BMCR 2009.06.32: Gamel on Ewans, Opera from the Greek: Studies in the Poetics of Appropriation

Michael Ewans, Opera from the Greek: Studies in the Poetics of
Appropriation.  Aldershot/Burlington, VT:  Ashgate, 2007.  Pp. i, 216.
ISBN 978-0-7546-6099-6.  $99.95.

Reviewed by Mary-Kay Gamel, University of California, Santa Cruz
([email protected])
Word count:  1729 words
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[The reviewer apologizes to the author and the editors for the delay in
submitting this review.]

Michael Ewans is one of very few performance studies scholars worldwide
who are also theatrical practitioners. He is, moreover, a gifted
translator who produces actable translations accompanied by excellent,
detailed theatrical commentaries. He stages productions of Greek drama
as a means of understanding ancient performance conditions. Not least,
he works on opera, and his latest book brings these two areas together
to excellent effect.

Opera from the Greek includes eight case studies of operas based on
Greek epic or drama: Monteverdi's Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria, 1640
(based on the Odyssey); Gluck's Iphige/nie en Tauride, 1779 (based on
Euripides' Iphigenia among the Taurians); Cherubini's Mede/e, 1797
(based on Euripides' Medea); Strauss' Elektra, 1909 (based on
Sophocles' Elektra); Enesco's Oedipe, 1936 (based on Sophocles' King
Oedipus); Tippett's King Priam, 1962 (based primarily on the Iliad);
Henze's The Bassarids, 1966 (based on Euripides' Bacchae); and
Turnage's Greek, 1988 (based on Steven Berkoff's adaptation of King
Oedipus). The case studies stand on their own; the introduction is very
brief, there are no cross-references between the chapters,
and--oddly--there is no conclusion. Some of the operas are familiar,
others (especially the last three) much less so. As the choice of
operas suggests, Greek models were popular subjects for operas in the
seventeenth, eighteenth, and twentieth centuries. Ewans has chosen to
discuss operas which raise "a major research question in the poetics of
appropriation" (5), and he clearly prefers comparisons with definite
source texts rather than with Greek myth more broadly defined.

Ewans begins each of his case studies by discussing the Greek model(s)
involved, then the libretto (Ewans credits both composer and librettist
in the title of each chapter) and the music of each opera. At times he
draws good connections between the dramatic and musical works and their
historical and artistic contexts, such as Charpentier's opera in the
context of Louis XIV'S court (64); the influence of Freud on Enesco's
librettist (115); the 1960s as "Dionysus' decade" (154).

The book is aimed at both classicists and musicologists, which is
appropriate as each group has much to learn from the comparisons
offered. Fortunately, the "classical tradition" approach, whereby
classicists felt entitled to decide whether a later work was worthy of
its ancient antecedents, is waning. More information, however, about
the operatic conventions prevalent in the era of each opera would have
been helpful. Although Ewans argues that adaptors must not create
"incongruities between the Greek material and the meanings implicit in
the new version" (29) he is admirably open to radical changes made in
the operas, such as Eddy's joyous acceptance of incest with his mother
in Berkoff/Turnage's Greek.

Opera has an especially important role in the reception of ancient
drama since music, song and dance were crucial elements of ancient
performances. Musicians of the Florentine Camerata (1577-82) felt that
returning to the forms and style of the ancient Greeks would improve
music, and the first musical composition which fits the term "opera"
(that is, singers enacting an entire drama with music throughout) had a
classical subject--Jacopo Peri's Dafne, performed at Florence in 1597.
Studying opera can help classicists understand what and how music
contributed to ancient Greek drama in performance, yet these
significant connections are all too often ignored both by researchers
and performers. Since few classicists have the musical training
required, studies of the operatic reception of classical texts have
been mostly limited to dissertations, chapters in books, and brief
mentions in larger studies. Ewans, who does have the necessary training
(he is Associate Professor of Drama and Music at the University of
Newcastle; his first book was on Janac,ek), has been a pioneer among
those writing in English. His groundbreaking comparison of Aeschylus
and Wagner[[1]] established him as an authority; M. Owen Lee's later
volume[[2]] pales in comparison. Marianne McDonald has published
several articles and a book[[3]] which discusses eight operas from the
sixteenth to the twentieth century including both Greek and Roman
subjects. Robert Ketterer's fine book[[4]] concentrates on Roman
subjects set by Baroque composers.

Opera from the Greek has many strengths.  The focus is clear, the
choice of operas good, the research solid, the bibliography of primary
and secondary sources and recommended recordings excellent. Most
important, throughout there are strong, exciting readings and ideas,
both about the individual works and the connections between them.
Ewans's convictions about the nature of tragedy are well defined: "a
combination of highly emotional subject matter and rigorous formal
shaping" (4). He is especially adept at bringing out important
differences between the classical scripts and the operas, for example
contrasting Jason and Cre/use's celebration of "imperious Love" with
the fervent pleas of Euripides' chorus to avoid love's dangers (64);
noting the inconsistent conceptions of Fleg/Enesco's 'Oedipe'--"one a
homage to ancient Greek culture, the other an attempt to overlay it
with the gentler teachings of Christianity" (127); and in Tippett's
depiction of Achilles and Priam's meeting (145), "stark, almost
nihilistic resignation" in place of reconciliation. As he has argued
elsewhere,[[5]] Ewans believes that Sophocles portrays Elektra and her
brother as ruthless, amoral assassins, and here he argues that this
portrayal is what appealed to Strauss' librettist Hofmannsthal, who
"develops with the new insights of psychology Sophocles' portrait of a
woman corroded and destroyed by her years of waiting and obsessive
brooding" (86). I found the five essays on twentieth-century opera the
most compelling, partly because I was less familiar with the last four,
but also because Ewans has more historical and biographical material on
which to draw; his discussion of the disagreement between the composer
and librettists of The Bassarids is especially effective.

The book's single most important contribution is the discussions of the
music. Ewans argues that the modern masters of operatic tragedy "use
music in exactly the same way as the Greeks used poetry . . .
paralleling the dramatic development of their libretti with a musical
development which illuminates the psychology of their characters"
(150). Again and again Ewans provides vivid analyses of the dramatic
impact of musical passages: "Mede/e begins with light textures and
non-threatening harmony, but becomes a dark and terrifying nightmare in
the final scenes. With such devices as the angst-ridden suspensions,
sudden tutti outburts and lengthy tremolandi in the third act,
Cherubini was the first composer to develop a musical vocabulary which
could successfully recreate in operatic drama the psychological
intensity of the most anguished myths in Greek tragedy" (71). "The
triumphant revenge of the matricides should leave a nasty taste in the
mouths of the audience. The horrible lurch of the fff brass and string
tutti away from a glowing, triumphant C major back for a moment to
distant E flat minor, in the penultimate semiquaver, achieves just
that" (102). "One of the greatest coups de the/a^tre in all opera is
the end of Act II, when Achilles' amplified, ululating triple war cry
obtrudes on and destroys the victorious trio in which Paris, Priam and
Hector celebrate the death of Patroclus . . . the orchestra conveys
ferociously the power of the destiny that is causing their downfall,
with an ominous rhythm in piano, percussion and lower brass" (143).
Ewans's discussion of the music in The Bassarids (170-181), especially
the contrast between the music associated with Dionysus and Pentheus,
is especially full and powerful. Since Bacchae is arguably the extant
Greek drama to which music is most crucial, this case study is the high
point of the volume.

The one major problem of the volume is not Ewans's fault: print is not
a sufficient medium for performance studies. I read music, but I can't
hear the effects Ewans describes from the musical examples on the page.
One solution is offered by Rob Kapilow, who created a website to
accompany his book on understanding music.[[6]]

I do have some quibbles. Ewans sees little irony in IT: "at the end the
Greeks prove worthy to be freed from their captivity among the
inferior, cowardly, but more numerous barbarians" (34). I question his
assumptions of a monolithic response from audiences ancient and modern:
Medea's story "was deeply disturbing to the ancient Athenian audience"
(55); "Cherubini obliges the audience, by the power of his music, to
sympathize against its will with Mede/e's agonized decision" (79); "the
spectators' sympathy for Klytaemnestra is muted, and they enjoy the
luring of Aegisth, and see his murder as cause for nothing but
rejoicing" (95). The introduction could be fuller, and a conclusion
which addresses larger issues would be desirable. Finally, there are no
references at all to performances either theoretical or actual; it
seems strange that a theater practitioner takes so little account of
the difference staging choices can make to the effect of drama and
opera. In his "Endnote" Ewans explains that he has not included
Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex because of its remoteness from the spectator,
"impersonal neo-Handelian mood" and "preference for the supremacy of
rationality over emotion" (201). Yet a composer's intentions need not
always be followed in performance, as Julie Taymor's powerful and
moving 1993 staging (available on video) of the Stravinsky
"opera-oratorio" demonstrates, and in the version performed by the Los
Angeles Philharmonic in April 2009 Peter Sellars obviously went much
further.[[7]] Overall, I wish that Ewans's book were longer and more
expansive--and that wish is a sign of its achievement.

The abundance of operas based on Greek material offers many more
opportunities for comparative studies. Braunfels' Die Voegel,
phenomenally successful after its 1920 premiere, then banned by the
Third Reich, was staged by Los Angeles Opera in April 2009. Handel's
operas are now being staged and recorded frequently, and works such as
Teseo (1713), Oreste (1734), Giove in Argo (1739), and Deidamia
(1741)--to mention only Greek examples--deserve attention. Comparative
studies of different operas based on the same model, such as Handel's
Admeto, Re di Tessaglia (1727) and Gluck's Alceste (1776), would be
fruitful. Operas such as Taneyev's Oresteia (1895), Gnecchi's Cassandra
(1905), Glanville-Hicks' Nausicaa (1961), Xenakis' Oresteia (1966),
Dallapiccola's Ulisse (1968), and Picker's Emmeline (1996) are
available in audio recordings, while others including Cavalli's La
Calisto (1651-2), Lully's Perse/e (1682), Vivaldi's Ercole sul
Termodonte (1723), Rameau's Castor et Pollux (1737), and Offenbach's La
Belle He/le\ne (1864) have been recorded on video. I hope that Ewans's
book will provide a model for more such excellent studies of the
operatic reception of ancient texts and themes.


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Notes:


1.   Michael Ewans, Wagner and Aeschylus: the Ring and the Oresteia.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

2.   M. Owen Lee, Athena Sings: Wagner and the Greeks. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2003.

3.   Marianne McDonald, Sing Sorrow: Classics, History, and Heroines in
Opera. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001.

4.   Robert C. Ketter, Ancient Rome in Early Opera. Champaign, IL:
University of Illinois Press, 2008.

5.   Michael Ewans, "Dominance and Submission, Rhetoric and Sincerity;
Insights from a Production of Sophocles' Electra", Helios 27 (2000):
123-136.

6.   Rob Kapilow, All You Have to Do is Listen: Music from the Inside
Out. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2008.

7.   Alex Ross, "Adieu," The New Yorker May 4, 2009: 78-79.