Ades: Powder Her Face
The emergence of British composer Thomas Adès was one of the exciting musical phenomena of the 1990s. So heady and extravagant was the praise heaped on the enfant terrible (born in 1971), one feared the attention would overwhelm, squelching an otherwise brilliant career before it had a chance to mature. Praise be, it didn't. Adès has proceeded apace into the new millennium's first decade with further artistic triumphs (his Covent Garden-commissioned, richly imagined operaThe Tempestand an excellent violin concerto,Concentric Paths).All the more fascinating then to revisit one of the breakthrough moments of Adès's career in this film version of his chamber opera,Powder Her Face. When he was searching for a topic for his first opera, Adès originally turned toLolitabefore he and librettist/novelist Philip Hensher settled on the downfall of Margaret, Duchess of Argyll for their subject (she had just died in 1993, at the age of 80). The two were obviously drawn to this ironic morality tale of sex, class privilege, and the tabloid media on account of its satirical possibilities. True, the opera does trade off a certain sensationalist element. Some negative critical responses to the opera (which premiered in 1995) charged Adès with "adolescent exhibitionism" for composing a pivotal scene around the heroine's predilection for offering oral sex. The core of the story involves the so-called "Dirty Duchess"--once attractive, rich, and the inspiration for Cole Porter's "You're the Top"--after her scandalous divorce trial in 1963. Details of her audacious sexual adventures were widely publicized, leading to her fall from grace.But there's much more than snarky attitude to the opera. Adès exudes a Nabokovian delight in the rich possibilities of his allusive musical language, which touches on Astor Piazzolla tangos, swanky band music, the degradation of Berg's Lulu, Strauss's Marschallin, even--in an imposing, spectral appearance by the Duke--the Stone Guest from Mozart'sDon Giovanni(the Duchess had been characterized by the tabloids as a "female Don Juan") . Adès here conducts the 15-player chamber ensemble (performing is the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group). His scoring alone is a tour de force of constantly skittering, electrically charged currents--spiky and acerbic but also delightfully inventive--commenting on the characters' behavior. Throughout Adès threads a leitmotif of mocking laughter. A cast of three play multiple roles (including her maid, a society journalist, "rubberneckers" at the trial, a room service waiter, and so on) against the Duchess as flashbacks enact her past life.The 1999 film is adapted from David Alden's stage direction for the original Almeida and Aldeburgh Festival productions and was originally shown on Britain's Channel Four. The settings offer splendid period detail, suggestive of faded elegance for the (now electronically surveilled) Dorchester Hotel suite where the aging Duchess has her flashbacks and of a bygone era's glitz. Camera angles melt into surreal shots (we see the notorious "blowjob" scene from the ceiling's perspective), while everyone seems to be enacting some sort of ritual (including a hilarious encounter of the Duke with his own mistress in "Is Daddy squiffy?") The singers (Heather Buck, Dan Norman, and Graeme Broadbent, with Mary Plazas in the lead as the Duchess) are all theatrically involved, with especially vivid contributions from Buck as a high-flying coloratura in several guises. Plazas may seem to lack the icy edge of the Duchess's arrogance, but she's spot-on in conveying Adès's more sympathetic passages: where the larger perspective of hypocrisy as society condemns her for "nymphomania" emerges. One complaint: no text or subtitles are included, so bits of Hensher's clever libretto get obscured in ensemble passages.And a bonus: the disc includes Gerald Fox's 50-minute documentary portrait of the composer from 199, "Thomas Adès: Music for the 21st Century." It shows him performing some of his piano works and conducting his symphonic masterpieceAsyla, interspersed with discussions of imagery that has inspired the composer.--Thomas May