Life and death experience in Adelaide Festival staging of Mozart’s Requiem
A confronting new opera staging of Mozart’s Requiem holds great emotional resonance for its Australian soprano Siobhan Stagg, whose singing career really began at a funeral.
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In a way, the extraordinary spectacle of Italian director Romeo Castellucci’s opera staging of Mozart’s Requiem takes its Mildura-born soprano Siobhan Stagg back to the pivotal family moment which led her to career.
“It wasn’t until I learnt Amazing Grace for the funeral of my grandfather when I was 12 … that was one of my first times singing in front of people outside the family,” Stagg recalls.
“As I was leaving, a cousin – who came from the city and knew a bit more about music – slipped something into my hand, with a $100 note and a card that said: ‘This is for your first singing lesson’ and ‘Please invite me when you sing at the Sydney Opera House’.
“That really was a turning point, because it kind of forced my parents to enrol me and to take my musical side more seriously. They were completely supportive after that, but it was just something unfamiliar to them before,” Stagg, who turns 32 next week, says.
“The beautiful side of that story is that, two or three years ago, I finally performed at the Sydney Opera House in concert with (French tenor) Roberto Allanya – and I was able to invite my cousin and say thank you.”
Controversial director Castellucci’s radically different vision of a Requiem Mass will be the centrepiece of next year’s Adelaide Festival, for which he previously staged Julius Caesar in 2000 and Go Down, Moses in 2016.
Mozart’s Requiem is also the first result of the Festival’s new three-year partnership to commission works with Aix-en-Provence in France, where it was performed in July.
The main festival venue there is Theatre de l’Archeveche, the courtyard of the former archbishop’s palace, surrounded by its stone walls which were built between 1650 and 1730.
“Because it’s an outdoor theatre in Aix-en-Provence, we have to rehearse in the evenings, once the sun goes down. Some days we would start rehearsing at 6pm and rehearse until 12.30am,” Stagg says.
Usually performed as a choral work, Mozart’s Requiem was not originally conceived as an opera. In fact, Mozart died in 1791 before completing the work – which, according to his widow, he believed was intended for his own funeral – and its performances have always been based on arrangements finished by other composers.
“I was literally the only soloist to have not performed Mozart’s Requiem before, even though it is a staple of concert repertoire,’ says Stagg.
“My other three colleagues from New York (Italian contralto Sara Mingardo and bass Luca Tittoto, and Austrian tenor Martin Mitterrutzner) had done it numerous times, but for me it was the first time.
“It is an unusual thing to stage a piece like this, although it is happening more and more. People are realising that there’s a lot of potential for dramatic interpretation of these pieces that we’d previously seen as stand-alone concert works.”
A similar approach was behind Australian director Barrie Kosky’s Glyndebourne Festival Opera adaptation of Handel’s Saul, which was written as an oratorio, presented by the Adelaide Festival in 2017.
“It does mean to engage a different sort of audience … it appeals not only to the purist music lovers but also to those people who love to see beautiful pictures and drama unfolding on stage,” Stagg says.
Requiems are usually regarded as solemn works but Castellucci’s staging is much more vivid and exultant.
“In the conception talks, on the first day of rehearsals, Romeo said that he didn’t want this to be a dark and depressing project – he wanted it to be a celebration of life,” Stagg says.
“The conductor, Raphael Pichon, also mentioned the fact that the Requiem is not really for the people who have died, but actually for those who are left behind, who have to keep living. So they wanted it to be this uplifting source of energy and inspiration, so we can live our best lives.”
While Castellucci does reflect on the concept of extinction as a “through thread”, Stagg says this was always juxtaposed with passages of “beautiful colours and a lot of dancing … a very clear example of what it is to be alive”.
“I think that is the power of the piece, that it has both sides of the coin.”
The work opens with an elderly lady in her apartment, going through her nightly ritual of watching TV and preparing for bed.
“Then the TV is muted and we hear this beautiful, pure singing of Gregorian chants. So that’s where the juxtaposition begins, with polar opposites, and it continues from there.”
The Gregorian chants are among a number of musical elements which Pichon has added to the score, including other, rarely performed works by Mozart.
“We’ve also added a gorgeous piece for a little boy soprano, which stole the show each time, bookended with these Gregorian chants. Harmonically, it’s very coherent.”
Castellucci’s visual interpretation works backwards through the stages of life, from the opening sequence with the older woman, through a dancer in her 20s or 30s, to a nine-year-old girl.
“The final image is a baby, a real baby, who in our production was seven months old,” Stagg says. “It really brings home this linear idea of a life.”
Australian Dance Theatre performers will also be involved in the Adelaide production, while the singers are required to move in time with an ensemble of folk dancers.
“We weren’t told there was a dance component before we arrived,” laughs Stagg.
“It was really interesting to watch in that first rehearsal … there’s always a little bit of polite resistance when you ask opera singers to dance or put themselves out of their comfort zone.
“What was great is that as we all became more comfortable with it we started to relish it and actually enjoy the chance to present ourselves in that different way … as non-dancers dancing, opening up our hearts to the audience.”
Growing up in Mildura, Stagg did study some dance. “For me it was really nice to reconnect with that sense … I loved it just as a free form of expression.”
Her parents were both school teachers and young Siobhan’s fascination with music was “quite accidental”.
“I always sang around the house and in school concerts … but my family didn’t have any musical background or exposure,” she recalls.
“We used to go to Adelaide for our Christmas holidays, because Adelaide is the closest city, despite being in a different state.”
Her parents and younger brother recently moved to Adelaide, and Stagg is looking forward to catching up with and performing for them during the Festival.
Immediately after completing her studies at Melbourne University, she joined the Deutsche Opera’s young artists program in Berlin, where she has been based ever since and has just applied for residency.
However, she spends much of her time on the road, having sung everything from the title role in Cendrillon for the Lyric Opera of Chicago, to Pamina in The Magic Flute for London’s Royal Opera and Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier for the Opernhaus Zurich.
While she had returned to perform in concert with Australian orchestras, Stagg did not make her opera debut here until last year, as the female lead in Pelleas et Melisande for Victorian Opera.
Castellucci is noted for his brutal and often confrontational imagery and soundtracks but, off stage, Stagg says he is quiet, gentle mannered and comes across as considerate and engaging.
“That’s exactly our impression … that we worked with this very humble and softly spoken, kind and shy person, actually, whose head is full of these very strong ideas and images and things that really cut to the core of what it feels like to be a human.
“Perhaps that’s why it’s so effective. I guess we all have that darker side of us, but he is bold enough to actually put it on stage and that seems to really affect people when they’re watching it.”
She describes some segments, like those involving the nine-year-old girl, as “symbolically confronting”.
“It’s nothing directly violent, it’s just that we pour honey and blood – although the blood is fake – and ash over her. There are a number of images that you would never conjure up in your own mind, but when you see them they somehow are painful to watch – not in an unpleasant way, it’s more of a cathartic experience.”
The combined result of these elements is that the white backdrop eventually comes to resemble a giant canvas.
“Castellucci is very influenced by art – I think he spends a lot of time in galleries,” Stagg says. “When I was visiting galleries in France, I would suddenly realise when looking at a painting, ‘Oh – that’s the gesture that Romeo wanted us to do on stage’.
“One of the ideas for this Requiem was that he wanted it to be like a living piece of art that was created slightly different every night, because of those elements that we use like paint: all the powders and blood and honey and ash and feathers.
“At the end, there’s a big reveal, where the audience is presented with the piece of ‘art’ that we’ve created that night, through our performance, through our dancing, through our exertion.”
The work also embraces the impact of death, from the topical to the personal.
“People did tell me that there are moments when you feel really sad about the current state of affairs, because during the show at the back there is a subtle list of things that are extinct,” Stagg says. “It starts out very literal, with dinosaurs and animals that have become extinct ... then it moves to landmarks that no longer exist. Then towards the end, it starts getting quite philosophical and says things like … ‘the extinction of conversation’.”
Emotionally, Stagg feels most connected to the Benedictus sequence.
“They bring out a car that has been smashed up in an accident … I think that scene had a profound impact on many people on stage and in the audience,” she says.
“At first, it’s clearly a prop … but then people start to think about the devastation of having a real crash in your life and the ripple effect that it has on the immediate people involved, then all the families connected to those people, their colleagues.
“But also, often, we feel like we are in chaos in our lives. We feel like our lives are a metaphorical car crash, everything is going wrong. Often, when you look at it from outside, you get a sense of perspective.”
Mozart’s Requiem, Festival Theatre, February 28 to March 4. Book at BASS