Page 565 - Aldeburgh Festival 2022 FINAL COVERAGE BOOK

of each day’s life”. Indeed this story resonates strongly with the violation of nature
Shakespeare portrays in his Scottish play. Excellent allusion.

There was a hole or two in the plot though e.g. on Day 4, as the town clock jumps 7
hours from midnight, and we learn that the lost time is daylight hours. Then when light
is extinguished finally and Violet has her boat ready to escape with Laura who is afraid
of drowning, we understand there are no news reports from the wider world about
what has happened yet Violet assures Laura that many boats have crossed the sea over
the horizon without sinking.

This brings me to the disappointment I felt about the outcome. Seeing no more of Violet
whom with Laura we assume has been liberated to find a new life at last, the bizarre
denouement is relayed as an animated collage on the backdrop, including the
announcement a baby was born in January. Is this to Violet, yet how and by whom? A
series of numbers is flashed up which I took to refer to quiz teams as we watch a quiz
show where a contestant has to give 10 answers about the side effects of sarin, else
calamity will ensue as images of warfare increasingly dominate the screen. The final
quiz question is shocking. Why would a man use a gun? Answer – to shoot his children
in the face. This is a nihilistic message with no apparent redemption for anyone. Unlike
Shostakovich’s tenth symphony, also desperate, terrifying and dark but which is
ultimately triumphant in the face of impossible horrors, ‘Violet’ fails to leave us with
optimism about surviving catastrophe.

The narrative tension is supported consistently throughout by Tom Coult’s score,
uncomfortably atonal, performed by the singers who must be credited for the hours of
work they must have done to mesh their voices with the dissonant orchestration of the
London Sinfonietta conducted by Andrew Gourlay, woodwind and brass very much at
the fore punctuating the vocal exposition of the story, though with chimes and the
ticking of clocks providing atmosphere and variety with some electronics. Anna Dennis
is especially impressive in the title role as she hits her notes with astonishing precision.
But for those who dislike the artificiality of musical theatre where dialogue can seem
forced and contrived, they may not be impressed by such torturous delivery. While
giving credit to the singers for maintaining their difficult lines over 90 minutes of a
story about the disappearance of time, it may seem ironic how slowly the pace of the
drama passed. With little obvious harmonic contrast,‘Violet’ seemed dissonant from
start to finish, with no let up of the strident tension as an orderly world disintegrates.
Comparing dissonance to being pepper, Prokofiev said no one wants to listen to music
that’s all pepper. While after 4 hours of dissonance, the groundbreaking score of
Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde finally resolves with consonance, ‘Violet’ does not.

In summary then, ‘Violet’ as concept with narrative potential is intriguingly bold even if
the denouement is finally disappointing, its staging was marvellous, and its
performances commendable. Its shrewd avoidance of specificity as to time or place
lends it the opportunity for long-term appearance in the canon of opera.