Elena Langer: It’s fun to be an opera composer (interview)
I meet Elena Langer in Poznań. The composer came in connection with the final rehearsals and the Polish premiere of her opera “Figaro Gets a Divorce”, scheduled in Teatr Wielki in Poznań for Friday, February 17th. The time, as it always is before the premiere, is really busy, and Elena Langer cannot dedicate too much time to me. But I would never forgive myself to miss such an opportunity. How often does it happen to meet and to talk to a composer, who has already composed music to several opera performances?
Władysław Rokiciński: Exactly, let’s start with this: how many opera performances have you already composed the music to? “Figaro Gets a Divorce”, the opera which will be staged in Poznań, which item on the list it is? And how is it to be an opera composer?
Elena Langer: My first opera is entitled “Ariadne”. It is a mini-opera written for a soprano and a chamber ensemble. It was my first musical experience in London, in the Almeida Theatre. The theatre is located in a old bus depot.
Shortly after that, I composed the opera „The Lion’s Face”. The work is about a man suffering from the Alzheimer’s disease, it is a combination of several genres. The main character in the performance is an actor who speaks, and the rest of the artists use singing. The people around the patient seem strange, they are different because of their singing. As soon as I got an insight into the world of a patient with the Alzheimer’s disease, the composing of the opera began to make sense. „The Lion’s Face” was staged in many places, among others in the Royal Opera House, in the Lindbury Studio Theatre (a small-audience hall). „The Lion’s Face” has been written for a small team.
Then, I found out that I began to be interested in composing comedy works, what is not too popular nowadays. I started my cooperation with the American sopranist, Dawn Upshaw, who heard my works, and asked me to write an opera for her students in the Bard Conservatory in NYC. I composed the opera „Four Sisters”. Its libretto is a mixture, and has an entertaining character. Is is an one-act comic opera designed for the symphony orchestra. The next opera title, which I wrote, was „Songs at the Well”, it was in 2012. I worked on them thinking of the Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theatre in Moscow. According to its director’s wish, the composition was to be amusing, jolly, and based on the folk text. I selected some very old, Russian texts on marriage, and on all what is related to it (quarrels, dances...). Each scene in the opera is another song, it presents various situations among people. The opera director has a choice: can change the order of separate scenes, except the first and the last song which stay on their places. Each scene is a complete, separate entity, but a director chooses what kind of story he wants to tell.
It was „The Lion’s Face”, which David Pountney had the opportunity to listen to, and he liked the opera. He knew, that I was just writing „Four Sisters”, he could not come to the USA, but he saw the DVD of the spectacle. He invited me then for a drink, and proposed to compose music to the opera „Figaro Gets a Divorce”.
It’s fun to be an opera composer. This profession allows me to come into contact with different artists, this is for me the fullness of life.
If you are – if I may say so – „opera-addicted”, most likely, it is your preferable form of composition. And the other genres of music?
There are they. I have just finished working with Britten Sinfonia, I compose also an orchestral piece for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. But it is a smaller part than opera, that’s true, although as well interesting. Britten Sinfonia, for example, play in everyday life without the conductor, performing contemporary music. The ensemble invites to cooperation youngsters from around the whole country. The kids learn, how to play with no conductor. I wrote for this ensemble the piece of music „Swimming in the Limmat”. In the middle of the composition, I placed a 15-second long, free passage, where the musicians imagine they swim, and try to reflect it in music. Some of them know how to improvise, others may follow my tips, and still others may ignore them.
I would like to hear it... And coming back to Poznań. Can it at all be said, that your „Figaro Gets a Divorce” is the continuation of the famous opera works by Mozart and Rossini? Is it your dialogue with them? Or on the contrary: Figaro is just a name, which could be borne by many men, once upon a time, and nowadays?
It is a sequel. It is a mix of topics from Pierre Beaumarchais and Ödön von Horváth. The title of the opera has been taken from a play of the latter. Technically, it is the continuation, but musically – it is not. The text of the opera has quotations from the previous operas, but musically it does not have quotations. Sometimes I’ve made references to the rhythm from Mozart, but it’s coded.
Summing up: all this, what the audience in Teatr Wielki in Poznań will see and listen to on Friday, how did it start?
I said it already: it started from a drink with David Pountney.
As in life! And, is it your first opera that is to be staged in Poland? Or, were you in Poland already before? If not, I do hope, that your first impressions are good? Be frank, please.
Yes, this is my first ever visit to Poland. My impressions are very good, they bring some memories from the past, which makes me nostalgic. The Poles are very friendly and very kind!
Your musical education is divided between two countries: Russia and Great Britain, both of them being musical super powers. How do you see your musical roots, the tradition – if I may say so – you are coming from?
Indeed, I was educated in both these countries. At first, in the Moscow Gnessin Musical College (music theory and piano), and in P.I.Tchaikovsky Conservatory (compositon). A day after my exams, I went to London, I did not speak English then yet, so I had to start composition from the very beginning. I started my studies in the Royal College of Music in London (Master Degree), and then in the Royal Academy of Music (PhD).
When during my studies in Russia, I was growing up in the Russian and German music, what I missed was an appropriate approach to the new music. London looks at the contemporary music in a totally different way. But today, I have to admit, that I am a little bit bored with the new music, and nowadays, I listen to a lot of Händel, Mozart, Rossini, Brahms, Purcell.
After the question, where are you coming from, it is time for the other eternal one: where are you going to? Have you got any specific goal to achieve?
I take day at a time.
Thank you very much for your time, for our conversation, and I keep my fingers crossed for the success of „Figaro Gets a Divorce” in Poznań!