The opera house had 50 home-made seats and was called The No 1 Ladies’ Opera House
In the world of opera – and music in general – nobody pays much attention to librettists, which is understandable enough: what counts in opera is not the plot so much as the music. Così fan tutte has an unlikely plot but the most sublime music. The plot of Wagner’s Ring is similarly absurd, and yet is elevated by the power of the music to something extraordinary.
But who amongst us knows much about Lorenzo da Ponte, who was Mozart’s librettist? I did not, until I chanced upon Anthony Holden’s The Man Who Wrote Mozart, an account of the life of the librettist of The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and, of course, Così. Few who see his name on the score of these operas will be aware that da Ponte ended up as a grocer in New York – amongst other things.
This is not to say that the librettist is unimportant – he or she may play a vital role in setting the emotional tone of the opera, or indeed inspiring it in the first place.
On occasions, the libretto may assert itself as a work of literary significance in its own right. Auden’s libretto for Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress is worth reading as a self-standing work, as is his libretto for Britten’s Paul Bunyan.
I came to appreciate opera as a student. Like many, I benefited from the cheap tickets one could get for Scottish Opera’s performances at the King’s Theatre in Edinburgh.
My experience was broadened by the occasional treat elsewhere – including a performance of Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci in Rome, for which I sat in the upper, upper circle next to an ancient musician– a retired conductor, perhaps – who had the score on his knee and vigorously conducted and hummed the music throughout.
When, many years later, I devoted my time to writing, it occurred to me that it would be interesting to write material for musicians to set to music. I had met Tom Cunningham, an Edinburgh choral composer, whose work has an immediate appeal to it. So, when I had the idea of writing an operatic libretto, it was to Tom that I turned.
The way it came about was highly peculiar. I was visiting the Okavango Delta in northern Botswana with my American agent, Robin Straus, and my New York editor, Edward Kastenmeier. We were in a small boat going upriver when I happened to see a few huts in thick vegetation on the river bank, some distance away. I asked our guide, Mighty, what the settlement was and he replied, “That’s the baboon people”.
The penny dropped. I have a very amateurish interest in primatology and I had just read an obscure book by two American primatologists, Baboon Metaphysics. I realised that this was the very camp at which the two primatologists in question – a husband and wife team from Pennsylvania – were living with their troop of baboons.
I managed to persuade Mighty to take us ashore. As we approached, I cupped my hands and shouted out across the water: “I’ve just read Baboon Metaphysics!”
The effect was immediate. Out of the huts there rushed the two primatologists, who made us tea and told us all about their research. They mentioned that female baboons could be very ambitious for their male partner. Lady Macbeth! That idea stuck in my mind, and the idea came of writing an operatic libretto setting the Macbeth story in a troop of baboons in Africa.
Tom wrote some magnificent music and we premiered The Okavango Macbeth in a tiny opera house (a converted mechanical depot) in the bush outside Gaborone.
This opera house, which we ran for five years, had 50 home-made seats and was called The No 1 Ladies’ Opera House. It gave great joy to the amateur groups who used it for concerts of various sorts. It was there that we mounted the first opera ever translated into the local language, Setswana. That was Cavalleria Rusticana.
We are now doing a children’s opera for the Scotland-Malawi project, based on Livingstone’s travels in Africa. There is also a collaboration with Tom Hyde, a London-based composer, which is all about the disappearance of Lord Lucan. Now, there’s a subject for opera…
