No Dying Diva in Paris – but Glitter, Dog Life and Office Humor

Opera is about transformation. Either the performers transform on stage, or the audience does – suddenly we find ourselves in a duel between friends on a plain outside St. Petersburg, or in a Parisian attic room where a young woman is dying of tuberculosis.

This year’s opera festival in Copenhagen also had transformation as its focal point, though often in more indirect forms. Here, opera was understood as music drama in intimate formats, with small one-hour performances in modest venues carrying the program.

A queen ant is born on stage

In a basement venue in Nørrebro (H20), Shlomi Moto Wagner invited the audience into his performance Salvation. Blue glitter against hopelessness and homesickness, red glitter against depression and melancholy – with a gesture almost ritual, he distributed the colors to those who wished. Like a priest at the altar, he marked our foreheads, but infused with the joyful energy and sensual delight of drag art. The transformation was both concrete and symbolic: a modern communion, where glitter carried the promise of change.

Techno rhythms supported his singing and spoken words, where he proclaimed that glitter can change and transform – »Then we’ll keep on becoming« was the phrase, looping in minor medieval intervals and modal harmony from his powerful voice. This was another kind of salvation.

Glitter can transform, identification can shift

Moto Wagner had for many years been a soloist at the Israeli Opera but broke away from the conformist universe, transformed into a drag queen, and created this performance, which became a powerful opening to the week of music drama in Copenhagen. »You’ll learn more from three minutes in a dress than an entire life in a suit,« he exclaimed with energy from the stage. Glitter can transform, identification can shift. At one point he sang about the functions of ants, and when a queen dies, a simple worker ant transforms into a new queen. Slowly he changed appearance, and with his arms above his head and tulle skirts swirling, he actually became a queen ant on stage. That was the climax, though the performance dragged on too long and ended up circling itself. Music, performance, and message were otherwise strong.

The transformation occurred in Nørrebro – I received red glitter on my forehead, which followed me for the rest of the day, even into Schubert’s Winterreise in Tivoli that evening, where I sat slightly transformed.

When good ideas fall short

Hundeliv (Dog Life) failed in an apartment in central Copenhagen, despite its seemingly good ideas and intentions. It was nearly impossible to understand or follow the story of domestic violence and a girl’s special bond with a dog without having thoroughly read the program notes. Sophia Heide Hertzum and accordionist Andreas Borregaard – never afraid to put himself on stage – were the only performers.

Hundeliv (Dog Life) failed in an apartment in central Copenhagen, despite its seemingly good ideas and intentions

Borregaard played the dog, the violence, the father, and abstract concepts like fear or security, while singing, barking, pulling the accordion, or lying on the floor making incomprehensible gestures with the girl. Abstraction is fine, but the line to insularity is short.

Kirstine Fogh Vindelev was the composer behind the soundscape, which consisted less of music than of atmospheres and accordion effects. A pity that Borregaard’s otherwise superb skills on the instrument weren’t used more – when he was the only musician, and they had a whole hour.

There were, however, moving moments – like when Borregaard sang from a table in the middle of the room, while the girl set off mechanical toy dogs that scampered around yapping on the floor: »In your eyes, everything lights up. In your ears, everything I say turns to pop. / Every single thought, every single memory – saturated with you, saturated with you,« sang the character to the dog, while the otherwise simple chords grew darker and more violent, eventually shifting into direct abuse: »I hate that dog!« and »There’s nothing more real than me!« Successful music drama – for about twelve minutes.

Good ideas and intentions filled the grand apartment, but one missed actual skill or competent performance – not to mention singing. There wasn’t much of that.

»Everyone likes me, because I’m a horse«

Office humor and absurdities

The same can be said of James Black’s Songs of Old and New at Aveny T. Even if one often leaves a Black work transformed into a giant question mark, there is usually the sense that it is created by a twisted yet original mind. It provokes and often hits something. You are rarely guided by the hand, but half of Songs of Old and New was this time fairly accessible.

Video sequences on a big screen showed a typical office environment, with small talk at the coffee machine about mountain bike tires or the weekend’s football match. Five to seven office workers in a meeting room sang a morning song ending: »Everyone likes me, because I’m a horse,« and all agreed that the secretary – always late – is annoying and stupid. Between video clips, the five performed live on stage at Aveny T. While the office humor was easy to grasp, things grew more surreal and grotesque on stage.

Flute, saxophone, and guitar accompanied James Black’s poetry reading: »In the beginning was the word, how absurd. Was it word? Was it dirt? Fuck that word.« The melody resembled the bridal waltz, and the program stated that »we throw ourselves into the power of friendship, the flames of anger, the freedom of song, the rush of running, the depths of love, and the grace of forgiveness.« I did not see all of those concepts, but rather a humorous (perhaps also condescending) display of the emptiness of office life.

A small highlight came when the five voices wove together in cutting dissonances about the nature of love: care and freedom, but also murder – and in the absurd register, doctor, radiologist, cardiologist, gynecologist, dermatologist. The manic repetition of »love« and the disharmonies sent vibrations through the body. At the end, they all wore strange hats with yellow confetti strips hanging over face and eyes – as if carrying a piece of pastry art on their heads.

Does James Black mock office life, opera, music drama – yes, the audience itself? Probably all of it. I wasn’t transformed into a fan of Black’s surrealist universe but felt for much of the time teased, provoked, or struck by the lack of effort to refine what happens on stage. Perhaps that was the point.

At Takkelloftet, the audience in BLÅ (BLUE) (music by Hugi Gudmundsson, text by Jesper B. Karlsen) were taken far too much by the hand. In a climate catastrophe setting, we weren’t guided but steered through a story so banal and predictable that it ended up with all the nuance of a toothpaste commercial. It felt less like art and more like a political statement.

It is not easy to turn something as personal as the relationship to a mentally ill sister into general opera art

Vulnerability as strength

It is not easy to turn something as personal as the relationship to a mentally ill sister into general opera art. The risk of it becoming too private looms large – but that did not happen in Dronning Annabell (Queen Annabell), created by Faun Vium. She had recorded conversations with her sister at a psychiatric ward and unfolded them into a deeply empathetic performance, carried by three performers who managed to act, sing, and play instruments simultaneously. Cellist, alto, and performer Amanda Drew was even the composer of the beautiful and well-written music.

They created a delicate and caring universe around the sister’s conversations, where she believes she is Queen Annabell, who has a language for love »that cannot be described in the language we have today.« Coronation gestures in the form of animal antlers changed hands throughout – also with the audience – and a homemade string instrument of antlers was among the few stage props, along with simple camp mattresses. Their softness underlined the universe – either a mental image of the sister or a space where well-meaning people try to save her.

Blue tape was laid on the floor, forming a square – a safe space for the sister, or perhaps her diagnosis? Faun Vium also put herself at stake: »What if it was just me, being selfish? You asked to let go – I actually came to save you, but you didn’t want my help.« This dilemma was reflected in vocal lines in a strong, well-written terzet: »Never can you be alone, I am no Annabell, I can save you« – but also with nuance: »Now everything is about you again.«

I left with deeper insight into new music

Of the three performers, Freja Højland Høj stood out with an inviting voice and a strong acting performance that lifted the empathetic layers of the piece. One was perhaps not transported or placed elsewhere that afternoon at Aveny T, but another kind of journey opened: a realization of how much sibling bonds, the urge to help, and human understanding can mean.

This very form of understanding marked the small, experimental operas at Copenhagen Opera Festival. Salvation gave a glimpse into queer culture, shifting identifications, and the transformative power of glitter. Hundeliv  circled around domestic violence and a young girl’s search for security in her bond with a dog. BLÅ tried to convey the urgency of the climate crisis, but with overly tight control. And in Songs of Old and New, it was perhaps unclear what the understanding should be – but I left with deeper insight into new music and into the genre, where anything seems possible. Not transported to dueling plains in Russia or attic rooms in Paris – but drawn into other people’s consciousness. And that is a journey worth taking.

Copenhagen Opera Festival, August 15 – 24

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek