Interview with Jane Eyre's opera composer and librettist

Last week, December 10, the program "Music Show" of the Australian ABC Radio National devoted part of its time to discuss Michael Berkeley's opera "Jane Eyre" interviewing the composer and the librettist David Malouf.

Guests: Michael Berkeley and David Malouf

Music in this interview:
Title: Jane Eyre: beginning
Comp. Michael Berkeley/ Lib. David Malouf
Perf. The Music Theatre Wales Ensemble
Conductor: Michael Rafferty
CD: Michael Berkeley: Jane EyreLabel: CHANDOS 9983
DUR: 4.47

Title: Beautiful, beautiful from Jane Eyre
Details as above.
Dur: 3.22

The transcript of the interview can be read here, but if you want to listen to the whole interview and the music you can do it here (Real Audio required), but just for a few weeks. The interview begins approximately at the 27 min and 45 s.

These are a few samples of the very interesting interview:

Andrew Ford: Maybe I could start with you, David, because operas usually start with the words, and in this case you inherited a lot of words from Charlotte Brontë, and then had to work out what to do with them. Obviously you cut them down, but how did you make those decisions?
David Malouf: Well I decided early on, because I already had limitations of how many characters we could have, how many singers; there are only going to be five of those. And so I decided to concentrate only on the central romance element in that book, which is the relationship between Jane and Mr Rochester. And that in many ways is what most people remember of the book. (...)

Andrew Ford: And the story of Lucia di Lammermoor as well, of course in the case of this opera.
David Malouf: Yes, that was because Adèle, the little girl in the house, her mother has been a dancer in Paris, and who is interested in opera, and because it was good to relate this rather operatic story to the world of 19th century opera. And because we have a mad woman in the attic, it was quite easy to have Adèle point out that her favourite opera was Lucia with the mad scene, where the madwoman kills her husband on the night of the wedding. It was a bit later in this piece, we’re going to have a wedding which goes wrong on the night before. So there’s little ways of doing something which I think we quite enjoy these days, which is a reference to other works which helps us see where to place this one, or where not to place this one.
Andrew Ford: And Lucia di Lammemoor and Charlotte Brontë’s novel are virtually contemporary, aren’t they?
David Malouf: Yes, they are. (...)

Andrew Ford: Was it your idea David, or was it Michael’s to do ‘Jane Eyre’ as an opera?
David Malouf: I think it was mine, I can’t quite remember.
Michael Berkeley: It was David’s. If somebody had said to me ‘We’re going to do ‘Jane Eyre’, I’d have run a mile to be absolutely honest, because the last thing I wanted to do was a Hollywood epic. David was very keen to do it, and I was a bit dubious, but when he produced the libretto, it was such a beautifully, surgically incised piece of work, and it did the thing that I felt would need to be done, which was to look at it from a completely different angle. To look at it through a different lens, if you like, and refract it, so that we learn more about these characters. And there’s so much, as David’s just suggested, going on which relates to contemporary society. I mean there’s racism, if you like, there’s the sort of suppressed eroticism which, since Freud, we now think about in a completely different way. I was initially completely appalled by the idea and as soon as I saw the libretto, completely turned on by it. It really was rather like that, so David must take the credit for it.


Categories: Music, Opera, Jane_Eyre, Charlotte_Brontë