Thwaite - Presentation

Summary of Libretto

Jurgen Simpson, Composer (Irish);
Simon Doyle, Librettist (Irish)
Conductor: Jerry Cornelius

Listen to music from this piece...

A clearing in a blasted wasteland. A mysterious prophet, Thwaite, and his six disparate followers arrive and build an improvised hut from available detritus. They forage for food and have a meal. The following day, after settling down to theological discussion, Blane (a mischievous interloper) provokes a debate about which of them is in fact this shadowy Thwaite whom they have never met.

She proposes that the wretched Biddle (an imbecile) is in fact Thwaite, owing to his beatific idiocy. The ensuing argument will rage on, reaching no conclusion until one individual is left standing...

Thwaite is set in a post-apocalyptic world of both catastrophe and infinite potentiality. In an absence of rules, laws, or doctrine, what does man make? Arbitrary systems that tend toward entropy is the pessimistic, albeit satirical, implication of the opera.

The musical structure and language of the libretto create their own pattern; beginning contemplatively but ending in frenzy, celebration, death, destruction, and so forth. The language is gnarled and elusive - as well as allusive - loaded with unresolved meaning, couched in evocative additive and subtractive patterns.

Jurgen Simpson and Simon Doyle, based in Dublin, are creating a sophisticated piece of music theatre that is operatic in the grand tradition of Berg's Wozzeck and Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre. The result they are aiming for is part ultraviolent horror flick, part raft debate and part absurdist, Rabelaisian comedy.

Statement by the Composer
Jurgen Simpson

It must be pointed out that the temptation to create a work that critically addresses opera as a medium, an attempt to 'legitimise' and 'play' with the format, was not in any way the impetus behind the creation of Thwaite.

Instead, the opening extract presented here, the opening moments of a tragic misunderstanding in a doomed place, is quite happily rooted in the heritage of opera. There is an unmistakable air of Wozzeck here. Even Chopin, Liszt and waltzing Strauss are at times allowed to creep into the frame.

At this early stage in the opera there is a sense of flux. The coexistence of different musical identities seep into each other, grappling for a sense of direction just as the characters who make their entrances are as yet unformed, harbouring secrets and holding masks.

These multilayered ingredients form an initially impenetrable layer from which it is difficult to extract an honest 'surface'. Biddle's "hungry / so hungry" is accompanied by a seriousness which one might expect from Feldman's Neither and despite the grandiose entrance accompanying Thwaite, he too seems more interested in satiating his appetites than playing some messianic role. In all of this the music maintains a deliberately dominant position, self-conscious in its introductions yet at times curiously void of consolidation at this early stage.

Yet there is the occasional glimpse of the horrors in store, Blane's uncontrolled outburst and the relentless passage following Biddle's acceptance of slavery which peters out, first into a complex piano solo and then into the strange sound world of scene six.

The music of Thwaite (at least the first three acts) is in some ways a departure from familiar territory and methodology as most of my work has been oriented toward the medium of electronic and computer music.

Indeed if there are any precedents here it is that Thwaite is loosely based upon structured improvisational techniques, an area I have been working in for some time now. Despite appearances, Thwaite is not based on any system or technique. The juxtaposition of material (in the manner of Ives or Berio) is characteristic of this first act and it should be noted that as the opera progresses (and Blane's subversions become more visible) the 'style' gradually becomes more static and concrete. My vision for the endgame through Act IV and into Act V is one in which the sonic landscape is gradually overturned to reveal burning shards of noise which cut into and envelop the ensemble completely as if wiping a giant slate clean.

Statement by the Librettist
Simon Doyle

When Jurgen approached me about writing a Libretto, I fished out an old play that had always seemed to grotesque and cartoon-like for the theatre. I dusted it down and streamlined the structure and we both felt that its Rabelaisian tone would be ideally suited to an operatic treatment.

The characters are one-dimensional and larger than life and the action is violent and extreme, not to mention blackly comic - a combination not dissimilar to my personal experience of traditional opera.

The panel had expressed reservations that the material's theatrical source might mitigate against its suitability as a libretto, that the complexity of the characters' motivations and actions might be lost in the medium of opera. For Jurgen too this was a concern, as he was anxious that the story be as clearly delineated and comprehensible as possible.

I hope that I have managed to avoid any potential confusion by simplifying these actions and motivations, and stripping the characters down to be no more than vessels for their most basic needs and desires.

The current draft of the piece is still somewhat overlong, but this is the nature of first drafts and any subsequent drafts will be far more pared down.

I have tried to make the flow of the piece somewhat granular, so that each unit of action and dialogue can stand alone, while also being explicable in terms of its wider context. I was especially concerned to do this in light of the potential gap of minutes between the beginning and end of a couple of lines of dialogue. I have attempted to make the dialogue as rhythmical as possible, while trying to avoid being prescriptive about the rhythm to which the words are set.

I have also endeavoured to emphasise the mathematical structure of the piece. The characters enter one by one, then leave one by one, and most permutations of dialogue and interaction between the characters are explored, with some combinations repeated and ironically reversed. Finally, I was especially concerned to make a piece which was theatrically interesting, and which allowed some lucky director to create an interesting and extreme spectacle.

Casting at the Workshop

Biddle Natalie Raybould High Soprano
Thwaite Omar Ebrahim Baritone
Blane Anna Dennis Soprano
Moorish Keel Watson Bass
Firk Louise Mott Low Mezzo

Other characters in the opera

Wyke: Counter Tenor
Phip: Mezzo

Repititeur: John-Paul Gandy

Instrumentation

Clarinet in Bb (doubling bass clarinet), Clarinet in Bb (doubling contrabass), Horn x 2, Trumpet in C, Trombone x 2, Percussion (2 players), 2 cellos, Double Bass (with C extension), Piano Jurgen Simpson.