SCENEKUNST NORWAY review “CRANE REFLECTS ON A FAVOR”
Costume design: Jill Sigman and Lydia May Hann. Lighting: Kaja Lund. Photo: Manuel Madsen.
Despite a somewhat unclear fictional contract, Kristin Norderval's newly written eco-opera is intense and heartfelt in its portrayal of a crane's gloomy reflections.
VårFest is the vocal arts organization VoxLab's annual international festival for new vocal works and takes place at various concert venues around the capital, spread over three days. This year's festival theme is Crossing Boarders and focuses on marginalized voices and voices seeking new expressions of change and freedom. The festival has an impressive proportion of female composers and performers and this year included a musical celebration of the ongoing Iranian revolution in Tøyen Church. On Saturday 2 September, the festival concluded with the world premiere of the contemporary opera Crane Reflects on a Favor. The piece is written by festival director Kristin Norderval, in collaboration with a strong ensemble consisting of Flora Ångman, Viktoria Nikolova, Viktor Bomstad, Miguel Frasconi, Peter Van Bergen and Rob Waring.
An eco-opera
The narrative of Crane Reflects on a Favor is loosely based on the Japanese folk tale Tsuru no Ongaeshi, about the crane that spins magical sails from feathers from its own body. The sails bring wealth and well-being to whoever buys them. However, by using its own feathers in the weave, the crane is tragically driven to extinction and destruction by human greed and hubris.
Norderval calls the performance a diptych - a two-part visual presentation that is linked in terms of content and forms a whole, and which does not necessarily have to be read in chronological order. Nevertheless, Crane Reflects on a Favor begins with three narrators who introduce us to the story: A poor sailmaker rescues a crane from a fishing line. That same evening, he meets a mysterious woman on the run. The two become a couple, and the woman spins a magical sail that saves them from hard times, but also opens the door to temptation, greed, betrayal and loss. The woman forbids her husband to see her work with the loom. But in an impulse of greed and power, the sailmaker breaks his promise and sees that the woman is the crane he saved. In the end, we are informed that what we are about to experience are the crane's own reflections on the fatality that has occurred. The story is told simultaneously by the three narrators, one positioned up along the lighting rig, the other two on either side of the auditorium. With a few seconds of delay or space between the voices, they create a natural echo, and a foreshadowing of the electronic contribution that will characterize the performance.
In the program, Norderval offers us the story of the crane and the sailmaker as a metaphor for the relationship between humanity and "mother earth" and subtitles the performance "an eco-opera". Cranes - like the rest of our bird population - are living dinosaurs and are said to be over ten million years old. Today, crane fossils - like other fossils - are the breeding ground for wealth and prosperity through oil and gas extraction. Ironically, this power not only nurtures humanity, but now also threatens our existence and that of the planet. Norderval therefore invites a collective mourning process around these complex and intertwined mechanisms.
The sound of sails being woven
Crane Reflects on a Favor is also a site-specific piece of modern musical theater, written for the old Christiania Seildugsfabrik (1856-1960), the building that now houses the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. At first glance, one might wonder what is site-specific about a black box/traditional concert hall, but everything from the side aisles to the string ceiling is quickly and consistently put to use. The stage is large and open with a color palette taken from the crane itself: black outfits for the musicians, a black backdrop lit with cold white lights, white, almost paper-like suits that envelop the three singers. The palette is only broken up by a few red elements - a shoe, a ribbon - the color that characterizes the cranes' backs during nesting season. The room is also colored with sound memories from the old sailcloth factory, as well as recordings of real crane song and the sound of Rosanna Vibe's large loom, which is on stage and on which she weaves throughout the performance. In this way, the piece takes the form of a hybrid between a more traditional dramaturgical theater process and a dream-like sound installation.
In the program, all the instrumentalists are listed as sailmakers, but in many ways they also appear as part of the crane and nature's wrath. Jon Halvor Bjørnseth's "Long string" instruments hang from the high ceiling throughout the room. The sound of cello bows being played against the steel strings resonates deep into the body. The sound of glass being rubbed, crackled or broken by glass musician Miguel Frasconi also creates a combination of beauty and discomfort. It is not a pleasant story that is told this evening. There is a great openness to improvisation throughout the performance, and in terms of sound, Viktor Bomstad on electric guitar, Peter Van Bergen's double bass clarinet and Rob Waring on percussion are reminiscent of Sidsel Endresen, Christian Wallumrød and Helge Sten's 2003 album Merriwinkle on Jazzland Recordings, or Endresen's live collaboration with guitarist Stian Westerhus. The combination of this free jazz-inspired sound fused with the three classical sopranos is interesting. The memory of, for example, Van Berger's solo parts played from high up on the technician bridge still comes back to me.
Concrete fable or abstract emotions?
I have previously written about the first diptych of The Sailmaker's Wife - Something is Coming here on Scenekunst. At the time, I read the performance in the light of VårFestfest 2021's festival theme Extended Voices. At the time, I was critical of how the performers' voices stood out as unextended in their constant search for a smooth, grand sound and long lines that trumped all other musical initiatives, and that the speech's meaningful speech melody was therefore conspicuous by its absence. This time I enjoy to a greater extent the vocal premise offered to me; mostly because so much of the song is wordless. The tonal language, phrasing and text treatment are still clearly rooted in the classical opera tradition, but the vocal wingspan is performed with so much fervor and dedication that it creates both credibility and goosebumps.
The three sopranos, Flora Ångman, Viktoria Nikolova and Kristin Norderval, fill the room with strong physical presence and vocal drama as they one by one take on the crane's reflections and move dance-like around the stage and in the side aisles. One in gratitude. The next with fatigue. The third as a fully consumed being. However, the highlight of the evening is created when the three gather in the crane's fourth reflection, flight. Placed at the back of the hall, they create a wall of power that evokes both physical reactions and vocal admiration. I find myself staring at the three bodies mobilizing each cell to produce volume, anger and interaction. The sight of the singers' breathing muscles in action is as powerful and meaningful as the sound itself. We hear the echo of this trio movement out in the hallway for a long time after the singers leave the room and the piece slowly comes to an end. An echo that gives a promise, and a hope, that this is not the last time we will hear from this crane.
Resonance and rings in water
Crane Reflects on a Favor is the final artistic contribution to Norderval's PhD project Electrifying Opera, Amplifying Agency: Designing a performer-controlled interactive audio system for opera singers at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. In the project, Norderval aims to design, develop and test an interactive vocal system for sampling and processing the opera voice. A system that will investigate and emphasize the classical singer's relationship and interaction with the acoustic space, the unamplified, acoustic voice and a more digitized, disembodied expression from the same body.
In Crane Reflects on a Favor, we see the technology in practice. Shaped like two jewelry rings, the voices of the three singers were processed through gestures. Gestures that in turn provided strong guidelines for the performers' stage presence and choreographed movements. The sound processing mostly takes the form of extensions: echoes, reverberations and tones that were allowed to reverberate for a long time in the large, almost empty stage space. At times it was difficult, but interesting, to find the source of the sound. Like ripples in water, it was not always easy to see the stone that hit. But what we dealt with was the aftermath, which was allowed to live for a long time in the room.
The performance made me think of the German philosopher Hartmut Rosa, who works at the intersection of philosophy and sociology. Rosa writes about man's relationship to the world around him. Modern society is built on acceleration, he writes, acceleration of the pace of life. According to Rosa, resonance is the key to a good (and sustainable?) life. We shouldn't yearn for something that existed before the modern era, instead we should connect to what is actually happening around us right now. This is how we can slow down the acceleration. For Rosa, resonance is reverberation, or echo. Something sends out waves that hit something else. Vibrations occur, something is sent out, something comes back. But everyone involved is moved. For me, the performance on Saturday was a piece of resonance. The pace was slow, slow, invading and redemptive at the same time. Although the fictional contract was unclear at times - whether I should connect to an intellectual presentation of a concrete fable or be guided by a more abstract, wordless emotional register - I was connected. There was no trace of swan song at KHiO this evening, neither in the composer, the work, the old sailcloth factory or the brilliant performers. But there was crane song.
Text by
Guro von Germeten - CriticismMusic
Crane Reflects on a Favor - VoxLab VårFEST
Oslo National Academy of the Arts, September 2, 2023
Produced by Kristin Norderval (KHiO)/LOOS Foundation/VoxLab
Concept and text: Kristin Norderval
Music: Kristin Norderval in collaboration with the ensemble
Director: Jill Sigman
Lighting: Kaja Lund
Sound design: Kristin Norderval
Sound engineer: Cato Langnes
Costume design: Jill Sigman and Lydia May Hann
Costume construction: Lydia May Hann
Long string instruments construction: Jon Halvor Bjørnseth
Producer: Claudia Lucacel
The Crane:
Rosanna Vibe, live weaving
Flora Ångman, soprano
Viktoria Nikolova, soprano
Kristin Norderval, soprano
The Sailmaker:
Viktor Bomstad, electric guitar
Miguel Frasconi, glass instruments and modular synth
Peter Van Bergen, double bass clarinet
Rob Waring, percussion
The Narrator:
Viktor Bomstad
Jill Sigman
Claudia Lucacel
