ThomasAdès (b. 1971)
Dances
from Powder Her Face
1.
Overture
2.
Waltz
3.
Finale
Duration: 11'
Publisher: Faber Music
KSO played: 2010
Philip Larkin
famously observed that “Sexual intercourse began in 1963 (Which was rather too
late for me).” The Beatles and Lady Chatterly’s Lover were his compass
points, but another could easily have been the scandalous divorce of Margaret
Campbell, Duchess of Argyll. The
daughter of a Scottish millionaire raised in New York, Margaret was named
debutante of the year in 1930 and became a well-known socialite. Just how well she had made herself known was
demonstrated when the Duke of Argyll filed for divorce.
The evidence
presented for his wife’s infidelity prompted the Minister for Defence to offer
his resignation; the identity of the “Headless Man” photographed in a
compromising position with the Duchess remains a subject of speculation to this
day. The Profumo affair the same year
provided further evidence that the age of deference was coming to an end. The Duchess continued her extravagant
lifestyle regardless. Eventually she was
forced to sell her home and live in a hotel suite. She ended her days penniless in a nursing
home, a far cry from her glamorous youth.
Sex, Scandal
and Aristocracy are of course three staple ingredients of opera. Thomas Adès duly stepped up to the challenge
in 1997 and made his name with the ensuing succès
de scandale. Signing up with
Britten’s publisher, curating the Aldeburgh festival and composing to
commissions from Covent Garden and the Berlin Philharmonic among others have
since cemented his position at the heart of the establishment, but Powder Her Face remains a highlight of
his career so far.
The opera is
not quite biographical: the duchess presented in it is a fictionalised version
of the real Margaret, which allows for a certain latitude with regard to fact;
dates and the order of events are freely rearranged. The duchess is presented as at once comic and
tragic, a woman of little self-awareness who is brought down by her own
foolishness, but also by a puritanical and judgemental society, and the passing
of a culture that holds its upper classes in unthinking deference. The action takes place at various points in
the duchess’s life. At the beginning and
end of the play we see her in her decline, about to leave the hotel suite she
could no longer afford in 1990. In
between come scenes from her youthful prime as a débutante and socialite, and
the furore surrounding her divorce.
In its
original form the music is written for a small ensemble reminiscent of a pit
band or a dance orchestra. The present
suite expands the original forces into a full symphony orchestra, and presents
a précis of the Duchess’s world. The
acid-drenched tango of the Overture evokes the hotel staff mocking the Duchess
and her decadent past. There follows a
waltz with an hallucinogenic quality, suggestive of a world lost to dreams,
before the finale snuffs out the lights.
Note © by Peter Nagle
Note © by Peter Nagle
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