The Royal Opera Copenhagen: Manualen (The Manual)
Copenhagen Opera House
An opera for our time that works!
Copenhagen Opera have just premiered one of the best new operas I have seen in the past 50 years of opera going. What is more, it is visually stunning, has an engaging and melodic score, is well sung and deals with one of the most important issues of our time, namely assisted dying. It truly is an opera for our time.
‘The Manual’ (‘Manualen’) stems from the case of a Danish doctor, Svend Lings, who wrote a guide to how to end your life, which included naming of medications (none without prescription) which could be used to that end. He was sentenced to 40 days in prison in 2019, increased to 60 after appeal this year, and this sentence is currently under further appeal to the Supreme Court in Denmark, making this a truly topical opera. Assisting suicide is against the law in Denmark, as it is in Britain and most other countries. In Scotland, an attempt was made a few years ago in the Scottish Parliament by Margo MacDonald MSP to introduce a bill to assist people to die but it was defeated, partly due to the power of the Church. So in Denmark, as in Britain, if you want assistance in dying you must travel to Holland or to Dignitas in Switzerland.
The challenge facing the composer Louise Alenius was how to deal with the issue of death. Her brilliant answer was to create the body in visual terms on the big stage of Copenhagen Opera. In the opera she shows how the organs interact and how when in pain and nearing the end of life Consciousness, beautifully sung by Elisabeth Jansson, attempts to persuade different parts of the body to follow The Manual, personified by Morten Grove Jansen in an impressive pointy hat, and end life painlessly. Interestingly the opera had to remove the mention of a specific medicine or they too would have run foul of the law.
Each organ of the body was represented by singers or dancers. The heart was represented by baritone, Petri Lindroos, in a large wire creation hovering over the organs as they interacted, eventually lowered as the body’s condition worsened and brought to an end by violent shocks, administered by Angina, sung by Sofie Lund as a merciful Angel of Death. The other organs of the body were represented by singers and dancers, vividly representing red blood corpuscles or green lungs. The chorus presaged death shrouded in black and Angina was dressed in white. The sets, costumes and lighting were superbly done by Sasha Milavic Davies, Marie i Dali and Mathias Hersland.
The music was a revelation; it was modern but melodic and evocative, at times sounding a bit like Phillip Glass but without his relentless repetition. The small Danish opera orchestra, under its excellent conductor Robert Houssart, produced ravishing music to fit the scenes. The composer Louise Alenius is a specialist in film music, and this really showed in her portrayal of the different organs. She is also the composer of ‘The Silent Zone’, a well-received chamber opera about domestic abuse in 2017. Clearly, she believes opera should tackle tough topics!
Indeed modern opera should tackle topical issues, but it helps if it does it in a way that entertains as well as provoking thought amongst the audience and this it clearly did in Copenhagen. The audience were very appreciative of the work and gave it warm applause at the end. Copenhagen Opera showed that you can tackle controversial issues and inform and entertain. I predict that ‘The Manual’ will be translated and will become an important part of the repertoire produced in many opera houses; there are not many modern operas that manage to do that.
