A guest blog by Ger Leppers
originally posted by Basia con fuoco

In the spring of 1987 I bought my first subscription to the opera performances at the Brussels Muntschouwburg. Since then I have seen quite a few world premieres there, because they are lavish in the Belgian capital. New operas by Boesmans, Hans Werner Henze, Jan van Vlijmen, Pierre Bartholomée, John Casken and many others passed by, and they always pulled out all the stops in Brussels to make such a first performance a success.

This is perhaps even more true than most other premieres for ‘Fanny and Alexander’, the new opera by Swedish composer Mikael Karlsson.

The work is based on the last film of the same name by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007). It is a work of Wagnerian length: more than three hours. In the later television version, “Fanny and Alexander” is even longer: Wikipedia clocks in at 312 minutes. And a second cinema version, from 2019, even at 317 minutes.

Condensed and edited into an opera, it yields a performance of just over three hours, including the interval. The story takes place in three different spaces, each characterized by music with its own character.

The first scene takes place during the Christmas celebration in the artistic Ekdahl family, sometime in the twenties or thirties of the last century. Jokes are made, presents are unwrapped, the boy Alexander sees how his father drinks one glass too many and delivers an impassioned speech. In a next scene we witness the death of that father, a few days later, during a rehearsal of ‘Hamlet’.

A good year later, Alexander and Fanny’s mother remarries the sinister bishop Edvard Vergerus. The music, which in the first scene was warm and often tonal, and sometimes not even free of bonhomie, is much harder and sharper in these scenes, because the bishop is a hard-hearted, egocentric man who wants mother and children to give up their previous life completely and submit to his whims. This servant of God’s word does not shrink from mistreatment of the unruly Alexander.

Thanks to the merchant Isak Jacobi, the children manage to escape the bishop’s clutches. Fantasy and cheerfulness reign in the Jacobi’s house. Ismael – a small but very strikingly sung and played role by the wonderful countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen – even has spiritual gifts, as Alexander discovers: Ismael can read his thoughts.

The bishop dies when, drugged by a sleeping pill, he sets fire to his house with an unfortunate movement. Some time later, the Ekdahl family celebrates Christmas again, and welcomes a new baby.

Mikael Karlsson wrote an often driving, easy-to-listen, transparently orchestrated music, which often reminded me of early John Adams – that of ‘Nixon in China’ – with grateful parts for the percussion and for the winds. The orchestra was accompanied by another 47 loudspeakers spread throughout the hall, which were supposed to provide a ‘surround effect’. Towards the end of the opera this did provide a few special sound moments, but most of the time I would not have been less happy without this effect. The vocal lines follow the text closely, and are therefore easy to understand, but are generally rather recitative-like in character.

Two absolute world stars lent their support to the opera – proof that La Monnaie tackles things thoroughly. One was the baritone Thomas Hampson, who played a magnificent, sinister, egocentric, sadistic bishop who virtuously uses all sorts of religious precepts to get his way. The other was Anne Sofie von Otter, who played and sang the – small – role of the bishop’s servile, intimidated housekeeper to perfection.

But the star of the evening, vocally no less than as an actor, was 15-year-old Jay Weiner, in the rather large role of Alexander. He has been singing in the Children’s and Youth Choirs of La Monnaie since he was eight, and hopefully we will hear a lot more from him.

The fact that this opera was received with a long standing ovation after the performance is also due to the direction of Ivo Van Hove – as far as I am concerned it was the most successful opera direction I have ever seen from his hand.

The various scenes of ‘Fanny and Alexander’ are, as you have probably gathered from the plot summary, rather loosely connected. The opera starts off relatively slowly, and in the part before the interval the dramatic development of the story was not really inevitable.

But the extremely precise acting and the very clever video projections had the audience on the edge of their seats from the very first bars. The death scene of Alexander’s father in particular, in which video projections provided a close-up of his facial expression, thus merging cinema with the stage, was a highlight of the performance. The scene in which the bishop perishes in the flames was also breathtakingly staged. My father said it before: in opera, there is nothing better than a good death scene. In that respect, ‘Fanny and Alexander’ ties in worthy with the age-old traditions of the genre.

Music: Mikael Karlsson
Libretto: Royce Vavrek

Musical direction: Ariane Matiak
Director: Ivo Van Hove
Set and lighting: Jan Versweyveld
Costumes: An D’Huys
Video: Cristopher Ash
Dramaturgical preparation: Peter Van Kraaij

Helena Ekdahl: Susan Bullock
Oscar Ekdahl: Peter Tantsis
Emilie Ekdahl: Sasha Cooke
Fanny: Lucy Penninck
Alexander: Jay Weiner
Bisschop Edvard Vergerus: Thomas Hampson
Justina: Anne Sofie von Otter
Isak Jacobi: Loa Falkan
Ismaël: Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen
Aron: Alexander Sprague
Carl Ekdahl: Justin Hopkins
Lydia Ekdahl: Polly Leech
Gustav Adolf Ekdahl : Gavan Ring
Alma Ekdahl: Margaux de Valensart
Paulina : Marion Bauwens
Esmeralda : Blandine Coulon

Symphony Orchestra of the Mint

Performance seen on December 8, 2024

Production photos : © Matthias Baus.