#thebans

In lieu of a poem, today I post a link to this short piece about the Scared Band of Thebes.

This was well before the era of "Don't ask; don't tell" in military recruitment.

The Sacred Band had a prominent role in the defeat of the Spartans at Leuctra (371 BCE) and, hence, in the foundation of Messene.

Q. Dont you hate fourth of july?

so damn loud and annoying

A. It is difficult to find the mental energy to hate a mere chrono-political marker in the vastness of time (if you subscribe to solar-linear time, that is), when other objects demand our attention. Indeed, can time even be said to constitute an object? Dates can constitute “memorials,” but memory is always formed by the construction of a fuzzy Presence, displaced by the Trace of past Presents— However, that does not make them “real” in the same way that other objects of desire are. No one can desire “fourth of july” just as no one can hate it. It simply does not exist in any meaningful way.

On July 4, 362 BCE, the Second Battle of Mantinea took place on the island of Arcadia between the Thebans and the Spartans. The outcome of the battle led to a hegemonic shift in the ancient northern Mediterranean kulturkreis as it moved from Spartan to Theban dominance, ultimately opening the region to dominance by the Macedonians by the end of the 4th century BCE. Many people died.

The calendars used to mark the date would be unintelligible to any of the participants on the battle, and to my knowledge, no one remembers, cares about, or celebrates the event. It is utterly meaningless, and bears only an accidental relationship to the “date” that we have assigned the event. Even if I harbored secret Spartan sympathies, I the object of my “hatred” would not be the date itself, but my hatred of Memory itself— my own construction of Past/Present/Future would be embedded within memories associated (but not constituting) the date.

As such, if you find yourself hating non-objects, like arbitrary time divisions, practice Forgetting. Forget to go to work, forget to feed yourself, forget what day it is, forget what has happened in the past, forget what you have agreed to do do in the “future,” forget language. It is only through the act of radical Un-Remembering that we can undo the violence that the Trace enacts upon our Being. I have not been able to remember my name or the “current” year for most of my life, and I’m doing fantastically! Once you have forgotten everything, you will truly be able to live as pure Presence, and your problem will resolve itself! Good luck!

“THIS... IS... LEUCTRAAAAAA!!!!”

(17 May)

Everyone has been raving about this new opera from Julian Anderson and Frank McGuinness covering Sophocles’s Oedipus trilogy, so I was quite excited to have acquired a Secret Seat (same premise as Secret Hotels or Secret Cinema - you book, but you don’t know what seat you’ll get until 3 days before). I ended up in the middle of the 8th row of the Stalls, which is a pretty perfect vantage point for opera.

Thebans has a lot more plot than most operas, having to cover quite a bit of ground - the first Act especially, as it focuses on the uncovering of Oedipus’s crimes and his exile. It lasts 50minutes but it feels much longer as it so very, very slow. Oh so slow. The music careens between cacophonous and just plain loud, drowning out the singers frequently. The blocking is static, with the soloists coming forward, striking a pose (frequently leaving their upper body unlit as they miss the spotlight) before delivering a line or two. Tiresias seems to have been costumed into a pantomime dame rather than an all-seeing prophet.

Oh no, I thought. Oh no.

The Chorus is stunning, though , and that is the saving grace of Act I - their singing is beautiful, and frequently unaccompanied. The lighting design is also pretty special (despite the terrible execution), with the crawling silhouettes across the walls following the blind Oedipus into exile.

Act II is miles better, focusing on Antigone and her death. The stage design is suddenly fascist, the costumes those of blackshirts. Creon is - obviously - a fascist ruler of a police state, and in 20minutes he manages to kill off Antigone. It is a real moment of distress.

Act III and the wheels come off the cart good and proper. We go back in time to Oedipus’s death at Colonus - so the Future takes place before the Present. Oedipus meets Theseus, curses his sons, and dies. And … I was entirely ok with that. He was such an unsympathetic character that there was no catharsis or sense of loss or fulfilment when he died, he just cleared the deck for Creon (so not exactly much if an improvement). The “holy grove” he rested in with Antigone was a blasted bomb site with the gnarled corpses of trees, and the Theseus that came to meet him was for some reason painted gold.

Here is the problem with Thebans: the good bits are drowned out by the bad bits. The music is too difficult, too academic, for the subject matter, and the words and music are cacophonous together. The emotions on stage become flat as a result, which is problematic because the sheer amount of plot doesn’t allow you to develop empathy for any character as they rotate too quickly.

Things I would change: the music. It’s just not something that an opera novice can enjoy, and Thebans was definitely targeted at opera novices (one of the main selling points was the Oedipus cycle dramatic coverage). I’d also change the dramatic structure around - past / future / present doesn’t work because Oedipus is of so little interest dramatically. The one point of empathy is Antigone, and reworking the drama to be about her makes more sense (especially as Oedipus is obviously already dead in Act II and isn’t of any focus or concern in the plot or the minds of the characters). Making Act I about Antigone’s family falling apart and her mother’s death, Act II about her father’s death & his cursing of her brothers, and Act III about her grief for her brothers’s deaths & her own murder, makes the entire thing hold together stylistically. It also allows an emotional ending, focusing on the one character the audience genuinely feels empathy for.

Overall, I enjoyed some parts of Thebans, and thought others were poor. I don’t think it’s suitable for opera novices as - speaking as an opera novice - I felt that I didn’t understand the music at all. (Discussions with the other audience members indicated that they didn’t understand it, either!) The singing is nice, but frequently marred by the odd score, with the Chorus easily the best bit musically.