Whose Butt?
The main reason one gay couple came to my opera at Musiktheatertage Festival in Vienna last summer was because of its title: The Butt . At composer/director's Q and A's they revealed that they had really come for the bottoms! As it happens there were quite a few bottoms on show but perhaps they did not exactly fulfil their criteria. Will Self’s novel is a dastardly satire on Western civilisation's failings, its insurgencies raging in the middle east and the outmoded assumptions of a average man with a disgruntled wife and two point three kids. But of course Martha, his wife, is enraged, why shouldn’t she be? Tom Brodzinski pleases himself. He is an outdated character but perhaps that's just fine for an opera!
"The music of The Butt was stylistic with great variety: it was skillfully worked and crafted, offering a variety of moods and motivic links.” Stefan Ender, Weekend Der Standard, September 3-4, 2016.
My composerly standards for the opera were up to scratch according to the Viennese press, phew! They liked the weird story of Tom giving up smoking in a strange land. That through the flip of his last butt falling from his holiday apartment balcony on to an old man's head it burns a hole leading to Tom’s entire life unraveling to the point of lobotomy. Well, this is a Will Self novel and yes, we are related (first cousins) and yes, some of his writing references the peculiar obsessions of our shared family landscape. Therefore it was exciting and relatively easy to compose. I could with ease put my proverbial butt behind it. The fact that Will and I ended up at a Poo-Bah type Q and A at the British Ambassadors residence just as Boris Johnson was about to arrive only added to the bizarre nature of the whole gig. And believe me there were stranger things: women playing men, contemporary sounding music that also managed to weave in melody, polyphonic harmony and sumptuous vocal lines.
Héloïse Mas as The Entreati Sorceress seduced Tomas Desi the director and myself at the audition like a fragile doe-eyed shaman, her voice is stunning, and there are others too: Catherine Joule, Miriam Sharrad, Hazel Neighbour, Dawn Burns and the brave Nick Buxton as the naked Tom, noble, humiliated and reduced like a gravy to pulp. We never got the mud bath because of a white carpet on the set but hey it was all deliciously bizarre.
"Musically The Butt is in the best British tradition.The organic liquid vocal lines remind me of Britten. Composer Susannah Self forms musically the internal structure of the plot. Self’s ironically undermined musical pragmatics is for the public actually very digestible. The ensemble includes musicians of high standard. The composer conducted the performance with meticulousness.”
To give you a taste of the experience I have made a 15 minute video of extracts on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ZAGo-Jmiv9w
But returning to the overall bottom theme of The Butt was perhaps the amazing road trip that I made with Percussionist Chris Brannick and Cellist Joe Davies. Here I can assure you no holds were barred, each of our entire sexual history hung out on the metaphorical washing line over a period of 4 days trucking from London to Vienna and back. An engorged experience that the three of us will hold dear for eternity. And finally yes my own butt displayed freely and without shame in the Blue Danube en route while Chris and Joe looked on over a cooling beer.
