How should we treat “the classics”? Even the phrase is an unhelpfully vague one, used (mostly inaccurately) to refer to everything from Ancient Greek drama to Shakespeare, from ballet to opera, from Renaissance paintings to Victorian novels.
Generally it is implied that “classics” are part of a western cultural canon — other iconic works usually involve modifiers: Chinese classics, modern classics, Indian classics, minor classics, and so on.
Inevitably, and appropriately, South African artists and audiences are uncomfortable about the status of these Western classics that we have partly inherited and partly had imposed upon us. We are hesitant to embrace them, but we also sense that we shouldn’t reject them out of hand. The thing is, they can be difficult; they can be inaccessible and seem irrelevant; they can be ideologically offensive; they can be downright boring; sometimes they can be plain silly.
Say you want to stage Verdi’s Aida, which emerged out of a centuries-long operatic tradition that had been through stages of Baroque and opera seria, of comic opera buffa and nostalgic bel canto — and that, when Verdi was composing in the 1870s, was a terribly rarefied and self-important affair.
It’s worth noting that Aida was commissioned for the opening of the Khedivial Opera House in Cairo, which in turn was connected to the construction of the Suez Canal. The story told through the opera is set in ancient Egypt: a relatively innocuous nod to local context. But the wider background is a telling example of the intersection of European high culture with Europe’s imperial ambitions.
Suffice it to say that Aida is one of those “Western classics” that presents problems in a South African context. Not the least of these are logistical and financial. Where would you get funding for the enormous cast, crew and orchestra? The sets, costumes and props? You are staging an enormous pageant, after all. Isn’t that what opera demands?
Not necessarily, says Greg Homann, who has conceived and directed a two-man Aida Abridged (at the Auto & General Theatre on the Square in Sandton, until January 31). If those two men are Clint Lesch and Len-Barry Simons, who between them can hit every note from the deepest bass to the highest soprano, and who switch characters with the greatest felicity; and if they are accompanied by the dexterous Wessel Odendaal on piano; and if a brown paper scroll and a few hats are all you need to immerse your audience in a distant place and time; then unquestionably, it can be done.
The key is not to take yourself too seriously. And, simultaneously, to be entirely serious.
This could be a manifesto of sorts for performers engaging with “the classics” in SA today.
There must be an element of self-mockery, acknowledging the basic absurdity of the undertaking. A love story about an enslaved Ethiopian princess and an Egyptian soldier? Come on. An art form that lends itself to caricature, even as it seeks the sublime? Risible. Western elitism on the postcolonial stage? Surely not. Recreating a sweeping epic with a low-budget design? Embarrassing.
So you have to perform with a constant meta-awareness, to work into the storytelling process a practice of winking at the audience to parody the act of storytelling. You have to achieve exposition (because, let’s face it, the story is complicated and it was written in Italian; this is a kind of education and edification) without a dull explanation. It has to be fun.
At the same time, however, you must approach your craft with absolute solemnity and dedication. You have to believe that the love story is poignant and beautiful. You have to commit yourself fully to the expression of — yes, universal — human feelings through a technically demanding and vocally constraining style of singing. You have to love opera, even as you know most people in your audience find it unloveable.
Oh, yes: you also have to make it shorter. Three hours is more than most people can bear. This production, which runs at just over 70 minutes, is remarkably compact given the amount of musical and narrative terrain it covers.
Homann, Lesch, Simons and company have achieved something substantial here. Go and see it.
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