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The opera novice: The Minotaur by Harrison Birtwistle and David Harsent
Harrison Birtwistle's opera The Minotaur has all the terrifying power of Greek tragedy, writes Sameer Rahim.
In Ovid’s Metamorphosis the story of Theseus and the Minotaur only takes up 30 lines or so. Since then, however, it has been retold many times: from Dante’s half-man half-bull described as the “infamia di Creti” or infamy of Crete, an incarnation of man’s violent propensities – to Picasso’s Minotaur etchings, where the artist’s own animal passions are displayed. What there has not been – or least none has survived – is a Greek tragedy based on the myth.
For their opera The Minotaur – first performed in 2008 and now revived at the Royal Opera House – the composer Harrison Birtwistle and the poet David Harsent have been inspired by Greek tragedy. They strip away the adventure aspect of the story (pointedly the title does not mention the slayer Theseus), and make the man-bull a malformed tragic hero. In Ancient Greece tragedy was apparently sung or chanted: this opera is an attempt to re-create that same hypnotic mood. The libretto is as sharp as a sword and the epic music drills into your soul.
The opera opens with the terrible sigh of Ariadne, half-sister to the Minotaur, looking out to sea as the virgins marked to feed the beast arrive in Crete. The superb Christine Rice, looking a bit like Maria Callas in Passolini’s film of Medea, then tricks Theseus into going into the labyrinth and facing the monster.
Though he is musically signalled from the start with ominous rumblings on the brass, the star attraction is kept offstage until some way in. He appears in a flash of flight, the Minotaur, Asterios, the “half and half” as he is derisively called, played by opera legend John Tomlinson.
Stomping at the centre of the labyrinth watched by a creepy Greek chorus urging him to rape and kill his victims, the Minotaur roars in anguished desire. In a nice irony for the master of clear operatic diction, Tomlinson does not sing words but instead bellows noise. His booming voice competes with Birtwistle’s volume but also complements the music’s struggle with coherence and tonality. (Someone waggishly pointed to me that both Birtwistle and Tomlinson are from Lancashire – could the Minotaur’s roar of “Nooowaaargh!” reflect Northern alienation?)
In an interview Tomlinson compared the role to Wotan in Wagner’s Ring Cycle and Claggart in Billy Budd – both characters struggling to control their desires. “It’s all about the dichotomy between human and animal,” he said. “Often the animal is the innocent part, with muscle and instincts; the human part can distort those things and is more often to blame for the rapes, murders and destruction the Minotaur reaps.”
Tomlinson’s cleverly designed mask seemed sometimes imperviously solid, while at others his face was visible through the gauze, echoing the human and animal aspects. Harsent’s libretto emphasises the point: “This rage: all too human / This hard heart: all too human / This inescapable sorrow: all too human.”
As others have pointed out all the blood and rage does not make The Minotaur easy viewing – or listening. Having watched a murder in the bullpen it was almost unbearable to watch another, and the exhilarating harshness of the music is sometimes too much. Yet there is tenderness in the final scene when Asterios finally manages to speak. Like Wotan he becomes more sympathetic (I hesitate to say human) after his powers have been stripped. Only at the end does the “half and half” become whole.
Until Jan 28. Tickets: 020 7304 4000, roh.org.uk
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