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The Opera Quarterly, Volume 24, Number 3-4, Summer-Autumn 2008,

pp. 286-292 (Article)

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For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/opq/summary/v024/24.3-4.bernardi.html

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Figure 1 Trisha Brown, rehearsal notes for the prologue of LOrfeo. Notebook. Trisha
Brown Private Collection.
 notes from the stage 287

Notes from the Stage

Trisha Browns LOrfeo: Postmodern Meets Baroque
{guillaume bernardi}

American choreographer Trisha Browns first directorial venture into the world of
opera in 1998 was a memorable success. The artistic director of the Theatre Royal
de La Monnaie in Brussels, Bernard Foccroulle, was quite daring when he asked
the abstract choreographer to direct Monteverdis LOrfeo, but his gamble paid off:
over the last ten years, Browns production has been widely toured, repeatedly
revived, and is now available on DVD.1 Commentators have often noted its great
success but they also have underlined its enigmatic quality. Noted designer
Roland Aeschlimann certainly contributed to the stagings hypnotic effect on
audiences by imagining the minimalist, bleached world in which the action takes
place. Ultimately, though, the defining feature of the production was the striking
movementhalfway between dance and theaterthat Brown devised for the
performers. A study of a page of Browns notebooks (fig. 1) might lead us to a
deeper understanding of the qualities of her work on LOrfeo and of her distinc-
tive creative process.
Anyone working with Trisha Brown has at one point or another marveled at
her notebooks.2 These heavy, dark, bound volumes are never far from the choreo-
graphers chair in the studio. They reveal a clear, sparse world, elegant and brainy
at the same time. The sketches shown here were made in Philadelphia (note
Philly at the top of the right page) in February 1998, when Brown and her team
were completing a series of work sessions at the rehearsal facilities of Flying by
Foy, a company that specializes in theatrical flights. The drawings refer to the
allegorical prologue of LOrfeo, in which Music directly addresses the audience,
inviting them to the performance that follows. In Browns production, La Musica
appeared in flight through a circular opening in a solid screen that filled the
proscenium arch. A dancer embodied the mythical figure, while the singer was
hidden in the pit (fig. 2).
Browns use of a dancer suspended in midair unmistakably echoes a series of
important performance pieces that she inaugurated in 1970 with Man Walking
The Opera Quarterly Vol. 24, No. 34, pp. 286 292; doi: 10.1093/oq/kbp033
# The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.
288 bernardi: trisha browns lorfeo

Figure 2 LOrfeo: Prologue. Choreography: Trisha Brown; set and costume design:
Roland Aeschlimann; dancer: Diane Madden; conductor: Rene Jacobs. The singer,
Juanita Lascarro, is barely visible in the pit. Photo: Johan Jacobs.

Figure 3 Man Walking Down the Side of a Building (1970). Choreography: Trisha
Brown. Photo: Carol Goodden.
 notes from the stage 289

Figure 4 LOrfeo: La Musica operates the transition between acts 4 and

5. Choreography: Trisha Brown; set and costume design: Roland Aeschlimann; dancer:
Diane Madden. Photo: Johan Jacobs.

Down on the Side of a Building (fig. 3).3 Those pieces explored daily ordinary
actions (walking, for instance) performed in extraordinary contexts. Beneath the
added layers of narrative, costume, and lighting, the expert eye recognizes that
the movement vocabulary of the dancer performing La Musica in LOrfeo is
related to Browns earlier experiments (fig. 4). The division of the part of La
Musica into a dancer and a singer should also be interpreted as more than a
mere trick to circumvent the physical limitations of singers; it squarely positions
Browns production within the realm of experimental theater. The radical step of
disembodying the voice (the dancer did not mouth the sung words) at the very
start of the opera immediately takes the spectator into another theatrical dimen-
sion. The opening sequence introduces the audience to a set of innovative per-
formance rules, far from those of traditional opera productions. Clearly, the
singing is not a mere accompaniment to the dance. The question therefore is
how those two components are connected.
Browns notebookspecifically the drawings at the bottom of the page
provides some answers. They record a close to final version of the sequence of
traveling movements that the dancer performs during the prologue, as the audi-
ence sees them through the circular opening in the screen. From the drawings,
one can see how the highly structured sequence associates specific trajectories
with the various stanzas of the music. The circles represent, of course, the circu-
lar opening in which La Musica appears. Each verse is identified by a particular
key word referring to Alessandro Striggios text or to a Roman numeral, while the
ritornellos are notated with R and the da capos with DC. The duration of
each section is notated at the bottom of the page. From the very first glance,
Browns movement sequence (and the preliminary versions in the upper part of
290 bernardi: trisha browns lorfeo

the page) reveals an abstract design. The aerial paths assigned to La Musica are
devised as a series of variations and repetitions. They create a continuous
sequence clearly connected to the structure of the music itself; they deliberately
do not attempt to illustrate the meaning of the text in a traditional way.
Browns abstract solution for this key moment is quite daring, especially since
it is applied to dramatic music and specifically to Baroque opera. Traditionally, in
Baroque aesthetics, gesture underlines the sense of the text; its connection to
meaning is quite clear.4 In most cases, gestures simply emphasize or mimic the
text and thus are, in some sense, pleonastic. Of course, this conception made
more sense in theaters where lighting did not bring out the body of the perfor-
mer, or where the singers competed with social interaction for the audiences
attention. Browns choices for the prologue, on the other hand, can be traced
back to her roots in postmodern dance.5 The great attention she gives to structure
and her decision to express the text only indirectly can be related to the collage
technique that John Cage and Merce Cunningham were developing and cham-
pioning during her formative years. Here movement is not subservient to the
text; its meaning emerges from juxtaposition with the music. This solution
implies a choreographic rather than directorial approach to Monteverdis master-
piece and a greater concern with form than with meaning. But a closer examin-
ation of Browns work reveals that this purely abstract approach is subtly
modulated to support the meaning of the text and of the drama. This shaping of
an abstract vocabulary to convey dramatic meaning is, in my opinion, the most
distinctive feature of Browns version of LOrfeo.
As with many choreographers of her generation, Brown extensively uses
improvisation techniques to develop choreographic material, and indeed her note-
books reveal pages and pages of improvisation material. All the drawings above
the prologue sequence illustrate how Brown relentlessly explored movement
forms that could match the highly formalized language of Striggios libretto.6 We
can discover, for instance, right above the prologue sequence, one of those
perfect matches between text and abstract movement. One reads ne soda [sic]
followed by a long stroke of the pen. This is a quotation from the last strophe
sung by La Musica:

Or mentre in canti alterno or lieti or mesti,

non si mova augellin fra queste piante,
ne soda in queste rive onda sonante,
ed ogni auretta in suo cammin sarresti.7

Brown matched Monteverdis musical rest after ne soda with the dancer taking
a breathtaking plunge, followed by a moment of stillness. By creating such strik-
ing images intimately connected with the music, Brown developed a new theatri-
cal language that fully respects the structure of Monteverdis music but
 notes from the stage 291

Figure 5 Correggio, Vision of Saint John the Evangelist, 1520 21. Church of San
Giovanni Evangelista, Parma, Italy. Photo: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

simultaneously challenges and stimulates the spectators perception and imagin-

ation. The rigorous matching of movement and music enables the spectator to
see and grasp the musical structure. At the same time, the clarity and sparseness
292 bernardi: trisha browns lorfeo

of the productions visual components open up a myriad of associations and

interpretations for the audience. Personally, I cant help overlaying the apparition
of La Musica as imagined by Brown with reminiscences of Italian High
Renaissance or Baroque art. The flight of La Musica brings to mind the countless
ceilings teeming with angels painted by Italian artists from Correggio to Tiepolo,
and I deeply enjoy such visual allusions triggered by Browns approach (fig. 5).
I am intensely aware, though, that Browns allusive, minimalist creation allows
each spectator to generate his or her own personal associations.
Browns notebooks reveal a mixture of rigor and freedom that defines her
approach. It is that mix that made her production of LOrfeo unforgettable, taking
spectators deeply into the text and music of Monteverdis masterpiece but simul-
taneously reconnecting them to their own inner worlds.

notes
Guillaume Bernardi is a professor in drama
studies at York University in Toronto. He
specializes in the study of intercultural
performance practices. His directorial work
covers a wide range of genres, from theater and
opera to movement pieces. Recent directorial
projects include Mozarts Le Nozze di Figaro for
the Frankfurt Oper and the Canadian Opera
Company. He was Trisha Browns assistant for
her productions of Monteverdis LOrfeo and
Salvatore Sciarrinos Luci mie traditrici.
1. After its premiere in Brussels in May 1998,
the production toured to London,
Aix-en-Provence, New York, and Paris the
following year. It was revived in Brussels in 2002
and in Aix-en-Provence in 2007. Rene Jacobs
conducted. The DVD was released by Harmonia
Mundi in 2007 (HMD 9909003.04) and features
Simon Keenlyside, Juanita Lascarro, Graciela
Oddone, and Martina Dike.
2. Pages of Trisha Browns notebooks have
already appeared in several publications. See Lise
Brunel, Babette Mangolte, and Guy Delahaye,
Trisha Brown (Paris: Editions Bouge, 1987), 37;
and Corinne Diserens, Trisha Brown: Danse, precis
de liberte (Marseille: Musees de Marseille; Paris:
Reunion des musees nationaux, 1998), 47 54.
3. Those early performance pieces are well
illustrated in Brunel, Mangolte, and Delahaye,
Trisha Brown.
4. On this vast topic, one can refer to
Barnetts pathbreaking work: Dene Barnett, The
Art of Gesture: The Practices and Principles of 18th
Century Acting (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1987).
5. An important analytical study of Browns
work in the context of postmodern art is Sally
Banes, Terpsichore in Sneakers: Post-Modern Dance
(Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press,
1987).
6. Brown, just like Monteverdi, played a lot
with the stanza form, strictly respecting it most
of the time throughout the opera.
7. Now while I alternate songs now happy
now sad, / Let no bird move among those
trees, / Let no wave be heard on these shores /
And every breeze be stopped in its path.