The Io Passion
Encyclopedia
The Io Passion is a chamber opera
with music by Harrison Birtwistle
and a libretto
in English by Stephen Plaice
. It was commissioned jointly by the Aldeburgh Festival
, Almeida Opera
and the Bregenz Festival
in Austria
.
as part of the Aldeburgh Festival on 11 June 2004 in a production directed by Stephen Langridge. It was then performed in July 2004 at the Almeida Theatre in London and at the Bregenz Festival. The work had its German premiere in Berlin
on 7 November 2008.
, is generally seen as having produced an intensely atmospheric and psychologically insightful score.
Some critics found The Io Passion dated in its attitudes to sexuality. "The notion that a holiday fling on a Greek island - however intense the connection, however heavy with meaning, however supernatural - might be analogous to the rape of Io by Zeus is peculiar enough. That that analogy might be titillating to someone whose former lover has effectively become her stalker smacks of the era when liberal men would chomp on their cigars while discussing the female orgasm."
Others, like "Alban Nikolai Herbst", found more unsettling depths beneath apparent glibness. Discussing a scene in which ferocious argument leads to a passionate kiss, he writes, "Harrison Birtwistle's opera, then, does not merely concern itself with the truth of the mythical parable - how the ancient Cretan matriarchy was conquered by invading tribes, how the Mother Goddess was usurped by a Zeus whose barbarian horniness knew no bounds... That is a sinister and accurate picture, the picture of the powerlessness of cultures. But still, it isn't that simple. Something else is working through these characters and gods, something beyond their own will. Zeus is not merely an overpowerer. Io also wants to be overpowered, even though after the event, with the full righteousness of an emancipated woman, she denounces his raw aggression. Relations here are not merely not simple. They are complex... There is that scene with the kiss. And it rings true."
The same scene is re-enacted in variations of increasing complexity, gradually unveiling layers of stories from the past. The man and the woman met at Lerna
in Greece
, the venue of one of the Mysteries of the ancient world, and the place where Zeus seduced the priestess Io and turned her into a heifer to hide her from his jealous wife, Hera. Hera sent a gadfly to madden the heifer, and Io roamed the world trying to flee it.
The intense, compulsive passion of the lovers at Lerna awoke the ancient gods, who scented sacrifice. An outrage was committed, which has never been avenged. Back in the city, the woman refuses to see the man, clinging to her domestic routine and trying to deal with the terrible manifestation they witnessed in Greece. But neither the gods nor the man will leave the woman alone, and the civilised veneer of her existence is gradually stripped away.
Chamber opera
Chamber opera is a designation for operas written to be performed with a chamber ensemble rather than a full orchestra.The term and form were invented by Benjamin Britten in the 1940s, when the English Opera Group needed works that could easily be taken on tour and performed in a variety of small...
with music by Harrison Birtwistle
Harrison Birtwistle
Sir Harrison Paul Birtwistle CH is a British contemporary composer.-Life:Birtwistle was born in Accrington, a mill town in Lancashire some 20 miles north of Manchester. His interest in music was encouraged by his mother, who bought him a clarinet when he was seven, and arranged for him to have...
and a libretto
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
in English by Stephen Plaice
Stephen Plaice
Stephen Plaice is a UK based dramatist and scriptwriter who has written extensively for theatre, opera and television.-Early Career:...
. It was commissioned jointly by the Aldeburgh Festival
Aldeburgh Festival
The Aldeburgh Festival is an English arts festival devoted mainly to classical music. It takes place each June in the Aldeburgh area of Suffolk, centred on the main concert hall at Snape Maltings...
, Almeida Opera
Almeida Theatre
The Almeida Theatre, opened in 1980, is a 325 seat studio theatre with an international reputation which takes its name from the street in which it is located, off Upper Street, in the London Borough of Islington. The theatre produces a diverse range of drama and holds an annual summer festival of...
and the Bregenz Festival
Bregenzer Festspiele
Bregenzer Festspiele is a performing arts festival which is held every July and August in Bregenz, Austria.Founded in 1946, the festival presents a wide variety of musical and theatrical events in several venues:...
in Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
.
Performance History
The Io Passion premiered at the Snape MaltingsSnape Maltings
Snape Maltings is part of Snape, Suffolk, U.K., best known for its concert hall, which is one of the main sites of the annual Aldeburgh Festival....
as part of the Aldeburgh Festival on 11 June 2004 in a production directed by Stephen Langridge. It was then performed in July 2004 at the Almeida Theatre in London and at the Bregenz Festival. The work had its German premiere in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
on 7 November 2008.
Critical reception
Reviews have generally been favourable, particularly in respect of Birtwistle's music. The composer's virtuosic use of a chamber ensemble, rather than the huge orchestral and electronic forces deployed, for instance, in The Mask of OrpheusThe Mask of Orpheus
The Mask of Orpheus is an opera with music by Harrison Birtwistle and a libretto by Peter Zinovieff. It was premiered in London at the English National Opera on May 21, 1986 to great critical acclaim. A recorded version conducted by Andrew Davis and Martyn Brabbins has also received good reviews...
, is generally seen as having produced an intensely atmospheric and psychologically insightful score.
- "Like the man and the woman themselves... we've been somewhere strange and something troubling has happened to us. And when we come out we're not quite the people we were when we went in." 'The ObserverThe ObserverThe Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
, UK.
- "A marvellous score, one of Birtwistle's most lyrical, with episodes of piercing beauty, moving solos, expressive themes in repetition or sequence, clarinet writing, string writing, and vocal writing that stirred the heart." 'The TimesThe TimesThe Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, UK.
- "What is striking above all is the utterly tender songfulness of this music. As you depart into the night, you know that you have heard a true Passion, that is, the passion and ritual of a timeless, eternal pattern." Die Dschungel, Germany.
- "The sense of something dark being stirred to life, of violence tightly contained, was riveting. The music, fascinating in its endlessly varied monotony, was exquisitely played, and the beautifully designed production seemed the perfect revelation of the work in all its vivid strangeness." The Daily TelegraphThe Daily TelegraphThe Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
, UK
- "Birtwistle’s haunting, inventive music delves…deeply into the longings and confusion of the estranged lovers… it may be the most lyrical music the composer has written for the stage." Chicago TribuneChicago TribuneThe Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
Some critics found The Io Passion dated in its attitudes to sexuality. "The notion that a holiday fling on a Greek island - however intense the connection, however heavy with meaning, however supernatural - might be analogous to the rape of Io by Zeus is peculiar enough. That that analogy might be titillating to someone whose former lover has effectively become her stalker smacks of the era when liberal men would chomp on their cigars while discussing the female orgasm."
Others, like "Alban Nikolai Herbst", found more unsettling depths beneath apparent glibness. Discussing a scene in which ferocious argument leads to a passionate kiss, he writes, "Harrison Birtwistle's opera, then, does not merely concern itself with the truth of the mythical parable - how the ancient Cretan matriarchy was conquered by invading tribes, how the Mother Goddess was usurped by a Zeus whose barbarian horniness knew no bounds... That is a sinister and accurate picture, the picture of the powerlessness of cultures. But still, it isn't that simple. Something else is working through these characters and gods, something beyond their own will. Zeus is not merely an overpowerer. Io also wants to be overpowered, even though after the event, with the full righteousness of an emancipated woman, she denounces his raw aggression. Relations here are not merely not simple. They are complex... There is that scene with the kiss. And it rings true."
The music
The Io Passion is scored for a chamber ensemble. The "rich circadian cycle of nocturnes and aubades for string quartet and basset clarinet is punctuated by ravishing ariettas, spluttered outbursts of unresolved argument and high-arching angular recitative".Instrumentation
- basset clarinetBasset clarinetThe basset clarinet is a clarinet, similar to the usual soprano clarinet but longer and with additional keys to enable playing several additional lower notes...
(performed in the premiere by Alan Hacker) - string quartetString quartetA string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...
(performed in the premiere by Quatuor Diotima)- 2 violinViolinThe violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
s - violaViolaThe viola is a bowed string instrument. It is the middle voice of the violin family, between the violin and the cello.- Form :The viola is similar in material and construction to the violin. A full-size viola's body is between and longer than the body of a full-size violin , with an average...
- celloCelloThe cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
- 2 violin
Roles
| Role | Voice type | Premiere Cast, 11 June 2004 (Conductor: Alan Hacker ) |
|---|---|---|
| Woman 1, also Hera Hera Hera was the wife and one of three sisters of Zeus in the Olympian pantheon of Greek mythology and religion. Her chief function was as the goddess of women and marriage. Her counterpart in the religion of ancient Rome was Juno. The cow and the peacock were sacred to her... |
non-singing role | Teresa Banham Teresa Banham Teresa Banham, also known and credited as Theresa Banham is a British television and theatre actress perhaps best known for playing the role of The Governor in the first part of the Doctor Who Christmas special, The End of Time and the role of Rebecca on the television show Robin... |
| Woman 2, also Hera | soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody... |
Claire Booth |
| Woman 3, also Io Io (mythology) Io was, in Greek mythology, a priestess of Hera in Argos, a nymph who was seduced by Zeus, who changed her into a heifer to escape detection. His wife Hera set ever-watchful Argus Panoptes to guard her, but Hermes was sent to distract the guardian and slay him... |
soprano | Amy Freston |
| Man 1, also Inachus Inachus In Greek mythology, Inachus was a king of Argos after whom a river was called Inachus River, the modern Panitsa that drains the western margin of the Argive plain... and the Gadfly Gadfly (mythology) The gadfly, a type of fly plaguing cattle, typically ones belonging to either the family Tabanidae or the family Oestridae , appears in Greek mythology as a tormenter to Io, the heifer maiden. Zeus lusts after Io and eventually turns her into a white heifer to hide her from his jealous wife, Hera.... |
baritone Baritone Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or... |
Sam McElroy |
| Man 2, also Zeus Zeus In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus... |
non-singing role | Joseph Alessi |
| Man 3, also Hermes Hermes Hermes is the great messenger of the gods in Greek mythology and a guide to the Underworld. Hermes was born on Mount Kyllini in Arcadia. An Olympian god, he is also the patron of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of the cunning of thieves, of orators and... |
baritone | Richard Morris |
Synopsis
A man, outside a house, and a woman, within it, watch and wait. The man posts a letter. The woman swats away a fly which is irritating her.The same scene is re-enacted in variations of increasing complexity, gradually unveiling layers of stories from the past. The man and the woman met at Lerna
Lerna
In classical Greece, Lerna was a region of springs and a former lake near the east coast of the Peloponnesus, south of Argos. Its site near the village Mili at the Argolic Gulf is most famous as the lair of the Lernaean Hydra, the chthonic many-headed water snake, a creature of great antiquity...
in Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
, the venue of one of the Mysteries of the ancient world, and the place where Zeus seduced the priestess Io and turned her into a heifer to hide her from his jealous wife, Hera. Hera sent a gadfly to madden the heifer, and Io roamed the world trying to flee it.
The intense, compulsive passion of the lovers at Lerna awoke the ancient gods, who scented sacrifice. An outrage was committed, which has never been avenged. Back in the city, the woman refuses to see the man, clinging to her domestic routine and trying to deal with the terrible manifestation they witnessed in Greece. But neither the gods nor the man will leave the woman alone, and the civilised veneer of her existence is gradually stripped away.