Atthis

by Georg Friedrich Haas

seen at the Linbury Studios, Covent Garden on 24 April 2015

This short piece, hovering between a song cycle and a mini-opera, sets fragments of Sappho's poetry, sung in German by Claire Booth accompanied by the London Sinfonietta. 

The program began with Haas's second string quartet, played by members of the Sinfonietta, with two dancers representing Sappho (Laure Bachelot) and Atthis (Rachel Maybank). Direction, design, costumes and video were by Netia Jones. 

The stage was a shiny black floor, and behind, an enormous dark disc in front of a wall. A small platform protruded from the disc below and to the left of its centre. A figure lay reclining on this platform, revealed later to be the singer.

Shafts of light illuminated the two dancers, and then a shimmering light, as if of moonlight filtering through trees, lit the stage for most of the dance. This depicted encounters between Sappho and Atthis, tender, urgent, reproachful as Atthis slipped away once too often, and valedictory.

During most of the singing, the dancers were absent, except that Atthis appeared towards the end.

Once the quartet was over, and 'Atthis' proper began, the disc was used as a screen for various images and for English renderings of the text being sung. (Occasionally Greek letters were also present.) This was essential as the texts are both extremely fragmentary and not at all familiar, and the musical style made the deciphering of the German words at times very difficult. Claire Booth sang with conviction and accomplishment, while images arising from the verse fragments, or projections from the dance we had witnessed during the quartet, became the hypnotic focus of our attention. The style was rarely lyrical or even tuneful, though the overall effect (visual and aural) was very striking. However, as there was no development , and only the generic idea of the progress of a relationship, the overall performance time of about an hour was sufficient.