Mixed messages lost in the medium: Foccroulle's Cassandra premieres at La Monnaie

We live in an age of Cassandras. Climate protestors block motorways, hurl soup at paintings and even – clutches pearls – interrupt Glyndebourne. So it’s no great surprise when a rag-tag of banner-wavers pitch up on La Monnaie’s litter-fringed piazza demanding climate justice. No traffic is halted, no paint thrown. Instead, these ‘protestors’ break into song. We clap and go inside. All of which is exactly the problem – ours, Cassandra’s and this opera’s.

Cassandra is the first full-length stage work by Bernard Foccroulle, with a libretto by Canadian writer and director Matthew Jocelyn, whose recent work includes the text for Brett Dean’s Hamlet, poster-boy for the irresolute.

We begin our journey through 13 scenes and a prologue in a library. A man reads – in his head – the story of Cassandra, gifted by Apollo with seeing the future but cursed by him (for refusing his advances) never to be believed. This the offstage chorus might elucidate but though they are given portentous phrases, they are almost inaudible. Cassandra appears and intones woe at the fall of Troy (the library’s collapsed and we’re in a war zone) but as captivating as Katarina Bradić may be physically, vocally she’s too low in her register to make an impression over Kazushi Ono's orchestra. Alas, we cannot heed her pronouncements.

Things lighten when we find ourselves at what has been heavily trailed as stand-up comedy, even if Antarctic specialist Sandra (get it?) doesn’t have any jokes. Jessica Niles’ energy and vocal punch bring the galvanising power that might just get this narrative moving. She’s handy with a hammer and a block of ice as she percussively tells how “Mister after mister after mister“ has failed to address the climate emergency. This all strikes a welcome blow until the mystery mister who was reading at the beginning appears in the book-signing queue and mansplains climate change. Sandra pluckily counters with some robust data and they, somewhat surprisingly, fall in love. Any uncertainty you or I might feel is echoed by interjections of marimba, while lower, sustained string lines make a brave attempt at binding things together. It’s all a bit awkward. Does climate change leave time for love?

Rapid sea rise would suggest not and this is where Foccroulle is up against it musically. As the mise en scène explicitly asks, what sound is more compelling to the puny human ear than the fearsome creak of polar ice? Sul ponticello strings and low drones for diminuendoing bees create a sort of music of the spheres as we transition between the natural world, ancient myth and Sandra’s bedroom, but ultimately Foccroulle’s score fails to go any deeper than imitation and, despite an abundance of tension, there is no drama.

Fabien Teigné’s versatile giant honeycomb set creates a welcome continuity, whether as backdrop to war, environmental collapse or a family dinner. First, we must return to the ruins of Troy where Apollo is eating severed limbs and trying to persuade Cassandra to have sex with him. When she refuses, he makes do with a corpse from the rubble and dry humps a rocking horse, a bold flex for the patriarchy now that we’ve all seen Barbie.

Much explanatory preamble accompanies (and remains within) this production but energy might have been saved by the creative team, led by Marie-Ève Signeyrole, making a choice as to which of the opera’s 13 scenes is vital. Most convincing is that dinner party, which goes some way to bring together the criss-cross of dynamics that strangle our best intentions in ethical and emotional red tape. You may be a prophet, but you’re still someone’s sister.

Niles aside, the other clearest voice in the production is Paul Appleby’s Blake, which is a good and a bad thing because, as the libretto increasingly gives Blake the airspace, Sandra is left, like the ice cap, in danger of receding dramatically. At least she has the good sense to say she won’t have his babies until she’s finished her thesis. Blake’s solution is to go to Antarctica with a rucksack. After being heckled at a gig, Sandra decides to go too, but news comes through that Blake’s ship has “been hit”. By what isn’t clear. Ice would seem the obvious, maybe rocks. Suffice to say, if there are mermaids beneath the majestic floes, Blake is now showing them how to swim. 

There’s an awful lot going on. Faced with the roar of collapsing glaciers and the cries of those whose homes and livelihoods have been swept away by floodwater or incinerated by wildfires in recent months, art must make and articulate bold choices if our actions are to prove more than an incoherent accompaniment to catastrophe. But goodness me, whatever opera can throw at us, with the temperature in the mid-thirties for almost a whole week in Northern Europe, aren’t we thankful for a couple of hours of air-conditioning! 

La Monnaie kindly offered Eleanor overnight accommodation to facilitate her also attending Opera Ballet Vlaanderen's premiere in Antwerp the same day.