6 MARCO CONCEPTUAL
6.19 Antecedentes de Investigación
Constructing and communicating the ‘operetta’ were fundamental elements in Opera North’s drive to reach new audiences with Skin Deep, and in the company’s ambitions to innovative within the genre (the ‘development’ as Richard Farnes described it of art form and audience192). More nuanced intentions for the work were, however, unclear. Sawer spoke about the lineage of European operetta, and about drawing influence from the satirical operettas of Offenbach, Johann Strauss, Gilbert and Sullivan as well as Ravel, Rossini and Kurt Weill.193 In various interviews, composer, librettist and director made points around the centrality and importance of humour in the libretto and its setting; this facet was frequently stated as a part of the definition of Skin Deep as an operetta.
The lineage of the operetta form and humour is evident in certain facets of the work, many of which will be analysed later in this chapter. Briefly, these include a speaking character, Susannah Dangerfield, commenting on the action; Gilbert-and-Sullivan-style moments, in Act 3, where the chorus echo phrases in response to a lead; and occasional, prolonged, melodic sections. Additionally, Sawer utilises the operetta convention, quite distinct from opera, that ‘everyone on stage knows that they’re singing, and knows that the audience knows’.194
In the introduction to the Radio 3 broadcast of Skin Deep, presenter Tom Service claims that Sawer had attempted ‘to do something really ambitious in music theatre’ with his idea, ‘to resurrect the form of the number opera’ from the eighteenth century.195
He described Sawer’s desire to write ‘a twenty-first-century operetta, a successor to Offenbach, to Gilbert and Sullivan’, which would be ‘both funny and contemporary, casting a satirical light on the world around us’.196
But this connection was not readily made by audiences or critics. Rupert Christiansen expressed his disappointment in the Telegraph:
192 Farnes, 10 June 2010. 193
Oliver Rivers, ‘The Composer: David Sawer speaks to Oliver Rivers’, Skin Deep, programme brochure, pp.12-14 (p.14); Sawer, 14 January 2009.
194 Rivers, p.14. In Act 3, No.25, Needlemeier sings: ‘Each of you sing for your survival’, to Donna’s nonsensical reply, ‘Why should I sing?’ (bars 81-89). In the same number self-reference is made by the chorus: ‘Choose for us, Needlemeier, Choose for your choir’ (bars 73-89); later in the work they sing ‘Sopranos and basses can have funny faces’ (No.27, bars 64-68). This convention works for as long as the ‘operetta’ form is more or less intact, but here, in Act 3, where much of the music is explicitly through- composed, one could argue that it is incongruent and awkward.
195
Service contrasted this idea, somewhat scathingly, to ‘the through-composed soup that so many operas have been mired in since the late nineteenth century’. ‘Skin Deep’, Opera on 3.
How sorely his music lacks the smile, lilt and exuberance that are fundamental to operetta. […] Bar by bar, it's arrestingly fresh and clean, but nothing is catchy, memorable or touching. […] it's a flop. Worse than that, it's also a bore.197 The music, reflected Christiansen, was not that which is fundamental to operetta; his disappointment was, at least partially, one of generic expectation created by the label and marketing. Creators and company failed to convince the public and critics that this piece worked in the way in which they had been led to believe it might. Audience expectation was built in a way that was unrealistic and unmanageable, and was ultimately disappointed, as I will go on to explore.
While Sawer’s interviews and Opera North’s marketing of the production focussed heavily on this generic label, clarification from the creators as to what this actually meant was elusive, with composer, librettist and director at various points failing to provide a satisfactory definition or explanation of ‘operetta’.198 Sawer defined his style, not specifically as ‘light’ but categorically as never ‘heavy’.199
He spoke, not of a thoroughly tonal style, but of the need ‘to allude to tonality when you’re writing a comedy’ and the ‘tonal elements’ in his musical language.200 He also claimed the label of ‘operetta’ to be a matter of lineage, saying that he researched into history of the first of the commissioning bodies, the Komische Oper in former East Berlin, and its affiliation with operetta.201 So Skin Deep is designated an ‘operetta’ because Sawer claimed the influence of historical works of the genre, and originally composed the work for the Komische Oper (although ultimately this was not the opera house to give the work its premiere).202
‘Operetta’ is an old and well-established form, with its conventions effectively defining the genre. The attribution of a genre such as this to a work has persuasive effects on the experience of the audience, guiding listening responses. It also guides the decision-making of the composer (or the creators, more broadly) and frames the terms of the relationship between audience and composer, as is outlined by musicologist Jeffrey Kallberg:
197 Rupert Christiansen, ‘Skin Deep by Opera North at the Grand Theatre, Leeds – Review’, Telegraph, 19 January 2009, <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/4288438/Skin-Deep-by-Opera-North-at-the- Grand-Theatre-Leeds-review.html> [accessed 9 May 2015] (para. 9 of 9).
198 Sawer, 14 January 2009; public interview of Armando Iannucci and Richard Jones by Charlotte Higgins, entitled On Skin Deep, Howard Assembly Room, Leeds, 16 January 2009, from notes. 199 ‘Skin Deep’, Opera on 3.
200 Rivers, p.14.
201 The Komische Oper is both theatre and resident company that was founded and led by Walter Felsenstein. Sawer described Felsenstein as a post-war director whose new style of directing was ‘towards the physical and visual’. Sawer, 14 January 2009.
The choice of genre by a composer and its identification by the listener establish the framework for the communication of meaning. [...] A kind of ‘generic contract’ develops between composer and listener: the composer agrees to use some of the conventions, patterns, and gestures of a genre, and the listener consents to interpret some aspects of the piece in a way conditioned by this genre.203
In analysing Skin Deep and its reception, we might assess the ‘generic contract’ entered into by the audience, the work’s creators, and the company, by way of the comprehensive use of the term ‘operetta’. In defence of Sawer’s argument for his work as an heir to the lineage of this genre, we might borrow Michael Chanan’s description of Kallberg’s model of ‘genre’ as elastic, gradually changing within a framework, and connected to philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s ‘concept of a family resemblance’:
There is no particular defining characteristic of an artistic genre, which is, rather, composed of a cluster of features which are variously shared in different examples. […] To employ a certain genre is to follow a model which belongs to a tradition – even though the earliest and latest examples of the tradition may turn out to be utterly different.204 Traubner, correspondingly, avoids an absolute definition of ‘operetta’, and instead refers to the ‘half-truths in many definitions’ and the ‘changes in meaning over centuries and from country to country’,205
merely making the suggestion that, overall, operetta is ‘an opera that […] takes itself lightly’.206
It is clear that within the generic contract, there must be some room for manoeuvre away from the prescriptions of tradition. The reception of Skin Deep as an operetta seems to be presaged in Kallberg’s analysis here:
Generic contracts […] may be broken; indeed, frustrated expectations often play a key role in the communicative process. Departures from perceived norms or expectations in genre have been a persistent stumbling block for many critics.207
Kallberg goes on to assert that, despite issues that critics perceive, prescriptions and norms ought not to restrict composers, but that ‘the rejection of prescriptions of a genre […] can be seen as a major force in the promotion of change’.208 Indeed, this seems to have been Sawer’s intent. But there is a tension within the framework of genre, as to where the boundaries might
203
Kallberg, p.5.
204 Michael Chanan, From Handel to Hendrix: The composer and the public sphere (London: Verso, 1999), p.39. 205 Traubner, p.1. 206 Ibid., p.X. 207 Kallberg, p.6. 208 Ibid.
lie, and how much flexibility they can accommodate in terms of compositional freedom and change. When I spoke to Music Director Richard Farnes about the problems inherent in Skin Deep a few months after its initial run, he was quite adamant that the ‘allusions to tonality’ that Sawer mentioned were not sufficient to fit the brief for operetta. Farnes specified, ‘If you’re going to do an operetta, it needs big tunes, literally. Just that. They could be modern tunes, but they need to be recognisable.’209 But overall in Skin Deep this melodic compromise is sparse.210 Without the framework of ‘big tunes’ that is expected of the form, the piece does not have the usual musical/dramatic shape and cohesion of an operetta. Contextually, as an ‘operetta’, and quite opposed to the promises made on its behalf, one might argue that the work is functionally lacking in entertainment.211
We might then ask why the generic label was applied so abundantly in marketing the production, and with many other cues given that this was an ‘entertainment piece’. One part of the answer to this question is that that the planning and scheduling of an opera production begins years in advance, and in the case of a new commission, the production is often programmed before the work is completed. This was certainly the case for Skin Deep, where revisions were made by the composer even after the dress rehearsal. The marketing campaign for a production is also planned and its materials commissioned largely before the production rehearsals begin. In this case, marketing began not only prior to the completion of the
composition, but was, to all purposes, finished before final revisions were in place, just in time for opening night. The idea that Sawer would write an ‘operetta’ was established at the time of his and Director Richard Jones’s initial pitch for the work, and this plan was then agreed upon and marketed accordingly.
The production design was conceived as primarily pink, with associations of camp and of entertainment. This visual message also found its way to the advertising of the piece.
Comical posters were created by Elmwood, a company advertising itself as ‘the world’s most effective brand design consultancy’.212
Elmwood described its own approach for Opera North:
A series of ‘mix and match’ faces were used on posters and leaflets to express the dark humour and intriguing peculiarity of the piece, showing how changing and combining random features
209 Interview with Richard Farnes, Premier House, Leeds, 22 April 2009.
210 The most melodic passages and functional harmony is given mainly to the characters of Robert and Elsa, the young lovers, the harmony perhaps hinting at what is potentially the only functional relationship in the work.
211 ON General Director Richard Mantle advertised Skin Deep as ‘a brilliantly entertaining new work’. In reality this was Mantle’s hope for the work, as, at the time of his writing this, Skin Deep was incomplete. Mantle, ‘Of Thee I Sing and Let ’em Eat Cake’, in Of Thee I Sing/Let ’em Eat Cake, programme brochure, ed. by H. Bredin (Leeds: ON, 2008), p.1.
can lead to an unexpected and ridiculous whole. Perforations were used to add an interactive element, allowing people to create their own bizarre face combinations.213
On the official poster, the playfulness to which the production aspired is visually apparent (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Publicity poster for Opera North’s Skin Deep by Elmwood.
Elmwood, however, did not embrace the generic label ‘operetta’, and instead Skin Deep was whimsically sub-titled ‘a satirical opera-tion’ on the official poster (see Figure 1). Neither did
213
Elmwood , ‘Skin Deep a satirical operation for Elmwood’, Elmwood [n.d.]
<http://www.elmwood.com/2009/01/skin-deep-a-satirical-opera-tion-for-elmwood/> [accessed 23 May 2015].
Elmwood contribute to the programme brochure (see Figure 2), and so the official modes of communication with audience had two distinct flavours: Elmwood’s references to popular culture and Opera North’s marketing in which the tradition of operetta was promoted and discussed alongside issues of artistic construction and of genre.214
Figure 2: Skin Deep, programme brochure (Leeds: ON, 2009), front cover.
Arguably, Elmwood’s marketing approach for a young audience was quite at odds with the emphasis placed on the operetta tradition, particularly the explicit references that were made by Sawer et al. to historical composers of operetta and light opera.215 But the marketing done by Opera North also at times alluded to the ‘fun’ of the production with a specific website (now
214 The programme brochure to Skin Deep included interviews with Sawer (pp.12-14) and Iannucci (pp.15-17), and an article by Nicholas Payne, ‘Stupider Than Jupiter: Some thoughts on satire in operetta’, detailing a history of the form (pp.20-23).
215 Rivers, p.14; Sawer, 14 January 2009; Iannucci and Jones, 16 January 2009; ‘Skin Deep’, Opera on 3; Music Matters, BBC Radio 3, 10 January 2009.
defunct) <goskindeep.com> including an online computer game, where players must ‘cut out’ a body shape in order to enter a draw for vouchers for the high-street record shop, HMV.216 Overall the advertising of ‘lightness’, ‘fun’ and ‘satire’ was communicated to the audience, or potential audience, before the work itself was even complete, and certainly before its shape was fully apparent.
In the introduction to Genre Matters: Essays in theory and criticism, Garin Dowd asserts that ‘in genre studies of popular music, the intervention will often seek to locate the popular musical form in a broader, cultural context’.217
This is a relevant approach to Skin Deep, within two frameworks: the contemporary cultural context in which reception occurred, and the historical cultural framework of the genre. In a contemporary sense, we might consider the work within the framework of ‘satire’, as was proposed by its creators.218
Indeed the celebrity status of Iannucci and his wider work as a satirist had an effect on audience expectation (and indeed on the composer’s expectation of the libretto he would produce). This was intensified, due to Iannucci’s other high-profile project that coincided with the operetta, as was reported in a Skin Deep preview in the Herald:
The Opera North production opens this Friday - six days before Iannucci's In The Loop, his debut feature film and cinematic ‘cousin’ to The Thick Of It, premieres at the Sundance Festival.219
Sawer referred, in the Skin Deep programme brochure, to his admiration of Iannucci’s television satire, and Iannucci, also in the programme, took the opportunity to refer to his concurrent work.220 A third article in the programme, by Nicholas Payne, detailing the history of satire in operetta, ends with a reference to Iannucci’s ‘best known satirical creation, the chat-show host Alan Partridge’.221
Thus Iannucci’s satirical work in television and film was a contextual factor for the reception of Skin Deep, invoking associations of popular culture that were absorbed into audience expectations.
216 ON, Go Skin Deep <goskindeep.com> [accessed 14 January 2009]. 217
Garin Dowd, ‘Introduction: Genre matters in theory and criticism’, in Genre Matters: Essays in theory and criticism, ed. by Garin Dowd, Lesley Stevenson and Jeremy Strong (Bristol: Intellect, 2006), pp.11- 28 (p.18).
218 ‘It was operetta’s combination of topicality, satire and formal freedom that [Sawer] had found enticing. “I thought – what is the equivalent today? Television.” Specifically television satire.’ Rivers, p.13.
219 Jay Richardson, ‘A Musical with Lots of Spare Parts’, Herald, 14 January 2009,
<http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12764933.A_musical_with_lots_of_spare_parts/> [accessed 10 February 2016] (para. 2 of 25).
220 Rivers, p.13; L. Walker, ‘The Writer’, p.16. 221 Payne, ‘Stupider Than Jupiter’, p.22.
The historical-cultural context of operetta is offered by Traubner, who outlines the commercial history of the form, since the Parisian inception of operettas in the mid-nineteenth century, ‘as entertainments not for opera houses […] but for boulevard theatres, for popular consumptions’. He clarifies the profit motivation:
These works were expected to show profits by running fairly substantial numbers of consecutive, or nearly consecutive performances. The subsidized patronage of royalty and the wealthy at the opera houses or court theatres of Europe did not create them; operettas from the start had to cater to the public’s taste. Profit motivation had as much to do with the conception of operetta as the artistic desires of its composers.222
This functional history of operetta as commercial entertainment presents us with a contradiction in the case of Skin Deep. Here, Opera North, a publicly funded company (because opera is not commercially viable, but is deemed culturally valuable) commissioned in a genre that has historically been reliant on commercial forces and public taste. The irony is particularly pronounced in terms of the duration of the creative process: Sawer reported that the work took three and a half years to write to Lynne Walker for the programme brochure and the
Independent, and also in a talk to students,223 although he told the Telegraph of Skin Deep, ‘it takes seven years to write an opera’.224 In either case, the commercial concerns outlined by Traubner would indicate that historically, the creation of an operetta would need to have taken substantially less time. These issues aside, the commissioning of Skin Deep in the once- commercial genre of operetta can be viewed as a part of the access agenda to engage a wider public with the company’s work. Although Traubner asserted (in 2003, just six years before Skin Deep) ‘it would be considered box-office poison today to call commercial presentation of operetta just that’.225
As a publicly funded company, Opera North does not have exactly the same box office pressures that Traubner describes, but when considering the access agenda for opera and Opera North’s drive to attract new audiences, Traubner’s assertion could indicate that Skin Deep might struggle to fulfil these ideals.
Another, small-scale, cultural context in which to consider Skin Deep is the wider programming of Opera North around the time of its production run. In 2008-09, Opera North produced a collection of works that were generally much ‘lighter’ than might be considered usual for a company year. Eight main-stage works were staged during this year. Of the eight,
222
Traubner, pp.viii-ix.
223 L. Walker, ‘The Writer’, p.17; L. Walker, ‘Tucks and Tremolos’ (para. 4 of 16); Sawer, 14 January 2009.
224 Jasper Rees, ‘Skin Deep: Taking opera to the cutting edge’, Telegraph, 22 December 2008, <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/opera/3902239/Skin-Deep-taking-opera-to-the-cutting- edge.html> [accessed 23 May 2015] (para. 13 of 29).
two were Gershwin operettas, Of Thee I Sing in the 2008 autumn season, and its sequel, Let ’Em Eat Cake, following on in winter. Paradise Moscow, played in the spring of 2009, was an English version of Shostakovich’s Cheryomushki and was advertised variously in company literature as an ‘operetta’, or as a ‘blockbusting musical’.226
There was also, in the same season, an innovative production of Mozart’s Singspiel The Abduction From the Seraglio with
additional spoken text, written in English. Inserted into this overall annual programme, premiering in January 2009, was Sawer and Iannucci’s ‘operetta’. So the focus on operatic ‘lightness’ was not only advertised as per this work, but contextually enhanced by the
company’s programming. In terms of genre, 2008-09 was Opera North’s year of ‘light’ opera,227