The Maids, by John Lunn, adapted by Olivia Fuchs from the play by Jean Genet

Claire         Christopher Robson
Solange        Nigel Robson
Madame         Emma Selway

Conductor      Dominic Wheeler
Director       Olivia Fuchs

Orchestra of English National Opera

Genet's play seems a natural choice to adapt as an opera. Two sisters
obsessively act out a fantasy in which Claire plays Madame, their employer,
dressing in her clothes, and Solange plays Claire, subservient and
resentful, but also adoring. Their murderous feelings for Madame are turned
back on themselves, and become merged with their obsession with each other,
until all three characters strike poses which demand the sort of adoring
aggression that belongs to an opera heroine.

The plot, such as it is, is that Claire has written a letter denouncing
Madame's lover to the police, and he has been arrested. Their ritual, which
should lead to the "death" (or death) of "Madame" is interrupted by a
telephone call, in which he says that he has been released and asks Madame
to meet him. They decide to murder Madame with pills in her tea, and delay
telling her the news when she comes home. She refuses the tea repeatedly
(Claire is a bit like Mrs Doyle). After a sentimental turn in which she
gives
Claire her fur, she finds out the news, takes back the fur and dashes out
in a taxi to meet her lover. The maids are terrified that Claire will be
imprisoned for sending the denunciatory letter and resume their game, this
time apparently completing it.

The maids are played by men, as Genet intended: Claire, who plays Madame
for most of the time and (perhaps) dies instead of her, by the
counter-tenor Christopher Robson, and Solange by his brother, the tenor
Nigel Robson. (The work was conceived for them -- John Lunn has composed
two previous works for Nigel Robson.) These two singers are also brilliant
actors, and their performance was powerful and engrossing, and strangely
sympathetic. They both managed to convey obsession and childlike pleasure
in play at the same time. Emma Selway was brittle and glamorous as Madame,
but not quite hysterical enough.

John Lunn's music emphasises the way the characters see themselves being
seen. It evokes both the popular culture, especially the movies, and the
Roman Catholicism that inform their concept of being a woman. One of the
key themes is the elision between the way the maids see themselves as the
Virgin Mary, and as the celebrants of a ritual similar to the mass, where
the priest both describes Christ's actions and acts them out himself.
Lunn's allusions to religious music were similar to (say) those in act 1 of
Tosca in purpose, but camper in effect. He also used Spanish dance forms,
recalling both Carmen and Come Dancing, or the film 10.

I felt that the music missed out the more violent identification of the
maids with Christ as an executed criminal, and with criminals in general --
the overall effect was rather dodgy entertainment rather than truly
disturbing drama.

The production was set in the 1930s, roughly. The maids wore black dresses,
and Madame's clothes were an odd assortment of drag-queen garments. The set
was bare except for a dressing table, a small table with teh

But I wonder what sort of future this work has. Nigel and Christopher
Robson make it worth seeing, but they've been working on it for a couple of
years. (They did a workshop before they appeared in the Glyndebourne
Touring Theodora, in which Olivia Fuchs was also involved.) Getting two
other singers, one of them a counter-tenor, who can give it the same sort
of power will be difficult. And the work itself assumes a decidedly limited
view of gender, making the themes of play and self-regard simply another
aspect of "femininity" and vice versa. It's very clever, but also very
limited without a supercharged performance.

Still, this performance is on for a fortnight in Hammersmith, then three
nights in Oxford, and on tour next year. With luck, the basic idea will be
intriguing enough to attract an audience who normally stick to new theatre
to try an opera.