Uncertain how to describe
and define Peer Gynt's hybrid juxtaposition
and combination of so many media. More than a concert-opera
à la Damnation
de Faust (though equally definite in not being
for the stage): might be a Gesamtkunstwerk (except that the term
is so specific to Wagnerian music-drama). "World-Theatre"
seems to have the right connotations. I suppose that if the
monster were ever to reach performance it would have to be in the
concert hall, with or without "visual aids". But
what I dimly conceive, in my pre-technological fashion, is that
the entire content in all its multiformity could somehow be compacted
into a slim lightweight pack encoding a cross between televized
concert / opera / ballet / play, plus animated cartoon film (à
la Fantasia, and
taking into account all the amazing advances since), plus gorgeous
filmed travelogue (Peer's 30-year Ocean
Voyage with its extended
episodes in the Americas, the Far East, India, Central Africa,
Egypt), that could equally well be heard and seen in the private
home or the public auditorium.
Peer Gynt was initially mooted
at the same moment as Brand. As
with Ibsen himself the two are
complementary: first the
grim morality of the boy who stays at home, confronting as modern
hero the latterday dragons of the contemporary world; then
the riotous adventures of the boy who bursts the bonds, making
home too hot to hold him, escaping to take the whole contemporary
world as his onion, sucking it dry and finding the bitterness,
then the nothingness at its centre as he returns old and spent
yet still salved in his mother / sweethearts's enduring love.
That initial impulse thought to combine the two tales. While
Peer passes his prime travelling the globe, the listener would
pass the time hearing the ballad of Brand whose life grows ever
narrower, till after his débâcle with the glacier, the alter
ego returns to resume the other story, encounter the Button-Moulder,
confront his past, make his peace with himself, and merge into
Solveig. This was crazy: both these gigantic subjects
need the full canvas of an entire evening to do them justice.
I've put my ALL (as Brand requires) into this huge affair, with
next to no hope of its ever being realized. If I'd not
written it I'd have lived and died unused at the highest level
to which I can aspire. Will the white elephant ever be
awakened from its sleep, yawn and stretch, blow its trumpet,
sing and louder sing, before flying off into the azure on swan's
wings?
The two extended extracts would work well enough in the concert
hall (the Ocean Voyage hasn't yet been played); but will
always seem to lack a dimension in their reduced scoring and
absence of the detailed visual scenario on film. |