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Documenting a live event is never easy, especially one that takes place in multiple locations simultaneously with lots of one-to-one connections on the phone. Although the calls were recorded and those interactions are an amazing document, they are not the event.
Three writers took on the challenge of writing about their experiences and reflections on THIS EVENING’S PERFORMANCE HAS NOT BEEN CANCELLED.
THIS EVENING’S PERFORMANCE HAS NOT BEEN CANCELLED – JESSICA RAMM
“Hello” Already I have noticed the woman speaking has an unselfconscious warmth to her voice. “Nice to meet you, you’re my first call,” she says. “I think it’s a technical thing maybe. Are you interested in Opera?” I answer “Yes.” Making sure my internal reservations are well camouflaged I follow up with: “it’s unusual to speak direct to the people involved in production.” She answers: “It’s the same for us. We do prepare the whole show two years in advance and work quite a lot to bring this on stage, and then we don’t really have contact with the public. Have you chosen especially our production?”
“I did choose you especially.” I answer.
THIS EVENING’S PERFORMANCE
– RACHEL BOYD
“That dialogue is ameliorative in a time of social distancing and isolation, offering up a shelter in which we might briefly press us up against each other. The implicit awkwardness in these initial, shy encounters is tentatively stage-managed in conversation: often, giving way to laughter.
The telephone renders our breath, our exclamations, our pauses tangible. Like warm breath rushing against cold air, telephony renders us vulnerable to “the very being of our sentences, and the climate that fostered them.”
WHO’S ZOOMIN’ WHO?
– IRENE REVELL
“After we hang up I feel a rush of excitement, I can do this all over again. For my part, I have received a partial slither of a stranger’s life, to which I have attempted to listen, bear witness, affective labour in both directions. This is the welcome re-dress for all the recent Zoom times where we have suddenly become almost always passive consumers in an array of not-before-possible contexts, an artist’s talk in ‘New York’, a weekend-long opening at ZKM, ‘Karlsruhe’, a discussion between Harney & Moten in ‘California’ etc etc. I also clock that I have been pre-occupied by words: what about the textures of other audio, the qualities of the recording itself over the phone line, I didn’t really listen out for these?”
THIS EVENING’S PERFORMANCE HAS NOT BEEN CANCELLED
JESSICA RAMM
[dial tone]
The rubber keys on my cordless landline handset make piercing tones as I press in the code for tonight’s performance. I make myself as comfortable as possible in front of my notepad in my small empty room. Take a breath, hit the green call button and wait while the dial sequence runs down the phone line.
An automated female operator answers: “Welcome to this evening’s performance has not been cancelled. For Bergen National Opera in Norway press 1. For Dutch National Opera press 2. For Garsington Opera Wormsley in the UK press 3. Grand Théâtre de Genève
in Switzerland press – On impulse I press 3.
Option 3
[tinkling piano hold music]
A voice answers, self-assured but lacking the slight edge of slick authority that usually gives away a pre-recorded automaton: “Hello, Garsington Hotline.” I embark on a mental scrabble to search for information to bridge the distance between us: “Hello, I’m calling from Scotland”. The line sounds distant. “Very good yes, It’s a weird thing we’re doing but none the less. You’ve called other numbers before?” I wish that I had, but ignoring my strong desire to brush over the awkwardness of my inexperience I say: “No. I thought I’d start at home to begin with and journey out from there.”
“Brilliant. Well the story is…”
I’m introduced to a vivid description of a bucolic English estate in Buckinghamshire. Rolling green hills populated with roaming deer, sheep, cows and foals grazing contentedly in their paddocks. The open air theatre allows sunlight to stream in. The first half of the performance takes place in daylight, followed by a long interval offering ample time for picnicking on the grass or enjoying dinner from the set menu. The alcohol flows freely as the sun goes down and the stage lighting is turned up for the second half.
“I must say it’s a very nice way to spend an evening.”
“It sounds like paradise,” I answer.
I wonder about the man’s deep smooth confident voice as he reassuringly sails over the glossy brochure-like sales pitch of the production. He has an accent that exudes confidence and a genial full-bodied warmth which he uses to glide over life’s problems buoyed up by a well-mannered habit which he deploys to sidestep unpredictable crosswinds in the flow of conversation. He embodies his work as a singer completely. I wonder if he is real or if this conversation is an extension of his professional persona. As he talks I can hear the practiced muscles of his face forming into the mask he adopts when looking out at audiences. Audiences whose rapture, boredom, confusion, ecstasy, self-absorbed distraction are for now mirrored in his mind’s eye; a light rustle and occasional cough puncture the barely perceptible rhythm of six hundred people breathing together in a packed auditorium.
“…So the choices I can give you are: Deh vieni Susanna’s aria – full aria, the Countess and Susanna – the Sull’aria duet, Voi che sapete Cherubino’s aria, or the opening duet between Figaro and Susanna.”
“I think the opening duet,” I say, hopefully giving the impression that tonight’s menu of delectable items simply offers too much choice to the discerning palate; though secretly I have no idea what any of the options on offer might be.
“Very good choice, you get me then.”
“Ah, I look forward to it.”
“It’s been lovely talking to you. Best of luck.”
“Thank you, same to you.”
“Not at all, I’m going to try and transfer you now. I hope I don’t cut you off.”
[Loud sustained digital tone of an unbearable pitch]
I cut the call and dial again.
Option 2
“your hold music for this evening is from Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. One of the operas which was broadcast by the Paris Théâtrophone service in the early 1900’s and forms the inspiration for this evenings performance.” Declining bass notes slow to a standstill, soprano female voice. “Thank you for continuing to hold –
“Good evening you’re at Rusalka from the Dutch National Opera in Holland.”
The man draws breath as though he’s been speaking for some time. He is disarmingly direct and efficient in conversation; informing me that his production was due to be screened to an open air audience of up to 5000 people at a festival, continuing a 20-year tradition. He asks me whether I’m interested in Opera and I reply over enthusiastically for fear of alienating him, telling him that I inherited a collection of antique opera records from behind the iron curtain that once belonged to an elderly relative. He catches me off guard, saying:
“actually the opera is not one of my favourite performing-art forms. Sometimes I really love the music and listening, but to see what’s going on stage, it’s sometimes so artificial. Sometimes people say that opera is the ultimate art form but I don’t agree about that.”
I’m caught off guard by his unexpected candour, and try to tread water while working out what tack to take next. Perhaps unadvisedly I continue on my original trajectory:
“Yes, it’s very full. The senses are completely filled. I often think about this older man alone in his house listening to records over and over again. He had dementia and as his mind disappeared the music became more and more important to him. I don’t know why he was so interested in that one art form, because he was not interested in very much else. Just opera.”
“Very interesting I think it’s a challenge for you to dive into the whole story of opera and his music. I think we could talk very long about this but it’s not the ideal project because there are some callers waiting.”
We do a brief conversational dance where each reassures the other no inconvenience has been incurred before I select a fragment of a recording of The Dutch National Opera from 1976.
“Enjoy”
“Thanks”
“Bye.”
[Beep beep…. beep beep…. beep beep…. beep beep…. beep beep…. beep beep…. beep]
No music arrives. I cut the call and dial again.
Option 7
“Hello … Theatro Royale Madrid.”
“Hello” Already I have noticed the woman speaking has an unselfconscious warmth to her voice. “Nice to meet you, you’re my first call,” she says. “I think it’s a technical thing maybe. Are you interested in Opera?” I answer “Yes.” Making sure my internal reservations are well camouflaged I follow up with: “it’s unusual to speak direct to the people involved in production.” She answers: “It’s the same for us. We do prepare the whole show two years in advance and work quite a lot to bring this on stage, and then we don’t really have contact with the public. Have you chosen especially our production?”
“I did choose you especially.” I answer. She talks with energy and enthusiasm about her work as a set designer and the opera she has been working on; a baroque piece from 250 years ago. Composed for the wedding of a Spanish princess to the French Dauphin, its theme is a surprisingly contemporary comic-tragedy of love mixed with divided loyalties and obscured identities. The hero Achilles is hiding from the Trojan War. His mother has disguised him as a woman and put him safely out of harm’s way on an island where he/she falls in love with a princess and receives unwanted romantic attention from a prince.
“What is the tragedy in the story? I ask, “I don’t mind if you spoil it for me.” She answers that “the tragedy is, as in all mythologies that the men have to choose between love and war and he cannot have both. He has to go with the other men to the war, and we know because of the story, the public knows he will never come back because he will die in the war.” We consider together for a moment why the men always have to choose between love and war, why the women have to stay home and just have love, and why this opera about miserable life and love would have been commissioned for a marriage.
I can hear in the intensity of her explanation how much she cares about this production. So I ask: “When you’ve worked on an Opera for two years do you find it hard to let go when it’s finished? How do you say goodbye to a piece?” She seems to genuinely appreciate this question and describes how everything starts from an intimate relationship with the director and making a model and how this is given to the theatre and they say “ok, we do it.” I can hear the excitement building in her voice as she says: “…and then you discover it grow and it grows, and then you come on stage and rehearse with the singers and you see it as the baby grows. Its growing and growing and suddenly it’s out of your hands because the orchestra comes, the singers come, the prop people, technicians and the last week for example, you sit in the audience and you have just some corrections, some light changes and you see its growing and it’s gone. It’s an adult. You can let it go. Two days before the opening it’s a bit sad because it’s done and that’s what you could do, no more. After the opening its out, and I don’t think about it anymore, it’s gone. And its ok.”
From here there is nowhere to go in the conversation that can avoid the emptiness of theatres unoccupied, costumes unworn, voices no longer reverberating. To compensate for this lack all I can offer is my heartfelt commiseration one creative person to another: “…let’s hope so. Let’s hope you can see it finished.”
“It was so nice talking to you.” She says. I sense the end of our conversation and quickly jump in to say: “Actually, I’m having a problem because people are forwarding me to the piece of music but I never hear anything.’
“Oh do you want to try again. What would you like to hear? Let me see if I can do it.”
“Third time lucky…” I say.
[Beep beep… beep beep… beep beep… beep]
Suddenly music breaks through: a male soprano’s fluttering vocals jumping octaves with a staccato underlying instrumental. A high trill ends with a rolling rrrrrrrrrr but the words are not discernible. It is a tempestuous moment, and exhausting like being jabbed all over the body with small pins. A brief pause, but just when I’m thinking it’s all over it starts up again for a final brief gallop as though the horse has bolted the stable with the still-singing soprano saddled on its back.
Then silence.
I hang up the receiver and look up out of the window to see grey clouds hanging listlessly in the sky. The rustle and murmur of the auditorium waking up, busying itself gathering jackets and pouring out of aisles is a distant memory quickly displaced by the sharp solitude of my sparsely furnished room. I have been sitting phone-to-ear for nearly two hours. Only now I discover my body has limbs. Unfolding myself, I get up to put the kettle on.
THIS EVENING’S PERFORMANCE
RACHEL BOYD
Music is transportive: it takes the individual on a journey which is mutually inclusive of both performers and their audience alike; disseminated within the forum of the theatre. In This Evening’s Performance Will Not Be Cancelled, this creative agency is rendered literal by virtue of the call-handling software used to facilitate direct channels of communication – by which the caller was able dial up and key in their chosen destination through a speed-dial service, connecting them with theatre professionals in real time (e.g, press 1 for Bergen National Opera). The performance of the project’s title is a live work performed through the conduit of telephone wires, linking international callers with ushers from across nine European theatre companies – Bergen National Opera, Norway; Garsington Opera, London; The Airport Society, Belgium; Teatro Real Madrid, Spain; Dutch National Opera, Netherlands; Grand Théâtre de Genève, Switzerland; Wuppertaler Bühnen, Germany and Staatsoper Hannover, Germany – whose productions were brought to an abrupt halt by the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic.
Furthermore, callers had the option to choose from a variety of pre-recorded excerpts related to the performance. These recordings signal the termination of the call. It is this transfer from live conversation to these disembodied recordings, estranged from view, that I find perhaps the most intriguing element of This Evening’s Performance Will Not Be Cancelled. The recourse to dialogue as a bridge between disparate, trans-continental callers and respondents here signals a commonality between the ‘sounding’ of our most intimate thoughts and experiences – a practice grounded in counselling – and the abstraction of what we experience as music, in all its tonal density, from over telephone lines. To my own mind, conversation constitutes a means of co-production which resembles opera in that – unlike the recordings that follow – dialogue between both caller and respondent operates on a horizontal axis. Conversation is borne out of a process of listening to each other in tandem; levelling gaps in our language, age and experience. These conversations might function as an induction into these respective European productions, hinging on an introduction to the genre of opera itself. For others, the project is a directive for company, for companionship of strangers. Opera, here, is presented as a discursive medium that facilitates personal reflection; where one might concede to hearing and find solace in being heard; the audience, privy to the cavernous echo-chamber that constitutes the theatre, also great and wondrous carriers of sound. One gentleman mused that the project provided a much-needed outlet to talk about opera after the death of his wife, his theatre-going companion.
As the ushers hang up the receiver and the recordings emerge into earshot, there is a benign attempt to fold conversation neatly back into the remit of the exchange; to relate the dialogue the premise of a performance which was never quite realised. Perhaps they do not realise that the conversation that has passed between them constitutes the event. Perhaps those participants do know this – but prefer to think on it quietly. To acknowledge it is to rupture the delicacy of the space they have consecrated together – to pierce that enclosed, dark space of conversation which, like an igloo built in winter, is eventually holed up again, left to silently dissipate.
Opera trades upon the creation of this negative space: isolating the audience from their surroundings by veiling all bar the stage in complete darkness; even as the pit remains hidden from view. The chorus of an orchestra reverberates throughout the theatre in a kind of sudden shock; imploring the audience to acclimatise to the dense acoustics of the space by way of redirecting our attention to the sublime, all-encompassing qualities of sound: that which fills your eyes, as well as your eyes.
Our senses are similarly disabled when entering into telephonic discourse. By dialing up and keying in, participants were invited to engage intimately with sound, recalling a quasi-religious dedication to the Opera that necessitated the invention of the 1881 Theatrophone. Telephone transmitters were once set up across the stage of the Paris Opera and broadcast of a specially-designed booth installed in bars and cafes or accessed from within the home by way of a paid-for subscription, which could accommodate listening at close range.
That dialogue is ameliorative in a time of social distancing and isolation, offering up a shelter in which we might briefly press us up against each other. The implicit awkwardness in these initial, shy encounters is tentatively stage-managed in conversation: often, giving way to laughter.
The telephone renders our breath, our exclamations, our pauses tangible. Like warm breath rushing against cold air, telephony renders us vulnerable to “the very being of our sentences, and the climate that fostered them”. Several of the productions featured – such as The Murder of Halit Yozgat, Symphony of Expectation, Voyage vers L’Espoir – dissect contemporary socio-political events, pushing the boundaries of what might be heard in a kind of sonic activism. The traffic generated by opera proper lends itself to polyphony; an imagined symposium in which the shifting floor of discourse is continually unpicked in an act of resistance. Opera accords the temper of the moment with something other than white noise. The plot-line of any given opera treads a contradictory and fluctuating soundscape, oscillating between deep crescendos, harmonies and splinters of creeping disquiet. Making sense of these recorded excerpts after the event reinstates the poignancy of these conversations, bound up in the unprecedented circumstances in which they have occurred. The project renders presence in that which there might otherwise have been an absence; tracing footprints in the snow.
As the poet John Ashbery also wrote, “We are all talkers, it is true… but underneath the talk lies the moving and not wanting to be moved”. Sound Artist Zoe Irvine, the artist responsible for This Evening’s Performance Will Not Be Cancelled, had to resource ways in which to implore ushers from across the nine European theatres to embrace and encourage open dialogue.
The spontaneity of this conversation engendered a tangible sense of unease between both parties; retracting the typical hierarchy between caller and respondent in the giving and receiving of information. Rather, it was the callers who direct conversation and who, in turn, prompt the ushers – the composers, conductors, dramaturges, stage-directors and musicians – who, wrenched from the instruments and apparatus which demonstrate their role, are now tasked with verbally describing their relationship to opera. Many callers had never attended the theatre before. This Evening’s Performance Will Not Be Cancelled destabilises opera from the traditional forum of the classical theatre; from the conventions that appropriate the space as ‘exclusive’, ‘expensive’ and ‘high-brow’. Through the prosthesis of the modern telephone, the audience are also being received.
Who’s Zoomin’ Who?
IRENE REVELL
1-
It is one of those close, grey-scale summer evenings in London and suddenly I feel nervous. In advance, and in the abstract, this project has all the tenets of something I will love: the collapse of ‘normal’ distinctions between composer, artist, performer, audience; a dance between precise structure and improvisation. Now I ask myself more pressingly: am I interested in Opera, or just people, and is that enough? I feel the kind of nerves before the kind of party where one won’t know anyone. Should I use some of the same questions in all my encounters, a methodology, or should these be organic exchanges, am I overthinking this? Most urgently: who is even performing for whom here? A conversation is necessarily an exchange; as the caller here, a total immersion (in at the deep end). I can’t help feeling I would be less nervous if I were on the other end of the calls, in my element talking about my own work. We are informed at the menu stage that these conversation may be recorded, not for the usual “training and monitoring purposes” but for documentation. This knowledge only heightens this sense of performance, a frisson of excitement biting into the nerves.
I choose Puccini’s Le Bohème to begin, with which I have some childhood familiarity, yet the least proximity now. I am reminded in this first conversation of a school language exchange, earnestness on both sides, the possibility of common ground driving the dialogue, sometimes faltering. As it progresses I experience the best kind of mingling small talk, no assumptions, no goals. I wonder though, what am I learning?
About two new cats, Merlin and Mimi, eight weeks old and spending only the second day in their new home to which I am calling. The Wuppertaler Bühnen have some form of co-operative structure, ninety percent publicly funded, ninety orchestra members and two-hundred of everything else. M, a member of the chorus, does not ask me anything about myself: I read this as non-intrusive politeness, or a generosity in his own sharing. I think I feel his voice warming over our conversation, perhaps even some camp flourishes, though it is hard to read such a thing in less familiar accents; everyone I speak to tonight is not speaking to me in their first language.
After we hang up I feel a rush of excitement, I can do this all over again. For my part, I have received a partial slither of a stranger’s life, to which I have attempted to listen, bear witness, affective labour in both directions. This is the welcome re-dress for all the recent Zoom times where we have suddenly become almost always passive consumers in an array of not-before-possible contexts, an artist’s talk in ‘New York’, a weekend-long opening at ZKM, ‘Karlsruhe’, a discussion between Harney & Moten in ‘California’ etc etc. I also clock that I have been pre-occupied by words: what about the textures of other audio, the qualities of the recording itself over the phone line, I didn’t really listen out for these?
2-
The infrastructure of the work itself becomes more apparent this second time round. The jolly female voice that guides you through the menu, more like the Tannoy in an actual theatre than the uncanny AI speech of contemporary call centres, “[w]elcome to this evening’s performance!” Underscoring again that we are now already in this very performance, all of us, not only talking about ones that might have been. Alluded to in its contrary title, the project has emerged out of these moments of turbulence early on in the global pandemic, the vacuum of cancellations as much as the new possibilities. Much of the cultural production in this new era is inevitably a refraction of existing work via these new platforms, Zoom, Facebook Live, etc, less an interrogation of form than a migration of content. Yet this is no refraction, rather this ‘found’ format – call centre technology – brings into question the limits of this new proliferation. The result, a kaleidoscopic diffraction pattern opening outwards to the possibilities of multiple autonomous encounters, where the operatic recordings serve more as ‘props’ in this inherently indeterminate live exchange.
Now I feel the need to choose something that might share some references with my current world. F, an assistant stage director for The Airport Society’s production Symphony of Expectation answers. She describes Schönberg’s Erwartung, based on the poem of Marie Pappenheim and here re-worked through the prism of the latter’s writing. She says their interpretation is “feministic”, a word that should surely enter more common usage. They were at the point of their final dress rehearsal when the Lockdown fell in Belgium. We speak for a while about our respective contexts, government support for the pandemic, before F says, “oh, but you must want to hear the recordings?” Though offering the recording is one of the few scripted or given elements, still I fear she has grown bored and wants to move the conversation on; of course our pre-existing social anxieties, ticks seep into the work as its social material. She has three recordings and I chose her favourite. The poor quality of the line is distracting and I hit ‘speaker phone’ to experience this in the same way as so much trebly hold music is experienced; imagining joyfully if call centres were to use ‘feministic’ interpretations of Schönberg.
3-
K is a costume designer in the Staatsoper in Hannover where they have just suffered a local outbreak, one hundred and fifty cases. She tells of their recent rehearsals preparing for a second go at a premiere which has now been cancelled again. For four weeks they rehearsed in PPE; the leads wearing special thin masks with mics underneath; the strangeness of their familiar amplified voices emerging in such abnormal conditions; costume-fittings whilst wearing gloves herself nearly not possible. She says they lost all energy when the local government shut them down for the second time, so difficult to keep on working. I was drawn to this option by the fact of a new commission, The Murder of Halit Yozgat, by a young composer Ben Frost whose name I didn’t know. She describes the story: the NSU, German far-right, have committed a string of murders, this one, of a young Turkish man in his parents’ internet café in nearby Kassel. I realise I know this story already: the opera is based on the work of Research Architecture, the London research group that investigated this case in forensic detail, resulting in the only prosecution amongst the ten murders. Which in turn produced the artwork that I had seen at Documenta 14, the contemporary art festival that occurs every five years in Kassel itself. K emphasises that this has been an exceptional experience, as it is “not only art”, the trial is ongoing. They were concerned that NSU supporters may attend and disrupt the thwarted premiere(s). We talk about her work with the costumes, her original ideas abandoned on hearing sketches of the score, frightening sounds.
Now I am listening to the recording, I clutch this one close to my ear. A nervy string undercurrent, the interference in the line is most pronounced, or maybe this is the music the least suited to the telephonic medium. A pitch shift and English suddenly creeps in, “I’m not wasting a shot on that”. And it feels aptly sombre to end with this piece: this project happens not only in the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic but just days after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Floyd’s murder directly at the hands of US Police; Halit Yozgat’s, the one murder of ten to be prosecuted by German Police though only after external investigation; different but not so dissimilar contexts for institutional racism, the harboring of white supremacy.
Later on I come to remember the experience of encountering the Research Architecture installation in Kassel, the overwhelm of the art biennial that so often leaves one without the concentration a topic such as this deserves; my very recent conversation conducted in such contrasting conditions, from a restful spot at home. Finally I think more about the conventions of conversation itself – how much these three were plays between script and improvisation – how much they share in this sense with any other form of conversation. I feel quite exhausted by these two hours on the phone but not at all lonely.
My title warmly cites Aretha Franklin whose song (and album) title seems to be a prescient anticipation of the now ubiquitous brand of video conferencing software, though originally about the ‘encounter’ and desire, topics as much at stake in any remote exchange.
A loose genealogy springs to mind, works that also employ mass communication formats to explore the possibilities of performance, composition: Mieko Shiomi’s Spatial Poem (1965-75) that sought to achieve simultaneous remote performances through the postal medium with written exchange; Robert Ashley’s Music With Roots in the Aether, literally subtitled “opera for television” that used this medium for a different kind of spoken exchanges, and portraiture.