‘The opera world should take more risks’

Why do you love opera so much?

Visual art is always struggle and pain, and creating an opera is hard work, but it is also such an incredible gift. I love the difficulties and limitations that are inherent to the genre. Unlike in theatre, you can’t touch the libretto and the music, and that gives me something to hold on to, boundaries that I can fill in with colour. I also love the intense and short rehearsal period. It suits the way I work and think.

Before I started directing opera, I did lots of different things, but opera is ultimately the only place where everything comes together, where everything falls into place. I enjoy every moment of the process and I like the fact that you create something together with others. It also makes sense that I’m making opera at this stage of my life, at age 55. I don’t think I would have been able to do this twenty years ago. It’s as if all roads led to opera.

How did you approach your work as a director?

When I created Norma, I had a specific process. It always starts with listening to lots of CDs and watching DVDs, but not too many. I prefer to watch vintage productions. I sketch and make drawings at an early stage, because my work method is very visual. I believe in intuition and free association. That’s why I try to let my imagination run as free as possible. I can shorten, delete and edit later, while listening to the music.

Then I continue with the libretto. One of the steps I love most are the long, intense conversations with the dramaturge. They produce an idea and I begin to see the line I want to pursue. Having a good dramaturge at your side is crucial. At La Monnaie, I get to work with the very best, Reinder Pols!

Then I prepare a first draft for a presentation. I start designing the costumes and the set, and work with i.s.m.architecten on the plans and models. Throughout, I continue to work on the libretto and the music, building up the performance. Next, I make a storyboard. For Norma, I made more than two hundred drawings. This allowed everyone to catch a glimpse of what was in my head, as it were, before we began rehearsals.

When the design was finished and I entered the rehearsal space, it felt as if someone else had created the set and costumes, as if I were an outsider. This allowed me to immediately discard what was superfluous and keep only the designs that were relevant. It’s about the performance, the story, the music and the voices – opera is not a painting or a design.

What did you start from concretely for this Norma?

The original story of Norma is set around the beginning of our era among the Druids and Romans in Gaul. However, I found that historical context to be of little relevance to the essence of the story. In my search, I first came across sects, religious and otherwise, but even then the interpretation is often too literal and of little interest to the dramatic course of events. In their time, the Druids were mediators who radiated a strong sense of authority and awareness of values; they were healers and advisers who were close to nature, but who also lived in closed groups in remote spots, isolated from the real world.

This quickly brought to mind those isolated communities that cultivate their own values in seclusion, that resist outside influences. You find this, for example, in neo-Nazi groups that buy up abandoned villages in Spain or Italy and create communities where only their values apply so that they can raise their children in complete isolation. But even that was too concrete for me. I held on to their anger and fear of everything that is foreign, their resistance to the Enlightenment, but I wanted to keep it rather vague so that everyone could interpret the story in their own way. I’d like everyone to recognize their own environment in it, where ideas are all too often expressed today that lock people in a world of self-righteousness and that exclude others.

Who is Norma to you?

She’s a woman who’s chosen to take up a position of power in a man’s world. The men wait for her approval to go to war, they listen to her and respect her decisions. That is precisely why I think this is a timeless story, the story of a woman who is trapped in a structure, an environment – a woman who, in order to be herself, has to live a second life. I think she’s highly recognizable: there are many layers to her, she’s confident, uses all her qualities, is fully committed to her environment. But because of this, she has to suppress a part of her personality in the service of a ‘higher purpose’, of the society in which she lives, of the people she associates with … Her family and her love clash with her official position. The pressure of this life – a life in which she can only be herself to a certain extent, a life we see on stage but that she actually lives in secret – ultimately destroys her. Norma is a ‘strong ‘woman – I always hesitate to use that term – but ultimately that ‘strength’ is also her weakness. Because it is precisely that position of power that makes her so vulnerable.

What is the most important thing you’ve learned about directing opera?

I’ve always learned from all the singers and colleagues I’ve worked with. I don’t believe in the myth that the director is always right. I love to engage in dialogue and to hear from people who know better than I do. So much expertise comes together in a rehearsal space, especially at La Monnaie, where everyone is so skilled and smart.

Besides directing, you also design the costumes and set. What are the advantages to doing that?

It’s not that I don’t trust anyone else or don’t want to work with other people. It’s just that I see the process as a whole. I can see what’s needed and I can easily change things: for example, how Norma moves, what she wears, how the door opens when she enters, the speed of the lift. It’s all part of the image I have in mind. What’s more, I’ve worked with artisans and artists all my life, all over the world. So I know how to deal with them and how to get things done. We’re on the same wavelength and I enjoy their company.

There’ll be no oak trees or mistletoe on stage in our production, where nature has been suppressed and is therefore absent. This allows us to focus more on the essence of the protagonists’ love triangle and the context of the oppressive society in which they live. And yet I think that nature is still very present precisely because it is missing. At the same time, nature is also stronger than humankind and resurfaces in every crack in the concrete.

In this new Norma production, the absent nature has been replaced by two elements, concrete and cars. Concrete, of course, symbolizes the vanishing of nature. This is a phenomenon we are unfortunately all too familiar with in our country, which is covered in concrete, a reality that regularly leads to flooding or drinking water shortages. The second element is just as acute. I see the car in our society – which is failing in many areas – as a kind of no man’s land, a capsule, a non-space, an enlargement of the characters’ emotional world. A car is by no means a romantic place or object, but one in which many things happen, where many emotions surface. For me, it is a kind of bubble of emotions that reflects the emotional world of that character at that moment, like an ectoplasm.

What would you like to change about the world of opera?

I can only create a performance in the way that I believe is right. But modern operas often look dated. ‘Modern’ operas often seem as if they were made in the 1990s, as if the director was only focusing on the opera world and had missed the changes that have taken place since, in social, political and economic terms, but also in the visual arts and in pop culture and fashion. A new creation must be inspired, and a director must bring these elements together in a fluid, natural way.

The opera world should take more risks. A lot of productions keep the idea of re-enactment alive, which is a pity. We can always enjoy earlier, historical performances on DVD or YouTube, but for me, opera is only relevant if it addresses urgent issues. It’s a delicate exercise, that’s true. I also hate it when a contemporary idea or subject is simply imposed on an opera. Ideas must be well thought out, and everything must come from the music.

Translation: Patrick Lennon