Interview with Philippe Manoury: Reinventing Opera
You begin by evoking the vast history of opera. Which aspects of this tradition do you want to revisit, or on the contrary, leave behind?
Philippe Manoury: I no longer believe much in the traditional form of opera. For today’s stories and considering how audiences have evolved, the codes of traditional opera do not work. Why sing certain texts instead of speaking them? Singing can enhance the message, of course, but if the text is too prosaic, too realistic, it does not work. That is why Nicolas Stemann and I came up with the idea of the “Thinkspiel,” already in Kein Licht in 2017. The Thinkspiel, as I see it, allows a blend of spoken and sung voices. The two interpenetrate. Some situations carry important information and must be understood in order to grasp the context. That used to be the role of recitatives. Others belong to the realm of inner feeling, sublimation, or transcendence. In those cases, expression takes precedence over words and meaning. A good example is at the beginning of Act II of Wagner’s Tristan, when the two lovers meet again. You cannot understand a word of what they are saying – which might be just as well – but the singing alone is enough to convey the emotion of the moment.
How did the operas you are creating this year come about?
P.M.: I had heard of Karl Kraus for a long time. Starting with Max Deutsch, my composition teacher, and more recently from the philosopher Jacques Bouveresse, probably the greatest Kraus specialist in France. As I searched for a subject for a new large-scale opera, this work gradually imposed itself. The theme – endless war – is still very relevant, but I was also drawn to the fact that there is no main character. Instead, there is a multitude of situations. I find that formally more exciting. To highlight this timeless and almost universal aspect of war, I structured the work in two parts. The first is more historical and follows Kraus’s text closely, set during the First World War. The second has no precise time frame. It might evoke our time or give a glimpse of the future. The exact time does not matter, as the phenomenon of war is not tied to any one era.
What lessons from your previous operas helped you compose this one?
P.M.: Since Kein Licht, I have moved away from the classical structure of opera. That piece had a much more open form. I had written independent modules that could be performed in a different order. The text by Elfriede Jelinek and the approach Nicolas Stemann and I adopted made that possible. The small instrumental ensemble also allowed for reasonable mobility. With Die letzten Tage der Menschheit, I returned to a more structured form from the start. With a large orchestra, such mobility would be impossible. So there will be more prepared scenes, structured in advance, but also more experimental moments, such as the electronic theater I want to create for this project.
Die letzten Tage der Menscheit by Philippe Manoury © Sandra Then
Opera means libretto. This time, you worked from a more developed libretto, which you helped shape.
P.M.: With Patrick Hahn and Nicolas Stemann, we reworked Karl Kraus’s massive text extensively. Kraus himself said it was a play not for Earth but for Mars. In truth, it has no real dramaturgical structure. It is a kind of many-headed monster. Many lines in the text were not written by him, but overheard on the street, in cafés, at meetings, and so on. A sort of foreshadowing of our social media.
The first part follows the five chapters of Kraus’s book, which correspond to the five years of the war. In the second part, we move away from Kraus to explore other, more contemporary situations, though we return to Kraus at the end. The apocalyptic conclusion reprises that of the book: having destroyed its own chances of survival, humanity is condemned to disappear by beings from elsewhere. I did not want to end on such a grandiose note, so I will close the opera with a more intimate scene. Three women will embody the children's chorus, pleading not to be born into such a world. This might sound very dark, if not for the very Viennese parodic humor running through the text.
Although there was originally no main character in this Thinkspiel, we added one: “Angelus Novus,” that strange winged figure painted by Paul Klee, whom philosopher Walter Benjamin turned into an allegory of History. Since it is an angel, I would like to create a kind of “sound halo” around its voice – perhaps with real-time synthesis to make the voice resonate. But I am not sure I can make it work.
What role can computer music play in an operatic setting?
P.M.:The very idea of the Thinkspiel implies, for me, an interaction between computer music and what is happening on stage – in real time, of course – or even using it to generate material for the electronic music. This genre makes use of both spoken and sung voices, which is not new. What is new, however, is that I bring spoken voices into the musical world. I have said for years that speech is chaotic singing. By nature, it is unstructured, but if we can extract musical structures, rhythms, pitches, or colors from it, we can make it an instrument.
For example, whispered voice is all noise. It has no pitch that our ears can identify. There are no vocal inflections. But the computer can quickly detect frequencies of different amplitudes. We can retrieve that information and use those frequencies to create sound synthesis that synchronizes perfectly with all the whispered syllables. This allows for a wide range of sound expressions, with very different profiles, using a voice that is, by definition, musically neutral.
Regarding randomness – or at least the illusion of randomness – I use a formal system developed by Miller Puckette, who created the software environment I use. This tool lets me simulate autonomy in the computer’s musical discourse, by randomly navigating through what has just been played – like a random function with memory. I use it often to bring electronic textures to life, supporting both the theatrical and musical action on stage.
Interview by Jérémie Szpirglas
Photo 1: Composer Philippe Manoury © Tomoko Hidaki
