote a four-generation genealogy of the syblings, for practical aspects: she wanted to create a baseline for the performers to understand and develop their characters' motivations. This was fascinating to watch.
EO What do you think about enoa?
VM I think enoa has a crucial mission as it is filling a tricky gap that exists between artists at the beginning of their careers and institutions such as festivals, opera houses, etc. Also, through enoa's workshops and events you end up getting to know a huge number of people from all over Europe, some of them very interesting artists. People you feel you might be able to work with at some point in your career - maybe not tomorrow, maybe in five or ten years.
EO How did you feel when you showed your piece to the whole world?
VM The experience of having an idea - something as ineffable as an idea - actually turned into a beautiful set with all these wonderful and gifted artists working on it, it´s both humbling and exhilirating.
EO What are your next projects? With whom would you like to work?
VM I´m now starting a piece for five percussionists; it couldn’t be further away from opera. As for whom I´d like to work with, there are such wonderful performers and directors that it is difficult to name one.
EO If you were to do some new opera work, what would be the piece of literature that you would like to work on would it be a short story? A novel?
VM I really like the short story medium, because it can contain the seeds for everything you need in a rather condensed way. If it is a good one, and if it has potential, you can turn it into a piece that lasts for one hour or three hours, depending on your take and your purposes.
EO Maybe poetry?
VM To have a poetic idea as the starting point for an opera is certainly possible, but it can also be tricky. For me it is more important to start with a strong dramatic idea. And if you have the right librettist, he or she will certainly make sure the poetic elements are present. Having said this, I do love working with poetic text. Last year I wrote a piece (commissioned by Aix, Verbier and Aldeburgh festivals) after a poem by Dylan Thomas, which is one of my favourite poets, and it was a joy to do it. Poetic text is ideal if you are working with songform, for instance. But when you are working in theatre I think you need to make sure the text you´ve chosen does have dramatic potential.
EO What is the last book you have been reading?
VM A novel by P.G. Wodehouse, "The Code of the Woosters"