Making an opera out of a movie, or a book better known to the general public from its film adaptation, is not new or unusual. Just look at some high-profile premieres from recent seasons: A Streetcar Named Desire, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea, Sophie's Choice, Dangerous Liaisons, Dead Man Walking, The Great Gatsby.
What those operas all share is a strong story told in traditional narrative terms. But Olga Neuwirth is going where no composer has gone before — into the surrealistic dream-world of auteur David Lynch, the man famous (or notorious) for such cult films as Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet and the legendary television series Twin Peaks. In collaboration with playwright Elfriede Jelinek, Neuwirth has prepared an opera based on Lynch's Lost Highway. The world premiere is set for this Friday, 31 October, at the Steirischer Herbst festival of new music in Graz, Austria.
The Lynch film, released in 1997, features Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette, Balthazar Getty, Robert Blake and Robert Loggia. The screenplay, by the director and novelist Barry Gifford, has earned the movie a reputation as one of Lynch's most dense, obscure and incomprehensible.
In a Viennese café on a chilly September day, Neuwirth distilled for me the essence of a work of cinema which took me eight viewings to begin to understand. "It's a masochistic piece. You can look at it in a scientific way: how a human mind can become distorted a relationship; how far you can go if you don't talk; how easy it is to build lies when you don't know someone's history. Fred [Pullman's character] wants so badly to love that he puts on this mask and becomes another person — he becomes [Getty's character] Pete. He tries to get out, but it gets worse. He will never have what he wants."
The 35-year-old Graz native explained her attraction to the subject matter. "I grew up with theater and film and painting, so I have a very visual point of view. For this opera, I wanted to use a fairy tale [approach] — singing is so artificial, it's between fiction and reality." The film's structure further appealed to Neuwirth in musical terms. "I can really relate to the way David Lynch plays with time. It's like a fugue: you can't break out of the cycle; you're entwined in a time loop."
In August 2002, Neuwirth was given an e-mail address to contact Lynch, and she wrote, asking for the rights to adapt Lost Highway's screenplay. She was startled when both Lynch and Gifford granted permission with virtually no strings attached: they asked merely to be invited to the premiere. (Gifford will attend; Lynch's phobia over flying grounds him in Los Angeles.) "It's amazing that they just gave up the rights," said the composer, "It seems so Kafkaesque." The complete script, including long portions which were never shot and included in the film, was gathered from Lynch's garage and sent to Neuwirth and Jelinek. They fashioned the libretto using large sections of the screenplay verbatim. "We had to cut the word 'fuck' a lot, because it's very hard to sing," laughed Neuwirth.
Neuwirth's Lost Highway (jointly commissioned by Steirischer Herbst and Theater Basel) will combine acoustic and electronic music with digital samples. It will similarly mix styles of emoting. "It's in two parts: in the real world, people only speak and whisper into microphones; after the killing, when the phantasm starts, then Pete sings," she explained.
Commenting on the long and solid collaboration between Lynch and composer Angelo Badalamenti — in addition to the latter's film soundtracks, the two have written a symphony together — Neuwirth observed, "There wasn't such a strong influence from Angelo Badalamenti in [Lynch's] Lost Highway. There was a freer space for my music. We could never do Eraserhead, for instance: it [the film score] is much too strong."
When I asked about the acceptance of women in the realm of new music, Neuwirth was quick to respond: "There is a prejudice against women in music which isn't there in visual arts and literature, and there's even more in new music. It's still got a very old fashioned structure and I am always dependent on people of power to bring my work to life."
This dependence was the cause for Neuwirth's initial concept to be shelved. "I wanted to have this video artist do it with all these projections, exploring the inner life of Fred like being inside his brain. I didn't want a literal visualization. Now my idea is phiff! I wanted an interplay between real and unreal, two different dimensions. It's now a normal music-theater piece. I don't think people will understand the layers without the video."
Soprano Constance Hauman, who will create the dual role of Renee/Alice, sees Neuwirth's point. "It would have been easier to cast in Olga's original concept, but once it turned more into a theater piece, the casting had to change," she explained in late September, shortly after arriving in Graz for rehearsals. "Olga has done something so unique — I just hope I can do what she wants. It's like she is living Ariadne auf Naxos, that losing control the Composer goes through. Strauss got it right!"
"Olga would argue with this, but I see certain similarities with Lulu," Hauman observed about Renee/Alice. "She unleashes this artistic energy in people. There must be a psychological reason why no man can possess her. She's been victimized: she was a prostitute and she did pornos. She is trying to better her life, but does this make her guilty? Then she goes to Fred; she's haunted by her past and she's trying to escape. I wondered why Fred is a jazz musician, but it's because she unleashes this creative energy. She has that in common with Lulu, like a muse.
"This is very exciting because it hasn't been done before: an opera based on such a complex cult film," concluded Hauman. "Maybe it isn't an opera; I'm not so sure. It's a new genre. They talk about the future of opera — well, this is it!"
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