Contemporary opera is on the up. But where is the passion?

Recently I went to the London-premiere of George Benjamin’s much-hyped London premiere of Written on Skin. Having read nothing but praise for the piece, I had very high hopes indeed. 'More sensuously beautiful and, at times, more fiercely dramatic than anything Benjamin has written before', raved The Guardian. 'Sensual and evocative', cried the FT.

And indeed it was. Luminous counterpoint, carefully-paced libretto, and hauntingly beautiful orchestration weaved the plot together with an expert craft. But the intense passion and fierce drama that I had read about over and over again seemed to be decidedly absent.

Martin Crimp’s stylish libretto, with its clever self-narration adds a contemporary twist to the medieval action, but often feels like it is trying to keep any real human experience at arm’s length. It is as if the story is under the same clinical light that bathed director Katie Mitchell’s ingenious set. The score creates a beautiful yet restrained world, with long pedal notes and unsettling instrumentation giving the impression of watching the opera from behind a wall of glass. Climaxes are carefully constructed so that the orchestra never drowns the singers. Good for the singers perhaps, but frustrating for the audience. The raw emotion of the story is held back, never exploding into real passion, real anger, real despair.

I enjoyed every minute of the evening, but afterwards found myself feeling cold and indifferent. This highlights for me a trend that appears to be emerging in contemporary opera which avoids the humanity of a story. Narrative is prized over emotion, and clarity over the protagonist’s passion. As enjoyable as Written on Skin is, when reviewers are describing it as 'the best opera…since Wozzeck' (Le Monde) one wonders if something might have gone awry.

The passion and struggle found in nearly all opera is the essence of the genre. It seems that composers nowadays are too easily scared by the need to please an audience, and so focus on creating a careful narrative with filmic underscoring, rather than exploring human emotion. A prime example of this is Mark-Anthony Turnage’s 2010 opera Anna Nicole. Billed as the future of modern opera, its first production at the ROH was equally as entertaining and well-constructed as Written on Skin, but as with George Benjamin, Turnage seemed to be handling his subject matter with distance. Instead of the exquisite delicacy of Written on Skin, Turnage’s detachment comes through his use of kitsch and music-theatre parody, creating a wonderfully bright and glitzy world for the action, but completely losing the intimacy of emotion that such a tragic story really needs to touch the heart. It was perversely only in the rapturous orchestral interludes that we really felt Turnage flexing his emotional muscles. These small glimpses of tragedy were simply not enough to give Anna’s despair a real depth, and the audience was left considering the bright pink curtains, not wiping away a tear from its collective eye.

This is not intended as a criticism of Benjamin, Turnage or indeed any of the wonderful casts that have brought these works to life. Rather the culture behind contemporary opera, which too often moulds the genre into glorified recitative. Any passion is fractured as if seen through a kaleidoscope, and any emotion distanced. It is a wonderful thing that contemporary opera is flourishing, and hats off to the numerous opera companies that are helping to make this happen. However, by avoiding the emotional impact that we feel with composers such as Wagner, Strauss and Verdi, the very essence of opera is taken away. The genre simply will not be able to flourish until composers can embrace emotion and wear their heart on their sleeve.