by Tansy Davies, libretto Nick Drake
seen at the Barbican on 25 April 2015
This opera, co-commissioned by ENO and the Barbican, follows five imagined but representative figures in the North Tower of the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11 2001. Directed by Deborah Warner and conducted by Gerry Cornelius, it features Andrew Watts as a Shaman, Eric Greene as a Janitor, Rhian Lois as a Younger Woman, Clare Presland as a Realtor (estate agent) William Morgan as a Younger Man, Phillip Rhodes as an Older Man and Susan Bickley as a Mother (of the Younger Man).
Both composer and librettist in the accompanying program refer to the events of 9/11 (as they are still so clumsily referred to) as 'unspeakable', and one senses the difficulty of approaching the subject with the appropriate degrees of tact and artistic conviction. By and large this production succeeds in overcoming the obstacles of glibness, sentimentality, voyeurism and presumption which could all too easily have bedevilled it.
