Photo: Laura Ratschau
Do you go with the howling chorus on the Titanic, or do you ask for a whiskey?
Don't read my review because I don't know nothing about opera. Can barely understand the words in an English pop song (the opera is in English). But on the other hand, I have seen John Wayne on German TV in the 5th grade, 2 years before we got a German teacher, so I understand everything without being able to understand the language. Thank you, ZDF.
The story - starring the soprano Peyee Chen, and I don't understand the words she sings - is about pain, fear, anxiety in the last 1 hour and 20 minutes of our voyage on the Titanic. Okay, I recognize "climate", "horse", and "changes". But it's not much out of a libretto of 34 pages.
Peyee Chen is in the role of the little girl who personally feels the iceberg approaching. She is unhappy. She howls and torments her parents. They don't understand her. Do their work. Grinds coffee from morning to night. And the kid howls and cries and shouts.
I feel for those parents - Ted Schmitz and Jessica Aszodi. If I stood on the deck of the Titanic in freezing weather, I didn't go into the howling choir either. As we crash into the side of the iceberg, I'd rather sit at the bar. Asks for a whiskey and smiles charmingly at the nearest woman.
This is how we are different. The end of the world cannot be stopped. The Incas went down. The Egyptians. The Greeks. The Indians. The Romans. Yes, even the Vikings had to give up.
All highly developed cultures end in collapse!
Is our culture highly developed? Yes, I think so. Our fate is sealed. Doom awaits!
Can we stop our imminent death and send him back by parcel post?
The wise can predict the future. On stage, Joseph Bolger is smart. He looks at the patterns, he sees the development. He lets the girl know how bad it looks.
So the girl tries to convince the parents to stop their coffee grinder and do something! Just something! Stop death! Stop climate change! Stop grinding coffee! Don't buy more electric cars. Buy no more at Temu! Just stop!
But she has a hard time convincing the parents. 20% of us buy cheap junk on Temu.com - manufactured with devastating consequences for the environment. We get it shipped home on container ships from Maersk, with devastating consequences for the environment. We play with it and throw it out. Such is our life. Who wants to turn off the internet 9 months out of the year? Who will stop consuming, just to save our common Titanic?
And, it is not actually ordinary people who steer the ship. It's something... It's culture. All cultures bloom, bear fruit, and perish when winter comes.
Or what?
A symphony orchestra and more for you!
You can look forward to the costumes in 'The Girl With the Hurricane Brain'. The clothes are sewn from parchment - skin skinned from an animal approximately one meter long. Probably pigskin. The clothes are sewn nicely. That's what we're all about. Fashionable clothes on the Titanic.
Those who understand opera say the singers sing skillfully.
There is a 9-person symphony orchestra in the performance. 3 strings, 3 wind instruments, percussion, guitar and grand piano. The music is abstract - not melodic - symbolic.
We must die, says this opera - but not when, or by what.
Many young people go out of balance in this time. Like the girl in the play, they listen to the prophets who preach doomsday. There is much to be afraid of. Personally, it doesn't matter to me. We have to die of something. There is no telling which will come first.
Line 2A in a pedestrian crossing. New corona. Plague. Putin in Ecco shoes drops an atomic bomb in Aarhus Harbour. The Gulf Stream shifts and the climate in Denmark becomes cold like northern Finland, and I hate cross-country skiing. Someone continues to use 4 times our resources and our world is slowly and surely burning down.
It ends with us dying. That's what this opera says, and it's true. But until that happens, I'm happy to meet the little grandmother in Rema on the way home from the theater.
- There are 5 kroner missing, says the man behind the till in a sad voice.
The woman speaks Greenlandic, I can see that in her. Her eyes are strong and alive, her skin has had a lot of sun, on the edge of the inland ice.
- You can get a fiver from me, here!
The woman smiles wholehearted. - Thank you, that was a good deed, she tells me.
- You are welcome, I reply.
We smile at each other, late at night in Rema. Just like that, heart to heart. That's how I want to go down with my ship.
Thank you for the experience. It was good.
'The Girl With the Hurricane Brain'
Featured Soloists Peyee Chen, Jessica Aszodi, Joseph Bolger, Ted Schmitz
Ensemble Lydenskab Karolina Leedo, Henriette Jensen, Fátima Trives-Escolano, Louise Gorm, Sofia Lind pedersen, Mads Stevns Uldall, Maria Eshpai, Thea Vesti Pedersen, Ying-Hsueh Chen
Direction Jude Christian
Composition Laura Bowler
Text Sam Redway
Choreography Marie Brolin-Tani
Playwright Zoë Palmer
Scenography Laura Rathschau
Costumes Laura Rathschau, Sofie Piil Grau
Conductor Lin Liao
Sound design and live electronics Morten Elkjær
Text Consultant Katie Mitchell, Steven Plaice
Produced by Lydenskab in collaboration with Sort/Hvid and Copenhagen Opera Festival.
Ambiorn Happy, Kulturnyt.net
★★★★★★
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