George Benjamin
Picture a day like this
Marianne Crebassa (mezzo-soprano), Beate Mordal, Anna Prohaska (soprano), Cameron Shahbazi (countertenor), John Brancy (baritone); Mahler Chamber Orchestra/George Benjamin
Nimbus NI8116 60:09 mins
Clip: George Benjamin – On a day like this, Scene 3: The Artisan
At the heart of George Benjamin’s new opera – his fourth with the playwright Martin Crimp – is a composed silence that robs you of words.
In an aria, his heroine on a quest to find a button from a happy person which may bring her dead child back to life, despairs.
Quarrelling lovers, a suicidal worker propped up by drugs and a composer fearful for her reputation have all failed her with their unhappiness. Snapping strings and a quiet tolling bell match her despair. And then the music stops.
When this fable continues nothing is quite the same. An obsessive art collector lets the woman into a garden where she finds the mysterious Zabelle. Is she, and are we, comforted? Benjamin and Crimp invite us to supply our own meaning.
Premiered at Aix-en-Provence last year, less is more in Picture a day like this with a cast of five and just 22 instrumentalists from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.
With every word of the text set to be heard, Marianne Crebassa is compelling as the Woman through a demanding range of moods and vocal modes.
While the American baritone John Brancy as the Artisan and the Collector reveals an unexpected upper register that evidently delighted Benjamin.
The pit, too, surprises with growling woodwind, a conversational harp and anxious chattering strings. Then there’s the insidious presence of the bells – a reminder from Benjamin of our shared mortality perhaps?
But like everything from this master of music drama, how can we know? Christopher Cook