A Week in Copenhagen
Denmark is a small country with about the same population as Scotland but seems to spend significantly more on the arts than Scotland. It has a splendid new opera house which, although built by money from the founder of Maersk Shipping A P Moeller, my Danish friends say, “it’s all the taxes he should have paid over the years”! I attended the big opening event at the new opera house more than 10 years ago, a radical feminist interpretation of Wagner’s Ring Cycle which the director Kasper Holten called “Brunnhilde’s Ring.” All the women were strong, all the men corrupt. It was a powerful feminist interpretation which I remember having to explain to Michael Portillo who was there as the ‘New Statesman’s’ opera critic. Ironically, it was Portillo’s last review for the ‘New Statesman’ as they appointed a new woman arts editor whose first decision was to sack Portillo as the opera critic! He concluded his review by saying “Truly women are taking over the world. This is my last review for the New Statesman.”
Kasper Holten went on to be the director of the Royal Opera in 2011 for five years, with I have to say mixed results in terms of production. I remember a rather silly production of ‘Eugene Onegin’, with ballet doppelgängers for Tatiana and Onegin! Holten returned to Denmark where he is now in charge of all the royal theatres, including a splendid new National Theatre opposite the new opera house, and the old opera house which is largely used for ballet these days. In addition there are opera houses or symphony halls in Aarhus, Aalborg and Esbjerg, and Denmark manages to produce over a dozen operas a year compared to the modest number of Scottish Opera. It is clear that Denmark, as an independent country, has a strong commitment to the arts and hopefully an independent Scotland might have the same commitment, if it ever happens!
We were in Copenhagen in particular to review the interesting new opera ‘The Manual’ about assisted dying. This is a hot topic in Denmark, but also in Scotland if you remember Margo Macdonald’s private members bill which was defeated by a vote in parliament. We review ‘The Manual’ elsewhere in the EMR. It was a very good new opera which is likely to be seen widely across the world.
Accompanying the 70-minute long ‘The Manual’ was a ballet interpretation of the Brecht/Weill work, ‘The Seven Deadly Sins’. This fitted the bill in terms of timing but was underwhelming in both the dancing and the singing.
Much more successful was a new production of Mozart’s ‘Don Giovanni’ which featured a hotel as the centrepiece of this modern setting production. ‘Don Giovanni’ is of course a comedy as well as a work with a serious ending and the farcical elements of the story were perfectly suited to the ins and outs of hotel rooms, at times reminding me of a Brian Rix farce, even to the extent of the Don having his trousers down! But it was also very well sung; indeed it compared very favourably with the Scottish Opera production we reviewed recently. Also worth noting that the majority of the singers were Danish and products of the Conservatoire just round the corner from the opera house. Of course the Conservatoire in Glasgow has a very good reputation and is among the top five in the world, but it is much more international in terms of its students and not many Scottish graduates end up in Scottish Opera productions up the road at the Theatre Royal. Now of course opera is an international art form but surely part of the role of Scotland’s Conservatoire and Scotland’s opera are to nurture home grown talent and promote it nationally and internationally? This is what the traditional music section of the Conservatoire does very successfully and of course, although traditional music is an important part of Scottish culture, I think the Danish experience shows that opera can become an important part of our culture too.
Copenhagen Opera is not afraid to experiment either and sometimes as with the feminist Ring Cycle it works very well. Incidentally, this is available on YouTube under the heading of ‘The Copenhagen Ring’ and well worth viewing. Sometimes it doesn’t come off, as in the fourth opera we saw this week - Shostakovich’s ‘The Nose’. Based on a satirical story by Gogol, it tells the tale of how the nose of a civil servant detaches itself from its owner and assumes an independent life of its own, ending up as a higher level civil servant than its owner. Clearly this was a satire on Russian bureaucracy in the 19th century, but when Shostakovich composed an opera based on it in 1929 it was seen as a critique of Stalinism and promptly banned in Russia until 1974. It didn’t help that it uses very modern atonal music which is difficult to listen to. Barrie Kosky did a humorous version some years ago at Covent Garden with 14 dancing noses on stage. I fear there was little humour or melody in this production, and I found the singing painful to listen to.
Still two out of four operas as a success is not bad and ‘The Manual’ is the best new opera I have seen in many years. So well done Copenhagen. It is a great city with very friendly people who all speak English. It has a superb new opera house with very accessible prices, and it’s only 2 hours from Edinburgh by plane. You could do worse for your holidays!
Cover photo: Camilla Winther
