Q&A with Composer Laura Bowler
Following our first Research and Development workshops for OperaUpClose’s upcoming production of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman — which was held at The Monastery, Manchester, the home of our partners the Manchester Camerata — we caught up with composer Laura Bowler, to find out about her experience of the R&D, her takeaways from the few days, and what questions have arisen for the next R&D.
Q: What are the eight instruments you’ve decided on following the R&D in Manchester, and what was your decision-making process?
The line-up that I've landed upon is flute with doubling, so bass flute, piccolo and alto flute; clarinet with doublings on bass clarinet; horn; percussion; accordion; violin; cello and double bass.
What's interesting, especially if you know Wagner's scores well, is that there’s only one brass instrument in there, when brass is a fundamental feature of many of Wagner's scores. One of the main reasons for this is balance. In that size ensemble, if we had more than one brass instrument, it's likely that the way the brass could be used would be limited, whereas the horn is a wonderful bridging instrument between brass and woodwind, and it blends really well.
Originally, I wasn’t going to include the flute because I wanted to have more brass or something that could blend in a different way with the horn, like the soprano saxophone. The original version is all below the flute's register, but we had a flute in the R&D, so I had to do something with it. I found incorporating the flute as a colour and texture in the score really helped to create the atmosphere of this man at sea. So I decided to keep it in.
One of the other instruments that's important to talk about is the accordion. The two predominant reasons for including the accordion are: one it's a hugely dexterous instrument, it can blend with anything, it has a multitude of different sound qualities and it has a huge range. It can fill a lot of the space that might feel lost for the singers – it's a really good grounding. Secondly the accordion is often associated with folk music, sea shanties and on old ships quite often they had an accordion, so it creates that sense of storytelling in the ensemble. As they are part of the story on stage, I thought the accordion would be a useful visual, not just as a sound based instrument.
Q: Your normal composing practice is quite far from the sound world of Wagner; what is it that made you want to do this project and how is your composing practice feeding into this in a way that is augmenting Wagner?
I love the process of arranging. This isn't arranging, but it's a creative kind of deconstruction and reconstruction, and that process is really fascinating for me because it's all about colour and texture. It's not necessarily about the fundamental pieces because they've already been given to us by Wagner, it's about how we can reframe that. I think it's something we should be doing more with older work, not just in the way that OperaUpClose does with opera, but in other work as well.
MANCHESTER CAMERATA PLAYING DURING THE R&D AT THE MONASTERY
Also, the context of The Flying Dutchman fascinates me plus the opportunity to work with Glyn Maxwell (librettist) on this retelling. I'm a hugely political composer and so the opportunity to visit a work that may not necessarily have been seen through that lens before and finding a new perspective is really exciting.
On a more personal level I've always been fascinated by different composers' depictions of the sea. As someone who sails a lot, it's something that's very important to me and I'm intrigued by the way different composers orchestrate the sea and represent it. The opportunity to take Wagner’s work and reframe it in the way that we're doing is really exciting but also deeply challenging – and I love a challenge.
Q: How did you feel before the R&D — did you have any concerns or expectations?
I was mainly excited. My only concern was about how to provide the support for the voice types and balance the sound world with the voices using a smaller ensemble. If the orchestration for the chamber ensemble is not scored in a certain way, then the singers won’t get the support they need from the ensemble to ground them and give them the scaffolding to sing upon.
I was really pleased with how it went. It’s always joyous in an R&D when your biggest concern no longer becomes a concern, especially given that we were working with four instrumentalists, and in future we’ll have eight.
I think with four instruments there could be a limitation of colour. Most of the time you'd have to use all four instruments to some degree, meaning there's no variety in the sound world. I think variety is vitally important given the way that Wagner orchestrates. Knowing now that we can get that variety from only four instruments when there will be an ensemble of eight in the final production, means I’m happy there will be a multitude of combinations, colours and textures that we can work with to create a really varied sound world.
Q: What are the main questions you still have to answer?
The main questions are whether there are moments in the score that we could take out or that could be extended. For example, I absolutely love one of the sections of the ghost chorus in the original score – it's just a single line, with no repetition – and I can't resist the desire to lengthen it. These questions will be a huge back and forth between Glyn, Lucy (director) and myself, making those decisions at the moments which we want to magnify, and the moments that we can go down from the epic towards the personal, because of the intimacy of this setting.
Then there’s the voices. We’re very clear with the Dutchman and Senta what we're going for voice wise, but there are questions about what happens if we bring in a different gendered singer for one of the roles. I think the possibility of saying our steersman is a steerswoman, or possibly a counter tenor, is a really exciting thing to question and probe — if we change that voice type, what does that do to the orchestration, the colour, where it sits in relation to the other voices? I think these are the things we’ll ask at the next R&D. If we’re approaching this work through a new perspective, then I think we need to approach every aspect of it through a new perspective and not to just pick and choose the bits that suit us.
The Flying Dutchman will tour to port-side locations across the UK in autumn 2022. For more information please visit our webpage, or subscribe to our newsletter for updates.