Figaro³

In a labyrinth of relationships and family histories – The director’s concept

Had I not been obsessed with Beaumarchais’s trilogy for a long time because of its humour and insight into human nature, I would not have taken this project on: for months I sought out, altered, and broke down the elements of the three pieces and three operas to arrive at a platform that can work as a story on its own even after the necessary constrictions. I wanted to focus on the essence of the original materials: the crazed behaviour of the characters as they chase, follow, manipulate, and love each other. Beaumarchais had originally been a watchmaker – the editing that he uses to delineate his characters in the labyrinth of relationships while composing an enormous arc is truly fascinating. The individual operas are by themselves not able to convey this feeling in the way the three of them together can.

To describe my own goal: I wanted to show the movement of the cogs and the inner workings of the instrument while uncovering hidden connections. I believe in the inherited patterns of family histories, and I was interested in what it would be like if we would compile all of them in Léon as the protagonist. The story is not told in a linear manner, but with a freedom that can be present only in a natural conversation – or in a form of therapy: in an associative manner, taking a roundabout way to get to the essence, the contradictions in personality and the structure mentioned above, and to resolving those contradictions by way of forgiveness. The performance is a product of love, and I would be very happy if the audience would accompany us on our journey into this world.

András Dömötör

Playful, but no comedy – An interview with conductor Ádám Cser

Rossini, Mozart, Milhaud. Three worlds, three periods. How can their music be joined together?

Rossini and Mozart are well suited to each other, but Milhaud is not a good match at all. That is why we need a story that helps us in successfully placing their music within the piece. The three operas are placed in a dramaturgical and historical structure where the appearance of all musical details become understandable and where we hope that the nature of the plot makes it clear why we use a Rossini, Mozart, or Milhaud excerpt at any given time. In the performance of Figaro³, the three works are used as a mosaic, with the musical texture using the excerpts not along the lines of the original logic, but this new logic. This provides a form of time travel experience, as the story looks back to the past from today as we try to unravel the familial strings, how we progressed to the present, and what influences the current state of the characters and their relationships. This is a theatrical piece where the main character is opera as a genre. That is what gives meaning and depth to including all three operas.

Contrary to the music of Rossini and Mozart, Darius Milhaud is not as well-known. What is worth knowing about him?

Milhaud had an interesting approach to composing music, and I am greatly intrigued by his theoretical concept. He did not cling to traditions, instead wanting to react to his own age with the most radical methods possible. For example, he did not like Debussy, even saying that he did not want to conform to the strong formal requirements used by him. Milhaud wrote more than 440 works, including a number of operas, ballets, and chamber music. He is one of the 20^th century’s most prolific composers and a member of the French “Les Six”, which wrote a number of pieces with the sole intent of annoying critics. For example, I feel that in La mère coupable (The Guilty Mother), which premiered in 1965, Milhaud wrote a tune directly for the text and then composed musical parts that are wholly independent, difficult to interpret as regards their harmonies, and form a random medium. There is hardly any drama, and the organising principle is consistent for no more than one-and-a-half to two bars, after which it is again followed by new material that has nothing to do with previous measures. Milhaud taught in America and his students included Dave Brubeck, Philip Glass, and Steve Reich: he educated a very important generation of composers. Even La mère coupable contains sections that can be heard in Brubeck’s works. And there are even one or two bars that contain crystal clear jazz harmonies and sequences, just like with Brubeck.

A lot of contemporary music and music composed in the second half of the 20^th century is being performed lately. Why is Milhaud usually left out?

Although his music is inexhaustibly rich in ideas and experimental, it is possible that it is his approach that is far from music education in Hungary, and so he is not as well-known.

How is it possible to learn this difficult music, either as a conductor or as a singer?

It is very difficult… The learning process requires a lot of work and analysis, and it involves getting used to the sound. The music in Figaro³ involves me writing little musical passages to complement the piece. This was carried out by selecting chords from the Milhaud piece that are suitable for portraying the characters and using those as a gentle main motif when the given character is mentioned in the spoken parts.

Did you write for the entire orchestra?

There is only one movement written for the orchestra, which is meant for a longer spoken scene. The rest of the new music provides accompaniment (similar to a continuo) or is played on piano to provide a background atmosphere. I also wrote recitativos in the style of Mozart and Rossini, sometimes moving the style into the territory of parody. During the entire performance, the only time there is silence without any music is when the actors break character and speak as “civilians” or “private persons”.

How did you choose which excerpts to include from the individual operas?

We seized the moments required by the story and that resulted in a turning point for the purposes of forgetting the past. Although the piece includes arias, it is the instrumented parts that are more exciting for the purpose. The Rossini excerpts are the most characteristic and the funniest, which is enhanced by the fact that I added additional notes to the orchestral music, so for example when the Count conducts music, it really does sound “bad”. The musical evaluation of the entire night is made all the more unique by the fact that the Count is a baritone even though Rossini wrote the role as a tenor, and our Figaro is a bass even though the original is a baritone. Solutions had to be provided for these changes, both as regards the instrumentation and the tone. This is an enormous task, a process that requires endless and continuous analysis and creativity. Luckily, the ability to cooperate with both the director András Dömötör and with the entire creative team is excellent. The performance has a very distinct psychological level which provides a range of possibilities and also requires that the personal affairs, behavioural patterns, and backgrounds of people also be portrayed. This helps bind the singers and creators together. Although this is no comedy, it is still playful.

Interview conducted by Diána Eszter Mátrai

What are family constellations?

The German psychotherapist Bert Hellinger started working on the family constellations method in the 1980s. He noticed that the development of psychological and physical issues cannot always be explained by the events in the subject’s own life. There may be difficulties in one’s life where the roots are found elsewhere than in our personalities. Hellinger discovered a shared “family spirit” or “family memory” that includes everything that happened in the family and that affects the fate of the individual. As a result, our fate is closely linked to the fates of our ancestors, and the same patterns and dynamic functions that were present in our ancestors often appear in our own lives. This “family spirit”, or, as the family constellation literature refers to it, “knowing field”, functions on the basis of certain specific laws; if these laws are damaged, there may be negative consequences for family members for generations to come. Family constellations work with this “field” which can be portrayed using actors in the field, allowing hidden links and balances of forces to be uncovered and injuries to be discovered and brought into the conscious realm, making it possible to see the family event that led to a current problem.

Orsolya Sztankay