VANUNU
Interview with the Composers
The following is a discussion between the two composers of VANUNU,
Robert Iolini and David Nerlich
The subject and content of the opera are explained in the interview, although
the issues covered here are more to do with the interaction of music and
text in opera, dealing with controversial or politically loaded subjects,
and if and how music is suffused with literal meaning.
RI: We should start with an overview of what we've done. What "Vanunu" is about.
DN: Well, Mordechai Vanunu was a nuclear technician who revealed that Israel was developing an offensive nuclear capability, unknown to the rest of the world and unknown to the population of Israel itself. For his trouble he was kidnapped by Israel's secret service and sentenced to 18 years in prison and as far as we know is currently in his 7th year of solitary confinement. So "Vanunu" maps out the fatal journey of its subject. It's a journey across physical and psychic terrains, and across geographic and cultural sites, from North Africa to Israel, South East Asia to Australia. Underlying all this shifting scenery is Vanunu's vacillation over the choice to act, over the polarities of his Arab and Jewish identity, his rejection of Judaism and adoption of Christianity and the significance of its tenets underscoring his decision to bear witness. So to continue I suppose we could look at what difficulties there were in translating these sorts of ideas into a musical form?
RI: I didn't find it very difficult... the subject matter inspired certain textural and gestural ideas. The libretto implied musical gestures which I created formal structures for. Maybe the difficulties, if any, were for the librettist?
DN: Hmm... well its a similar situation of studying the research material and making poetic gestures... and I suppose in turn I did as you did and further translated those into accompanying musical gestures. I think the problems particular to "Vanunu" were to do with narrative and controversy... with the currency of the political issues.
RI: Yes, political correctness is always a question... but this often tends to manifest itself in pressing artists into taking apolitical or 'safe' positions. But then I don't believe any action is truly apolitical. However, presently there seems to be prevalence of mythological subjects, of politics divorced from the moment.
DN: Yes, a timelessness that attracts, a politics drawn from history or myth, abstracted from the present, it allows a kind of inoffensiveness. Its something to do with the abstractness of music itself and a desire to retain that, but also a reluctance to offend anyone by taking or even intimating a potentially controversial position. Classicism in subject matter sometimes seems like an irrelevance seeking abstraction - but seeking also not to relinquish the element of narrative. Perhaps 'neutrality' is a better term than abstraction.
RI: Or is it easier for composers to be inspired by the classic myths and romances than it is to draw upon contemporary political issues?
DN: Perhaps it's not a common talent to be able to extract stable meanings or a viable narrative from current events. I guess myth and antiquity are substantially written, while our own history has still to be written and rewritten a few times by opposing points of view before it is by and large agreed upon. The history of that secondary conflict being the judge of what the rest of history ultimately becomes. Composers, by nature of calling themselves such, aren't usually interested in writing stories if they have the option of musically interpreting something that's already written... and already understood.
RI: Is that a weakness?
DN: There's a dishonesty when an abstraction like music seeks a literal subject only in order to justify its existence, though I think if this happens we may find part of the cause in modern structures of arts patronage. We have government (or occasionally corporate) arts bureaucracy entering into a symbiosis of mutual perpetuation with its supported artists, and a similar scenario with arts media and publicity. The dominant language here is the written and subsequently the spoken word. So in a sense because of funding and promotional structures, literature infects all the art forms. Music requires literal content or attachment so that it can be described and 'explained' for the purposes of funding proposals, reviews in the media, criticism, promotion and so on. Which is not to say things were necessarily freer in some bygone era.
RI: Again, nothing is apolitical. There is a politics in making music. Can an instrumental work with no text have no meaning? The process is a statement. You cant separate yourself from your environment. There are always forces acting upon you. Vanunu could have existed successfully as a purely instrumental work.
DN: The issue translates to popular or audience funded music. Interestingly, a lot of pop music from all sorts of cultures is based around singing and by default, with rare exceptions, the lyric. So you've got literature again. Of course it's possible to talk a lot and not say much, or say the same thing over and over like 'i love you' or 'aint life grand (or awful)' but then whether there is quality in the literal content has a lot to do with whether something is art or just entertainment. Its also interesting to look at how some of the really popular pop-stars deal with all the attention focussed upon them and how or whether they perceive a responsibility to utter words deserving of that attention. Some refuse interviews and maintain a mystique that way, others rise to the occasion like you had Bob Geldof with the Africans and Sting talking about rainforests, or you have someone like Bono in whom I often sense an acute frustration with the will to do some kind of 'good', some kind of messianic thing, but the inability to find anything much worth saying - possibly due to having spent his entire adult life working in a rock and roll band!
RI: There is the fear factor... Look at Rushdie. There are potential dangers in regard to offending certain people or even appearing unfashionably opinionated. But there are also responsibilities that come with freedom of speech.
DN: Its certainly important in an artist's career to 'be liked' and supported, either by as large an audience as possible, or perhaps as fiercely as possible by a narrower cross-section. There are questions of what ideas are sufficiently inoffensive related to what views or world-views are sufficiently widely held to be openly adopted. For instance taking an anti-nuclear position is much simpler and less likely to get you into trouble than taking a position on the actions of the government of Israel and whether Vanunu is a criminal or a political prisoner. You can attempt to let the 'facts' speak for themselves and leave opinion-forming up to the audience.. but one is always open to accusations of selective presentation of content. RI: Apart from its overtly political literalism, there were complex compositional and technical factors in realising the multi-layered form that Vanunu took. Balancing the dynamics of narrative form, musical integrity, informational accuracy.
DN: I don't think these dimensions clashed.. perhaps they competed. I was certainly attracted to the idea of Vanunu as both a tragic figure - that is the emotional content - but also as an embodiment of some very current human concerns. The story of Vanunu embraces an array of 20th Century obsessions and phobias - nuclear war, technology, religion, racism, human rights, democracy. That is more the 'literal' or referential content, while the emotional content can be understood in more musical terms.
RI: I'd say the importance of conveying ideas with Vanunu lead to a war between the text and the music, or at least a struggle for dominance within the time constraints of the piece.
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