Last night I went to listen to John Berger talk at an event organised by ‘Race and Class’ magazine. The event was called ‘Against the Great Defeat of the World’ - a quote from a poem by Juan Gelman, the Argentinean poet. John was introduced by A. Sivanandan, the Sri Lankan novelist and thinker and in some ways his introduction was the most moving part of the event, as it was infused with such love and respect. Once again it became clear that John’s work which, uniquely, is always both politically and aesthetically radical, has spoken to and for so many.
His book “The Seventh Man” (written in 1975) was praised as still being the most eloquent testimony to the lives of immigrant workers in print. His latest book, just completed, and from which he read, consists of letters from a woman to her lover who is a political prisoner. The letters range from a description of a pile of plums covered in frost to an account of being part of a human shield against a military barrage.
The questions at the end were the usual mix in such situations, but John refuses to waffle - he puts his head in his hands, sighs deeply, and waits until a phrase comes that is worth being uttered.
John came to the first night of Carmen and, despite his immensely busy schedule and multiple commitments, managed to find the time to write me a beautiful three-page letter about it which he faxed to me the next morning. It is a letter I will treasure, along with every letter and drawing he has sent me since I got to know him in recent years. To receive such a letter should, by any standards, be enough of a counterweight to any negative reviews, but even after many years of experience I remain vulnerable to every attack in print.
I left for Venice the day after the first night, hoping that the glittering light bouncing off the water in the canals might lift my spirits following these last few weeks spent in studios without any daylight and also might provide a visual counterpoint to any less than positive responses to my production. I had been warned by everyone who knows the world of opera and its critics that reactions would be sharply divided, despite a wonderfully warm response from the first-night audience. The predictions about the critics turned out to be accurate to the letter.
As the news of some hostile reviews trickled in, I sat down by the water and wept; tears of frustration and exhaustion. A faxed copy of the wonderful review in The Independent mitigated the grief; but dealing with critical response is, for me, always one of the hardest parts of the work in any medium.
When I meet younger directors (and artists of other kinds) I find I am constantly trying to provide some force against the massive tide of discouragement they face, of which dismissive judgement and cynical criticism is a major part.
When a work is made with love it is difficult to deal with a response of hate or calculated indifference. But one must weep and move on. And if I can pass on to others some spark of the fighting spirit and encouragement I feel from the very existence of John Berger and his work, I will be well pleased.
Comments
This blog post gave me absolute shivers... I have been reading John Berger's wonderful, terrible new book Hold Everything Dear, which meditates on "the state of undefeated despair" that is shared by those violently excluded from power.
In the first essay, "Wanting Now," he concludes:
"Not all desires lead to freedom, but freedom is the experience of a desire being acknowledged, chosen and pursued. Desire never concerns the mere possession of something, but the changing of something. Desire is a wanting. A wanting now. Freedom does not constitute the fulfilment of that wanting, but the acknowledgement of its supremacy."
Although written in April 2006, it rings true with many of the significant and moving themes that Ed Seckerson picks up in his Carmen review. It's wonderful that Seckerson acknowledged the way the production expresses your desire to find a Carmen who offers a model, a way to break free from the "state of undefeated despair."
It seems like you are on the same wavelength as John Berger, and with audiences who care about freedom and desire, and who acknowledge the supremacy of that wanting -- unlike some critics who, like Escamillo, merely want to feel they own and control.