An experience indeed, and one which has occupied my mind for hours after the performance and again today. What to think? What to write? How to respond? How to describe?

Listed as Oresteia Experience, Sunday evening’s event proves to be very much an ‘experience’ in several senses. It certainly isn’t something one just watches or listens to, but very much something that everyone in the audience ‘experiences’.

Although the central focus is a performance of Iannis Xenakis’ opera Oresteia, the evening begins with brief, but informative and engaging introductory talks by the presenters of the event (Drs Patrick O’Sullivan and Mark Menzies), followed by a guided visit to the University of Canterbury’s Teece Museum and its remarkable Logie Collection of Greek and other ancient artefacts. I had already seen this exhibition a couple of months ago, but it is certainly worthwhile revisiting the collection in the context of this event, which is a collaborative and creative initiative by the University’s Classics and Music departments.

This innovative introduction is followed by the performance of the opera, which Xenakis wrote, added to and revised between 1965 and 1992.

The radical, elemental and unique style of the music is impossible to describe to anyone who hasn’t actually heard it. The printed score ranges from traditional notation to various types of graphic representation. ‘Atonal’ isn’t the right term because even that word can suggest some tenuous connection with tonality. But, also, there are vocal ensemble passages that use forms of tonality and which consequently contribute to the shock and impact of the otherwise non-tonal soundscape. So I’d recommend anyone who was not present at this performance or is unfamiliar with Xenakis’s musical style, to look for, say, Metastasis or Terretektorh für Orchester on YouTube, where you can also find a complete audio recording of Oresteia and various video extracts.

Sunday night’s performance is as innovative and extraordinary as the work itself. The performing space occupies most of the Great Hall’s floor space with blocks of audience seating at the back and on the stage. The accomplished thirteen-piece instrumental ensemble, which looks far bigger because of the array of percussion instruments, plays with panache and confidence, and a large number of polystyrene cubes add to the soundscape as the chorus move and manipulate them as part of the ethereally abstract visual production.

Conductor, Mark Menzies, leads with clarity and vitality, and choreographer Julia Harvie’s imaginative movement matches the work’s inherent stylistic characteristics superbly, as does Stuart Lloyd Harris’s design.

It’s as difficult to categorise the production style as it is the work itself. Although Xenakis’s Oresteia has, on occasion, been staged in a conventional theatrical style, it has also been described as a ‘balletic oratorio’, which description perhaps fits this Christchurch production more aptly. There is little real sense of a story being acted out and, although we are provided with a full printed translation of Aeschylus’ ancient Greek text as used by Xenakis, the story’s murders and confrontations are never rendered visually explicit. No surtitles are provided to enable us to follow the plot step-by-step but, reading Mark Menzies’ programme note, it would seem that this was not intended. Rather, the work’s ‘filtering’ of the emotional, psychological and sociological content of the text, and its communication by the performance’s abstract nature, is what is important. 

This concept works well for the most part, although the long Cassandra segment, stunningly performed by countertenor Randall Scotting, fails to sustain its duration through lack of sufficient musical variety and dramatic enactment. Some aural variation in this scene is provided by Justin DeHart’s notably virtuosic percussion playing, but a more diverse visual presentation would help. The only other instrumental aspect of this long scene is a small Irish harp (an acceptable substitute for the more visually appropriate psalterium specified in the score) played by the conductor, which adds some of the needed interest.

Randall Scotting’s second ‘aria’ reaffirmed the initial impact of an exceptionally powerful countertenor voice. The score specifies a baritone who is required to use a considerable amount of falsetto. However, a firm-voiced male alto seems an even better option, especially if able, as Scotting certainly is, to drop easily into a baritone register. Also, given the nature of this event as an ‘experience’, perhaps the idea of the audience playing metal simantras, as stipulated in the score, would have been a nice touch.

Not every member of the student chorus shows equal assurance, but I am full of admiration for the commitment they show in the face of some formidable vocal and physical demands. The brief contribution of a children’s choir adds a further colourful detail to the richness of the work’s palate, even if they, too, struggle to totally dispatch the demands made by this challenging piece. 

A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate to see a production of Scottish playwright Zinnie Harris’s epic new trilogy Oresteia – This Restless House in Edinburgh. This play’s filtering of Aeschylus’ original, through the analogy of a modern-day family, along with my long familiarity with Strauss’s Elektra and, to a lesser extent, Gluck’s two Iphigenia operas, proved valuable preparations for Xenakis’ more extreme demands on his listeners. But, tough-going as parts of last night’s performance seem at the time, the cumulative rewards are considerable, and Mark Menzies and his team deserve our gratitude and admiration for their courage in challenging our comfort zones.

This is ideal Arts Festival fare.

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