John Malkovich on being Jack Unterweger

The actor on The Infernal Comedy, a work exploring the Austrian serial killer through words and music

The Infernal Comedy tells the story of the Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger through words and music

John Malkovich is best-known as an award-winning film actor and director, though his history of stage work is equally long and distinguished (most famously at Chicago’s much-praised Steppenwolf Theater Company). As he himself is quick to point out, he has had precious little to do with the world of classical music and opera. Indeed, his first real exposure to opera has been the new piece in which he stars, The Infernal Comedy. About the Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger and incorporating music by Beethoven, Boccherini, Weber, Vivaldi, Mozart and Haydn, Malkovich is touring it around the world and which has just been released on DVD by Arthaus Musick. Gramophone’s editor James Inverne spoke to the actor about the effect this close encounter has had upon him.

Gramophone: Have you been a fan of opera at all?

John Malkovich: It’s not so much about being a fan or not being a fan. It’s about being completely uneducated about it. Aside from a very few music appreciation classes at school, this was my first real contact with any kind of classical music or opera. I didn’t even really have any impression of what it could be like. It’s my introduction to it, which I’ve loved. But I’m well beyond a neophyte at it!

G: In which case how did you come to be headlining a new work about a serial killer?

JM: The costume designer Birgit Hutter is a friend of mine. She spends part of every year in Vienna but also comes to Los Angeles, and one night she suggested that we should go to dinner at the Austrian Consulate, of all things, to meet a friend of hers – a conductor who, she thinks is fantastic, Martin Haselböck. The following morning Martin called me and asked if we could collaborate on Gluck’s Don Juan. He sent me the music and libretto and I thought that while the music was fantastic (some of which found its way into The Infernal Comedy in fact), the libretto was one of the dumbest things I’d ever read.

So I replied that I would be interested in directing an opera, or something with this kind of music, but not that. It simply didn’t seem stageworthy. So we met in Paris where I went to direct a play, and towards the end of the conversation I suddenly said, “If I were you and I wanted people to come to the opera I’d do something about the murderer Jack Unterweger”. He was surprised that someone from outside of Austria had heard of this story at all. But he liked the idea very much and he and Birgit found Michael Sturminger to write and eventually, when I decided to act in it, to direct. So it opened in Vienna for a short run and then we’ve toured it since then.

G: Were you worried about the pressure of presenting such an Austrian story to the Viennese public?

JM: Vienna is a city I know well and spend a lot of time in and really love, so it certainly seemed to have a special sensibility when we did it there. I was aware what a huge story this was in Austria, but I couldn’t worry about that aspect of it. The only pressure I felt was to do with the music. Normally when you do a play you can try to will it to be what you want it to be. If it’s good, there can sometimes be a way to deal with everything else and eventually make it work. It’s a question of will. But you can’t do that as an actor with that music,  and whenever you try to take too many liberties with it, it’s like getting hit in the face with a moving house. Because it just has so much power. That has been not only a fantastic lesson, but a fantastic experience.

G: Have you found that acoustics have played an important role in how the piece has worked in different venues?

JM: The sound is crucial. The orchestra and the two sopranos who comprise the cast alongside myself are critical, and for instance I found I didn’t want to do it in the open air any more as the sound gets too dispersed. Martin has a very fine orchestra with a concentrated sound, but I prefer to do it in a hall. And although we’ve performed it in some great houses, the Mariinsky in St Petersburg, the hall in Turku in Finland and the theatre in Hamburg all had great sound, for me it’s very different in every hall.

G: You talked about the great force of the music and implied the discipline that imposes. Is there a freedom in that discipline? You’ve always been a very lyrical kind of actor, in the sense that you find the architecture of a role and the way that the text naturally ‘sings’. Which would suggest that you do respond well to the challenge of finding and using the inner music of a work.

JM: I agree that musical discipline can allow you to find a great freedom. Of course, I’m not the one having to sing the arias but I always have to be aware of how any musical moment sits in the piece, what it’s coming from and what it’s leading to. And of course that has great sway over how I interact with the sopranos, for instance. But I do find it freeing.

G: Has this experience, that aspect of it in particular, influenced your subsequent work elsewhere?

JM: It can’t really play into the movies so much because that’s so different. The comparison would be like the difference between playing the Don Giovanni overture straight through, and for a film playing it note by note, or rather three notes at a time and then you’d jump to do the 800th note! Because films are made in such a non-chronological way.

But my training lies in stage work and there of course you do play the whole thing, so you must always be aware of the pace and the punctuation of everything. I’d say though that a great challenge in The Infernal Comedy has been the extent to which the music informs everything alongside the text, and that it is vital to stay ahead of the public. In a movie, that’s the director’s job but in a piece like this it’s your job to think ahead, to keep an idea of the pacing and to be aware of what the orchestra and the singers can deal with from you as the actor. That has been an incredible experience.

G: This work of course includes arias and music by Haydn, Vivaldi and other composers. Are you now inspired to delve into more classical music and opera?

JM: I will go from this to discover more music but haven’t had time yet. In fact, Michael Sturminger and I are going to do a follow-up to The Infernal Comedy in December. He’s adapting Casanova’s diaries into a work for singers and two actors. So I’ll be pretty immersed in the music of that I imagine.

One more thing I’d say on that is that I actively listen to The Infernal Comedy when I’m performing it more than I used to. This experience is so specific and so consuming that I’m still sifting through this experience.

The Infernal Comedy - produced by Film+co Vienna and Matthias Leutzendorf - is available on DVD from Arthaus Musik and is reviewed in the Awards issue of Gramophone. The show continues to tour, and is set to play at London’s Barbican Centre in June 2011.

Watch a excerpt from The Infernal Comedy in the Gramophone Player (in the 'Awards 2010: The Issue' playlist)