There live outstanding artists who not only contribute the precious gift of their talent to the world but personify the most remarkable signs of the epoch by their life itself.
Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) is like this. Paying his last tribute to Van Gogh, Doctor Gachet said that his friend “was an honest man and a great artist; he pursued only two objects – humaneness and art.”
The genius’ mighty power and his love for people are inseparably interlaced in his art so one can explore the realm of the painter from his personality to understanding of art world as well as from the perception of the heritage to the comprehension of the creator’s figure.
Being a great drawer and painter he left a great number of pictures and drawings scattered all over the world. He was one of the most prominent innovators in the visual arts and was able to see the hidden essence of things and people; he possessed the aptitude for “animation of everything in existence”. “The old knotty trunks of the trees became wise and suffering; the interior of a street café turned to be hectic; tiled roofs became similar to rock layers; the paths bent steeper and twisting, the contours vibrated the size of the sun grew – and everything was blazing with the primordial colours of precious stones and fresh flowers as if all of them were cleansed of worldly nonsense and dust” (N. Dmitrieva). The portraits painted by Van Gogh are unforgettable. According to his own words, he put “something from eternity, the symbol of which was the halo, the eternity that we are looking for in the vibration of the colouring itself now” into the faces and figures of most unremarkable men and women.
However, Van Gogh’s tragic fate itself conceals some kind of a complete piece of art. He perceived other people’s pain; his responsiveness was clearly manifested in a youthfully naive attempt to become a preacher among the miners and in his collision with the church authorities during the strike when he acted as the only defender of the poor. After his failure as a pastor Van Gogh changed the means of his service to people and at the age of 27 decided his fate. It is not late for an artist, in the best way it is the most exact time for him alone! At this point two lines originate: one leads to the birth of his masterpieces, new manner of the vision and stroke; the other one brings him to even more outcast from the society. Only two of his canvasses (“Banks of the Seine with Pont de Clichy in the spring” and “The Red Vineyard”) were sold during his lifetime. His way of behaving gave rise to growing petty bourgeois’ spite but from early morning till late at night he was working at his easel almost without any breaks. Utter exhaustion results in malfunction of the artist’s most subtle psychics and neurosis turned into an incurable disease. There were no sponsors around him; the citizens of Arles demanded that he should be hospitalized against his will. This was the way the thread of his life uncoiled – a sad tragedy of the artist who was rejected by the society.
Much would have remained unknown if it were not for Van Gogh’s letters. His 652 letters to his brother Theo can rightfully be considered a unique literary document. They depict the life of the genius, and neither any of the letters nor any of the pictures is marked with the seal of madness. They are “the documents of the outlook, essence and thinking of the highest ethics, the expression of boundless truth, endless love, sincere humaneness… These letters belong to the most tremendous phenomena of the recent past.” (K. Jaspers).
The interest of many writers in Van Gogh’s life and especially in his letters is not surprising; they “can be ranked with the Russian writers’ confessionary literature.” (M. Shapiro). Gregory Frid’s idea of creating a theatre and musical work based on only Van Gogh’s letters without adding anything to the text seems very persuading by itself.
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Gregory Frid was born in Petrograd in 1915. In 1939 he graduated from Moscow Academy of Music in the class of composition under G.I. Litinsky and V.J. Shebalin.
The charm of lively thought and serious confidential tone are characteristic of his music. The problems of moral formation of the individuality, spiritual struggle when sense of duty, will, determination clash with powerlessness and hesitation. In complicated harmony of modern tonal music G. Frid realizes the thoughts and conflicts of the present day. Two composer’s mono operas raise the issues that are important for him.
One of them is “Anna Frank’s Diary” (1969) based on the tragic notes of the 13-year old girl from Holland that was occupied by Nazis during the WW II. They became one of the most significant documents of that war, a kind of warning for the world. The basis of the second opera is Van Gogh’s letters (1975). If the coincidence of the setting of both operas can be considered accidental, the choice of both plots was not random. Frid’s operas belong to “documental theatre”. What is the essence of moral attitude to the world, people, to oneself? What is the way of a lonely man like in the hostile environment? How can the man, artist, withstand if everybody is against him?
Working on making up the libretto the composer subordinated the compilation of Van Gogh’s letters rather to the art conception than to the chronology. There is only one personage on the stage. His confession, his tragic biography is being displayed in front of us. However, it is not a concrete artist Van Gogh; it is rather some collective image. This is not the individual realm of the only genius but the common problems that appear in the conflict between an artist and the world of consumption in the bourgeois society.
The comparison of the character in Frid’s opera and Alban Berg’s “Wozzeck” inevitably comes to mind. Both the great artist and a common man are deprived pariahs in the society. Van Gogh realized this himself. In his letter to E.Bernardt he wrote recollecting his liaison with Christine, “I not only feel sympathy for the tortured prostitute but compassionate her. She is our friend and sister, because she is ousted from the society and turned down by it like us, the artists.”
We meet the artist in his studio. The two first numbers of the opera are some kind of interlude, an exposition of the main character. This is a self portrait to some extent that Frid’s music completes. The intonation basis of the opera is made up by the starting theme of alt that later sounds both in the original and in various versions. The third, fifth and eighth numbers narrate about meeting Christine and her attempt to find her love that is doomed to failure. Impression of many trips is reflected in the stories about going to the country, about life in noisy Antwerp, about life in Arles, about his incarceration in the hospital and moving to Saint-Remy.
The composer finds individual means of notation for every episode. For example, in the scene of trip to a Brabant village the sound of percussion instruments prevails; even the string musicians take tambourines, bells and a triangle in their hands. The breaks of the metre depict the urban labyrinth of Antwerp (No. 7), where sometimes the scraps of sailors’ dance can be heard.
The blossoming nature of the southern France (No. 13) is described by the pastoral tunes of clarinet and violin; a slow dance a-la Sicilian makes the background. On the contrary, the prison-like atmosphere of Doctor Ray’s hospital is rendered with the terrible convulsive passages resembling turmoil in a closed up circle (one can recollect Dore’s famous “The Prisoners’ walk”).
The theme of fever takes its origin from the fifth episode (“I have been working all the time as if I were in fever”) and develops through the opera; it reaches its climax with the inexorable inevitability (Nos. 5, 11, 14, 17, 18). It is distinguished with the hasty ascent of the broken melody, that can’t find rest and aim, sudden dynamic accents, atonal harmony. The illness conquered the field; the theme of fever becomes more frequent.
The moving descriptions of the pictures take a large place in the artist’s stories. They are so impressive that it is enough for the composer to create an accompaniment as a decorative background that helps the listener’s imagination to restore the well-known canvass. There is “Potato Eaters” (No. 4), various landscapes (Nos. 1, 4, 11, 18, 20), “Peasants’ Graveyard” (No. 12), “The Huts” (No. 16). “La Berceuse” (No. 15) plays an exclusive role – it is both the instrumental interlude and climax of the opera that passionately glorifies the artist’s image for whom there was “nothing more artistic than to love people”.
A few theme arches consolidate the musical realm of the opera. The music of the second number not long before the sad finale connected with the image of mad trees (No. 18) refers to them. The interlude of “Mournful Music” is even more conspicuous in the last but one episode; it has the meaning of the author’s conclusion that precedes the stupor of the finale. The framing of the opera crowns these meaningful arches: “There is the heavenly blue sky above my head, and the sun is streaming its radiance of light yellow” – these are Van Gogh’s favourite colours, the main theme of the opera about the man who created pictures “full of harmony, consoling like music” all his life.
Grigori Pantijelew
