Review in Opera Magazine, October 2001

The Landau Papers 

Random Acts Music Theatre at the City Art Gallery, Leeds, June 10

Personal experience can drive inspiration. A common ancestry as children of Jewish refugees from Berlin unites composer Sam Paechter and librettist Rachel Feldberg. Paechter’s great aunt, the musicologist Dr Anneliese (Hannah) Landau, left Germany at the eleventh hour in November 1938, after the events of Kristallnacht made life for Jews intolerable. Hannah's unpublished memoirs, and the oral reminiscences of Holocaust survivors still living in West Yorkshire, form the back- bone of Feldberg's libretto. What distinguishes it from the ordinary run-if such a thing exists-of Nazi-era compilations is that it reaches outside the Jewish community alone. For it centres on the relationship between Hannah and her sister-in-law Dodie, who is Christian. They are first seen celebrating both Christmas and Hanukkah, which more or less coincided in 1932. Within a week Hitler is elected Chancellor, and the following March 'blue letters' are sent to all Jewish public employees dismissing them from their posts. Professional performers are also banned from appearing in public. The response is the formation of a Kulturbund, so that Jewish musicians, actors, singers and lecturers can perform before Jewish-only audiences. This, too, eventually falls foul of the authorities; Hannah is seen giving an almost silent lecture, after 90 per cent of her text has been blue-pencilled by the Gestapo. Escape becomes the only solution.

Paechter breaks down his narrative into a prelude and 26 scenes, grouping them into three acts. The danger with such a series of necessarily brief snapshots is that there may never be any focal moments: in old-fashioned terms, no arias means no reflection, no chance to underline key points. The score partly comes to terms with this problem by using several leitmotifs. Paechter also has a strong sense of rhythm, so that what might have been acres of simple dialogue is given undercurrents of urgency. His evocation of atmosphere gets a powerful helping-hand from back- projected film, devised by David Collins. The opening festivities start with the preparation of culinary treats and culminate in some spontaneous dancing. This makes the later tribulations all the more poignant, not least because one of the revellers turns up later as a member of the SS arresting Hannah's elder brother.

What tension there is comes from the antagonism between the Jewish side of the family and Dodie's Christian relatives, not so much her spineless brother Max but more his wife Ilse, whose Nazi sympathies are all too clear. Hannah is also a creature of flesh and blood: she loses her temper on discovering Dodie packing for England (where her husband has been offered a job) without having told her. This is the opera's fulcrum and certainly its strongest scene. These moments stand out in what tends otherwise to be docu-opera, a steady and frequently engaging recital of history, but without sufficient exploration of human emotions. Paechter’s score is largely tonal but always intriguing and sometimes tough. He is adept at near-pastiche- ethnic dance, a little swing, a close-harmony quartet-but is inclined to use his 11 -piece band in its entirety, which clouds the words, especially in Act 1. More melismatic setting of the text would at once encourage emotional development in some of his leading characters.

Quentin Clare conducted Ensemble 11 with admirable commitment to the score, but without always putting his singers first. It did not help that his players were right next to the stage and not even screened. Lore Lixenberg projected a determined Hannah from well inside the music, colouring her tone skilfully. Lucy Stevens as Dodie carried herself beautifully without quite finding the vocal flexibility to match. Among several members of Opera North taking part both on and off stage, Victoria Sharp and David Owen-Lewis as Hannah's philosophical parents, Justin Miles Olden as Dodie's husband, and Vivienne Bailey as the chilly Ilse all made distinctive contributions. Jenny Sidebottom drew a clear, confident portrait of Heidi, Hannah's young niece. Rachel Feldberg's production, self-confessedly intended only as 'a beginning' and not a full staging, unquestionably made its mark. If she and Paechter can now trim out some of the purely historical narrative and develop the work's human aspects in a full production - probably cutting it down to two acts - this could well become a repertoire piece. The potential is already there.

MARTIN DREYER