A brief conversation with Michael Besack

Q: “How do projects like this get started? Can you say a few words about that?”

A: “Accidental circumstances play a significant role. I have known Joyce for many years and even sang in one of her productions, back in 2000 (Il Giocatore). It was a comprimario role— that of the policeman. Some of the musical themes she came up with were quite interesting.

Q: “Did you already have something in mind at that time?”

A: “Not really. Joyce went on to other projects, mostly in the direction of musical theater and I had plenty to do with my series on esoteric journeys through poetry and song. By then, I was already buried in Mozart’s Magic Flute and my book dealing with it was published in 2001 We kept talking on social occasions, but there was really nothing in the works.”

Q: “So how did this collaboration come about?”

A: “It was suggested by Joyce’s husband Ernie, who had been following my writings. He mentioned that Joyce was ready to work on an opera, but was still looking for a suitable libretto. In the meantime, I had published an introduction to Wagner’s Ring and there were good reasons to believe that a collaborative effort might lead to interesting results. It all kind of came together in the spring of 2005.”

Q: “Why Pi Narati?”

A: “We wanted a futuristic theme along the lines of an early science-fiction film called The Forbidden Planet. It was based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest. For some reason, clever reinterpretations of great dramatic works tend to be more interesting than pure works of fiction—at least for me. Back in 1956 science-fiction films were not easy to produce. The Forbidden Planet looks somewhat dated at this point, but the story it tells remains fascinating. It revolves around an ultra-advanced civilization destroyed by monsters rising from the subconscious layer. The monsters are brought into existence by a gigantic ‘power-house’. The theme itself is quite popular and recurs regularly in a certain type of literature. There’s for instance John Buchan’s The Power-House, published in 1916. It talks about an instrument of occult control located in central Asia.

What makes this particularly interesting is the suggestion that we can be controlled from within: directly through the subconscious. We are all familiar with external methods of control that work through the senses, but the idea that there is another channel from which there is no protection is that much scarier. External conditioning can be escaped, but madness rising from within, and further coordinated by an invisible center, is an entirely different proposition.

The picture of an island ‘out of time’, located at the far end of the cosmic ocean, and otherwise identified as the ultimate ‘power-house’— and not just a secondary center, as in Buchan’s novel— appeals to our need for non-closure. The mythical narrative has always recognized a place ‘out of time’ that exerts total control over human affairs. In that sense, Pi Narati is a very important topos. It is already mentioned in ancient Mesopotamian tales dealing with the royal quest for immortality. It just so happens that this topos has traditionally been identified with Eridu-Canopus, or alpha-Carinae, the bright star located in the southern constellation of Argo Navis. Canopus is also known as the ‘rudder’ of the mythical vessel used by Jason and the Argonauts. This provides a dramatic bridge between established myth and an imaginary world of future deep space exploration.”

Q: “How did you come up with the central character of ZedZed?”

A: “Tragic heroes are power seekers who will stop at nothing to get their way. This applies to everyone, from Gilgamesh, to Odysseus, to Oedipus, to Alexander and then to imperial figures of the modern age. But starting with Alexander, we move from myth into recorded history—even if it is ancient history.

Tragedy deals with individuals who exhibit extreme behavior in their quest for dominance. Their ‘dark side’ feeds on raw power and the process of self-corruption becomes irreversible very early on. The predictability of the process is what makes it so unbearably captivating.

Unfortunately characters found in contemporary opera are not worthy heroes, or anti-heroes, for reasons that Nietzsche outlined many years ago. He pointed out that the death of ancient tragedy corresponded to the birth of modern literature, with its concern for verisimilitude. This means creating drama with materials taken from the world in which the spectators live, rather than from myth. The corresponding action ends up being packed with the trivia of daily life. This works for ‘soap opera’, but not for Opera as the original art form introduced during the Renaissance to revitalize the spirit of Greek Tragedy.

Vocal art is now seen as a mere medium for the performance of music written for the voice. But the historical record hints at a more complex picture. Opera is rooted in Greek Tragedy and Greek Tragedy, in turn, rests on a poetic tradition that goes back at least to Homer and perhaps beyond. In that earlier setting the singer is a rhapsode, who belongs to a continuous chain of rhapsodes collectively responsible for the authoritative transmission of the voice already contained in the song. It is not a matter of interpreting words and music according to an esthetic standard, but of correctly transmitting the spirit of the song, as intended by its originator. There is an esoteric aspect to this transmission and it has very little to do with vocal technique, or “interpretation” in the modern sense of the word. The Panathenaic Festival in ancient Athens and the medieval Contest of Songs at the Wartburg, give an idea of the environment in which this art is supposed to unfold.

Anyway, that’s quite a digression to justify my choice of character. ZedZed— the 22^nd clone of Sir Basil Zaharoff (1850-1936)— is a derivative, through ‘cloning’, of the most important warmonger of modern times. These names, Zaharoff and ZedZed, have many interesting phonetic-linguistic connotations, some of which are discussed in more detail in the published version of the libretto. Here I would just like to add that a shedshed, in ancient Egypt, was a magic standard which was supposed to lead the pharaoh to victory in war. The god depicted on the shedshed was Upuaut, the “opener of the ways”. In an important, but difficult to find book (Le problème des argonautes [1949]), R. Roux gives a few clues about the origins of the shedshed. He mentions that there were cities in Egypt where the royal rite of Zed was performed. The term referred to a tree-charm, stylized into a pillar, to which sacred skins were attached. The skins, always taken from a Typhonian animal— which Upuaut certainly was— were used as a hermetic sheath, or placenta, into which the dead Pharaoh’s body was wrapped. This was done to ensure that his soul would rise on the path to immortality during funeral rites.

Very few people have heard of Zaharoff, but that doesn’t mean he is not important. In fact, he can justly be seen as the founding father of the so-called military-industrial complex. Weapons, politics, banking, oil: he was involved in every aspect of the deadly business. He was, indeed, the Lord of War— and did he ever have a Typhonian, Seth-like ‘dark side’!”