by Richard Oxman

**Hans Schulz is an unofficial *goffer* for the Staatsoper Stuttgart in Germany. Long-time buddy from my days in and around Civil Rights era humiliations, Hans did a telephone fandango the other day…which tore me apart. This is not just for sopranos**.

ROX: So…what’s the deal with Morton Feldman and Samuel Beckett?

HS: When Feldman and Beckett set out to write an opera *ensemble* in ‘76, they were together on one single significant point: neither of them liked opera.

ROX: Whoaa, Beckett didn’t like opera?

HS: Let’s use that point as a point of departure, shall we? Beckett initially refused Feldman’s request for a text, but when he realized the composer shared his intense antipathy to the form, he changed his mind.

ROX: What did they produce?

HS: The first draft of the un-libretto was sketched on a napkin at a Berlin restaurant.

ROX: I’ll bet “waiters for Godot” are still hoping to come across it at that establishment.

HS: A valuable collector’s item, no doubt.

ROX: Seriously, what transpired?

HS: The final version of eighty-four full words fit onto the face of a postcard.

ROX: For real?

HS: I’m not just playing with words like you do.

ROX: You sound as if you are.

HS: With the phonetics, I’m teasing you, yes. But…Beckett’s text has no protagonist, no narrative, not even a grammatical subject. It is all innuendo…of absence, aimlessness, failure and darkness. And there’s a final line — “unspeakable home” — which makes for a very *distressing destination*, for want of a better expression.

ROX: Depressing operatic fare?

HS: I’d say…thought-provoking. You know, Grand Opera always had a public political interest; it commented upon history…featuring opposition groups acting within a given society.

ROX: And so?

HS: Let me take the long way around on this. Feldman set the whole thing up obliquely, with a single soprano who sings more disconnected vowels than recognizable words, much of it stratospherically high. His score is bleak, chilly, atmospheric, full of repeated motifsand overlapping patterns, whispered suggestions and eerie effects.

ROX: I heard it was only an hour long.

HS: Mercifully. But Stuttgart’s State Opera is the best house in Germany for turning difficult ideas into dramatic successes. And they tackled *Neither* — that’s the name of the work — with rigorous energy. Milan-based art-video team Studio Azzurro were teamed with dramaturges Klaus zehelein and Sergio Morabito. Instead of throwing it together with something else to make a double bill, Stuttgart created a “Prologue” in which Feldman scholar Raoul Morchen and Beckett expert Klaus Reichert discussed the piece. Their dialogue began off-stage, so that they were already engaged in debate as they strolled on to take their seats on a stage empty except for four chairs exactly like those in the stalls. And it continued, Beckett-like, as they exited, implying an endless discourse. Their observations were lucid and to-the-point, much of which was about the need for *anti-Opera*. It was really enlivened by slide projections and very clever video projections. You were left with a sense of having been a part of an intimate conversation about the need for a different attitude on everything, including politics…cultural politics. And a sense of knowing the minds behind this work personally.

ROX: Can you elaborate?

HS: The straight-up opera stuff was phenomenal in traditional terms, utterly focused, inhumanly accurate. Roland Kuttig conducted with analytical rigor and energy. However, Studio Azzurro’s production looked deceptively spare, nothing more than lighting and projections onto an empty stage. A nervous white mouse, gnawing at a dangerous circle of light; an unoccupied rocking-chair, a breaking ladder, empty shoes, and some uncomfortable surprises; their images spoke of things that words could not. At once sinister and resonant, they echoed the text without ever imposing the absent narrative, always in harmony with the score.

ROX: Sounds like a gratifying combo of stringent intellectualism with viscreal strength, but…can you pull anything together…about politics…for my readers?

HS: Earlier works present history as a straightforwardly closed book, whether in background or foreground. Like I said, Grand Opera has always projected a public political interest…commenting upon history, repeatedly, through dramatization of “opposition groups” acting within a given society. The illusion is created, by the usual suspension of disbelief in the theatre, *that history could have been different*. Thus the spectator must consider why it was not different, and can analyze history as something in the making. The processes of power themselves — with this paradigm of art — are under intense scrutiny.

ROX: And so?

HS: Feldman and Beckett, obviously, feel differently.

ROX: Hmmm. Perhaps it’s time for a little anti-Politics.

HS: Perhaps…a lot.