Swedish opera interventions fix broken hearts
Igor GEDILAGHINE
Are you lonely? Do you miss a loved one? Is your marriage on the
rocks? Place a call to a Stockholm opera and a singer will make a house
visit with an aria specially chosen to fit your state of mind.
“I’ve had the experience of singing for a couple who had lost touch
with each other a bit,” said soprano Henriikka Groendahl.
When she arrived at their home, it seemed the couple had drifted so
far apart they would never find their way back to each other.
“They were arguing a lot, they were working in different parts of the
country, sometimes communicating by notes only...” Groendahl said. “Two
bars into my aria, she was crying and holding on to her husband, and he
was very moved as well.”
The piece chosen for the couple, “Donde lieta usci” from Puccini’s
“La Boheme”, is about separation. But the singer told them, “It’s not
about you saying adieu to each other, but maybe you want to leave the
past behind without regrets?” The visit was part of a novel “happening”
organised by the Stockholm Folkoperan, an avant garde opera house intent
on challenging traditional interpretations like those shown at the
city’s royal house, Kungliga Operan.
Called “Opera Aid”, the idea was devised by British artist Joshua
Sofaer, who insists it “is not music therapy.”
“We are not offering therapy of any kind. We are simply offering
opera,” he said.
But he acknowledged that he believes “passionately in the power of
art to change lives and to offer people the opportunity to see things
differently, or to be given permission to behave in a new way.” “Opera
Aid” was part of a larger Folkoperan project called Opera Showroom,
which it hopes will become an annual happening.
Run by artistic director Mellika Melouani Melani, it aims to bring
opera, widely considered elitist, out of the confines of the traditional
concert hall.
The event filled the Folkoperan with alternative and free
performances for two days in late March, though the “Opera Aid” visits
were spread over two weeks.
Given their private nature, Folkoperan refused to allow journalists
to tag along and observe any of the 30 or so half-hour performances,
which were free of charge.
Four singers, two sopranos, one mezzo and a baritone, took part,
working with Sofaer to choose the arias proposed to people in need. They
limited themselves to classic 18th and 19th century works.
“Those classics of Italian and German opera are the ones that I
suppose most people immediately have an emotional response to,” he said.
“They cut through you somehow and get straight to your emotional
core.” More than the music, the singers had to prepare for the
psychological side of the visit: how to act, listen, ask certain
questions and avoid others.
“We give them the possibility to verbalise their feelings and once
you’ve done that you open up a room to their innermost feelings,”
Groendahl said.
“I think the contrast for them is so big. First, we’re just an
ordinary person talking with an ordinary voice and then you get ... a
singer who invades your room and your heart because you’ve already
opened up,” she added.
“The sound changes the room,” according to Sofaer who insists the
effect is long-lasting.
“There is a kind of ‘haunting’... The sound somehow lingers. If you
go out of the room and return, you remember the sound of the singer in
that space. The space has changed,” he said.
Groendahl said she modulates her powerful voice during house calls to
fit the private setting and direct it exclusively at the listener.
“From my experience, the impact of the voice, the music, the story is
huge on the person who listens,” she said. “It’s a personal gift... It’s
the ultimate contact with the audience.”
While it may sound like an opera fan’s dream-come-true, loving music
is not enough to get a specially tailored aria delivered to your home.
Anyone interested must formally apply and explain the problem they
hope the music will help fix, said Folkoperan’s director Pia Kronqvist.
If you don’t have a problem, you don’t get a house call, she said.
AFP
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