Disaster as a purifying opera ritual

The world trembles and quakes, reality has been turned upside down. The impact of a disaster cannot actually be measured. The suffering is immense. Composer Klaas de Vries hopes to express what cannot be put into words in his opera.

A vigil for the victims, an awakening for the survivors. His opera Wake (Vigil) has turned out to be a spiritual journey straight through physical and musical time. A comprehensive opera in which de Vries embraces emotions, looks for silence and works unscrupulously eclectically. Klaas de Vries was commissioned to write Wake by the National Travel Opera and the town council of Enschede for the tenth anniversary of the Enschede fireworks disaster. For quite a while de Vries wondered whether such an emotionally charged topic was suitable for a full evening music theatre work. Until he came across Cloud Atlas by the popular writer David Mitchell. “Such a musical book full of credible dialogues. This man had to write my libretto.” For a long time Mitchell would not commit himself, but de Vries’ proposals continued to stir his imagination. “In the end Mitchell wrote a complete libretto for me. It struck home immediately.”

In Wake the viewer follows the tribulations of nine inhabitants of an apartment building and their companions. The stormy feelings and fears just before and after the catastrophe. Wake, which is divided into four acts, does not follow time chronologically, but it is a revolutionary series of scenes full of moving mental leaps. The first act is a ‘Requiem’ which the composer had already completed for the ZaterdagMatinee in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. “The disaster has already taken place. We hear a universal, meditative ritual for choir and orchestra, dedicated to victims of a disaster all over the world.” In the charming second act, de Vries abandons all reserve and creates a dazzling ode to life. The disaster has not yet taken place and the characters are living their own lives. “All the people living in the apartment building are given a musical form. We hear blues, jazz and even Puccini. That was the challenge: with so many styles, what remains of myself? Without Mitchell’s libretto I would never have attempted this.” In the short third act the consequences of the disaster are tangible. The texts are suffused with loneliness. René Uijlenhoet has written the entire electronic score for this act. De Vries considers the final act the counterpart of the opening Requiem. “Conversations between the diseased and the survivors keep going through one’s head. A huge cloud of memories drifts through this act. Can memories heal wounds?” This fourth act is remarkably serene. “Call it mystic. A large gesture of reconciliation and melancholy.”

A reflective plot full of unique storylines and personages. This brings to mind his last large-scale music theatre work, A King, Riding. “Mind you, I really wanted to write a real opera with dramatic action,” de Vries laughs. “But once again it didn’t turn out that way. David Mitchell has really understood me.”

Performances of Wake by Klaas de Vries and David Mitchell with the Choir of the National Travel Opera and the Orchestra of the East conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw and directed by Stephen Langridge, start on Thursday 13 May 2010. Premiere in Stadsschouwburg Enschede, followed by a  national tour.
For more information see: www.nationalereisopera.nl

Mark van de Voort