你定義的歌劇是什么?

文：司馬勤（Ken Smith） 編譯：李正欣

從語法的角度來看，拉丁語中的“歌劇”（opera）只不過是“作品”（opus）的復數形式（拉丁語中的opus是指單一“作品”的意思）。因此，倘若我們寬容些，大可以將阿什利·福雷（Ashley Fure）所創作的《萬物之力：實物歌劇》（The Force of Things: An Opera for Objects）視為一個簡單的語法計數錯誤。

但是，福雷畢業于哈佛大學，跟她共事的都是聰明人，所以這一小“錯誤”背后多半藏有乾坤。這部歷時50分鐘的作品里包含了很多東西：沉浸式體驗、豐富的聲效，以及時而產生的視覺刺激——有一部分要歸功于她同樣聰明的哥哥，建筑師亞當·福雷（Adam Fure），是他設計了整個演出的實質環境。作品甚至還包含了一個政治導向正確的概念，試圖讓觀眾注意到“在我們周圍有不斷增長的、因為生態問題而引發的焦慮的嗡嗡聲”（這是作曲家在節目介紹中提到的）。但還是應該實話實說：這不是一部歌??！

大概從普契尼逝世的那天起，我們就一直在思考：是什么構成了“歌劇”。毫無疑問，我們比那群活在16世紀文藝復興后期的佛羅倫薩文人更加深究這個問題。當年，他們認為自己只是在重建古希臘戲劇。

然而，如今，沒有人會考慮要“重建”任何東西，就算——或者尤其是——當他們的確在“重建”的過程中時。一切必須“新穎”，即便完全缺乏新意。大概半個世紀前，披頭士樂隊（Beatles）把不同歌曲的主題連接起來而“開辟了新天地”。當時卻沒有人提出這個棘手的史實：比他們早150多年前，舒伯特與舒曼已把這個創意付諸實踐：一個時代的聲樂套曲（song cycle）可以變成下一個時代的概念專輯（concept album）。

如果“概念專輯”有相互關聯的角色并最終串聯成一個故事時，又應該如何歸類？涉及到 “誰人樂隊”（The Who）的主音吉他手、曾經譜寫了《湯米》（Tommy）與《四重人格》（Quadrophenia）的皮特·湯森（Pete Townshend），宣傳方會稱之為“搖滾歌劇”（rock opera）。那么描述美國西部荒野的史詩影片呢？“牛仔歌劇”（horse opera）。還有那些情節稀里糊涂、如同刻意插播推銷給家庭主婦的洗滌劑廣告的日間電視劇的作品呢？“肥皂歌劇”（soap opera）。

從這里你發現了什么？盡管歌劇愛好者與從業者熱衷于爭論歌劇的定義，局外人借用這個名詞，僅僅是因為用上“歌劇”兩字，立刻身價十倍，無論內容與音樂戲劇舞臺能否扯得上任何關系。

現在我們已經進入了21世紀第二個十年的尾聲，大家都認同歌劇再不需要用上傳統的吟唱形式（嘻哈音樂與朋克搖滾套在歌劇里的個案，效果令人信服）、不必避開口語對白、再沒有固定長度、舞臺規模大小均可。但是，唯一不可或缺的是故事性。讓我大膽地做出這個假設：只要作品有某種戲劇敘事性和某種帶有韻律的發聲技巧，大家都可以以此為據，把作品納入“歌劇”之列。

在林肯中心2018年莫扎特音樂節上演出的《萬物之力》

然而《萬物之力》上述的兩者皆缺。啊，差點忘了，演員名單上包括兩名聲樂家（vocalists），盡管他們制造出來的聽覺效果，與管樂、打擊樂演奏的同樣抽象、同樣脫離人性化，他們發出來的聲音沒有任何創意可言。觀眾聆聽得到的聲音——作曲家預先聲明，很多的聲音因為頻率過低，人類的耳朵無法察覺——都是過去這50年來前衛音樂家早已發明的現代主義演奏技巧。具有諷刺意味的是，這部作品于2016年在德國達姆施塔特（Darmstadt）新音樂夏季課程首演——1950年代，達姆施塔特正是培育音樂創新的前衛藝術重鎮。

今年夏季，《萬物之力》在林肯中心莫扎特音樂節（Mostly Mozart Festival）亮相，演出場地是布魯克林的柯克蘭藝術中心（Gelsey Kirkland Arts Center）。作曲家形容這部作品是對氣候變化所引發的焦慮情緒的音樂隱喻，她更要觀眾感受一下自然世界的慢節奏。對我來說，作品只有一系列任意的音響，它們沒有連貫性，抓不住我的注意力。

如果硬要把《萬物之力》歸納為歌劇，就像硬要將瑜伽吟誦與《羅摩衍那》（Ramayana，印度史詩）相提并論。但后來我覺得還有個更確切的描述會引起共鳴——比如說，“哲學性的聲音裝置”（philosophical sound installation）——但聽起來又毫無吸引力。

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福雷撰寫《萬物之力》的節目介紹雖然妄自尊大，但我今年夏天曾看過一部更夸張的作品，名為《我們的死亡不會傷害他人，第一部分》（Our Death Won’t Hurt Anybody – Part 1）：毫無情節，全無結構，歷時四個半小時，聲稱受《孫子兵法》所啟迪。這是巴塞羅那希臘藝術節與香港西九龍文化局的聯合委約。

大家想想有多么諷刺：閱讀整部《孫子兵法》都用不了四個半小時；而畫蛇添足標注的“第一部分”，令我聯想到當代文豪諾曼·梅勒（Norman Mailer）。他那本長達1300頁的小說在最后一頁竟然標上了“未完待續”。梅勒的讀者還算幸運，作家沒有機會構思續集就與世長辭了。

《我們的死亡不會傷害他人》是香港鄧樹榮戲劇工作室與巴塞羅那恩里克·瓦格斯（Enrique Vargas）所領導的感官劇場（Teatro de los Sentidos）的合作項目。演出時所用的語言包括英語、西班牙語、加泰羅尼亞語、廣東話——我還依稀聽得出幾句零星的普通話與法語。幾乎每一位觀眾在演出的某個段落必定會因語言不通而有被排除在外的感受。下個演出季，該劇要在香港首演，到時候效果也應該大同小異——只不過觀眾對于不同的部分將會給出不同反應。

現在很難說，巴塞羅那的演出版本到了香港會有多少變動。到了香港，演員會再次逐一引領觀眾入場嗎？還會有一名華裔演員展示廚藝，弄一碟豉椒炒蜆，然后請大家試吃嗎？觀眾們還會再次被邀請登上舞臺跳舞，而只是面對一場戲中的假空襲嗎？

盡管這場演出包括一些相當有效果的場景，整個晚上（四個半小時）卻好像工作坊一樣，演員之間似乎還沒有達到默契。最終，這個演出的最關鍵問題是：因為整體都缺乏推動力，到了最后也無法營造強烈的震撼感。

不過最起碼，《我們的死亡》沒有這么大的膽子，敢自稱為歌劇。

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診斷演出為什么失敗，要比解釋為什么演出成功更容易。我禁不住想，《我鄰居的天空》（My Neighbor Sky）——一部受胡安·米羅（Joan Miró）雕塑《月亮、太陽和一顆星》（Moon, Sun and One Star）啟發的作品——的成功，是歸功于它只有50分鐘的時長。但這么說對于《我們的死亡》甚不公平。演出成功也不完全歸功于舞蹈家小栗（Naoyuki Oguri）和安德斯·科切羅（Andrés Corchero）在胡安·米羅基金會那座雕塑前的演出［還有吉他手努諾·魯貝洛（Nuno Rubelo）現場伴奏］。

應該這樣說，那個晚上的亮點來自兩位藝術家——一位日本人和一位加泰羅尼亞人——不僅分享了日本舞踏（Butoh）和現代舞的肢體風格，他們倆對彼此的肢體優勢、局限和特性都有充分的了解，并能夠互相回應。然而，只憑藝術上的親密互通，還是難以獨立支撐其作品最終的成功。

整晚的節奏緩慢得幾乎讓觀眾感到痛苦。試想一下，仿佛是伊索寓言《龜兔賽跑》中的主角變成了烏龜和蛞蝓，其挪動的速度不分伯仲，再用羅伯特·威爾遜（Robert Wilson）的典型舞臺風格把故事呈現出來?？墒?，在這一個小時不到的時間里，小栗和科切羅徹底地宣泄了他們全部的感情，演出接近尾聲時觀眾能感覺兩人有明顯的改變，但卻說不出他們經歷了什么。

左、上：在林肯中心2018年莫扎特音樂節上演出的《萬物之力》

在圣約翰大教堂舉行的大規模合唱《以地球之名》現場

欣賞過這樣有強烈表達力卻在沒有用上語言的舞臺呈現敘事方式，讓人們更加難以忍受那些使用所有可用的講故事工具，但仍然無法正確地表達出意圖的人。另一個例子是約翰·路德·亞當斯（John Luther Adams）的《以地球之名》（In the Name of the Earth），由林肯中心主辦，8月在紐約舉行了世界首演。

與《我鄰居的天空》中親密無間的人際設定剛好相反，《以地球之名》動用了大約600多名合唱演員與十幾位指揮家。演出原定于中央公園露天首演，結果由于風雨交加，不得不移入紐約的圣約翰大教堂中。

亞當斯——通常被稱為“另一位亞當斯”（有時只稱呼為“路德”），以避免與寫出《尼克松在中國》（Nixon in China）及其他歌劇作品的作曲家約翰·亞當斯（John Adams）混淆——因其管弦樂作品《成為海洋》（Become Ocean）而獲得2014年普利策音樂大獎?！冻蔀楹Ｑ蟆芬园⒗辜雍兔绹鞅辈恳粠У暮Ｑ鬄殪`感；這次的《以地球之名》中也有來自水的靈感，合唱歌手用混合了多種語言的歌詞，吟唱著河流、湖泊、山脈和沙漠的名字。

盡管圣約翰大教堂是以其強烈的回聲效果（引致混亂的聲學）而聞名，我也無法想象，這部亞當斯的作品如果按原定計劃在戶外演出會是個什么樣子。當天演出時，一波又一波的聲浪涌過來。按作曲家的原意，首演應與主題吻合而在戶外表演，但效果肯定會被削弱。這一次選擇的室內場地雖然回聲過強，但任何具有更好聲效條件的場所，對于作品的呈現也不會起大作用。

現在讓我們來梳理一下。只用上《我們的死亡》的一小部分時間，亞當斯已帶領他的觀眾度過了一段令人信服的旅程。相比類似福雷《萬物之力》的沉浸式演出（兩部作品的時長相差無幾），同樣應對現代文明與原始環境相互斗爭的主題，亞當斯所傳達的信息更加有效。

我也必須承認，某些功勞得歸于圣約翰大教堂，這個地標為活動增添了一點精神上的莊重感（而不特指宗教方面）。從每一個角度來看，作品都具有作曲家深藏的、對自然力量大于人類的認同。

儀式和敘事，或者戲劇效果和真實故事，往往只有一線之隔。但從美學上來說，審美的結果或多或少相同。我不知道亞當斯會如何為這部作品歸類——可能是“大規模的合唱盛典”。如果有一天他決定稱之為“歌劇”，我也不會有異議。

Grammatically speaking, “opera” is nothing more than the plural of “opus,” the Latin word for “work.”So to be charitable, we can look at Ashley Fure’s The Force of Things: An Opera for Objects as a simple mistake in counting.

On the other hand, since Fure went to Harvard and works with a lot of other smart people, it’s safe to say something else is involved. Her 50-minute piece is lots of things: immersive, sonically rich and sometimes visually stimulating—in part thanks to her equally smart brother, the architect Adam Fure, who designed the piece’s physical environment. It even has a politically correct concept, intending to make us notice the “mounting hum of ecological anxiety around us,”as the composer states in the program notes. But let’s be honest here: it’s not an opera.

Since roughly the day Puccini died it seems we’ve been pondering what constitutes an opera. That’s more than you can say about the literati who invented it in Florence back in the 1500s. They thought they were just recreating Ancient Greek theatre.

These days, though, no one thinks about recreating anything, even—or perhaps especially—when they are.Things always have to be new, even then they aren’t. A half-century ago, when the Beatles “broke new ground”by showing the world how to link songs together thematically, few people mentioned the inconvenient fact that Schubert and Schumann had done the same thing 150 years before. One generation’s song cycle is the next generation’s concept album.

What do you get when a “concept album” has interrelated characters and ends up telling a story?Pete Townshend, the guitarist for The Who who wrote Tommy and Quadrophenia, would call it a“rock opera.” What about those epic American films of the Wild West? Horse operas. What about those silly daytime television dramas, the ones that used to advertise detergent to housewives? Soap operas.

You can see what’s going on here. Even as admirers and practitioners of opera debate what it actually is,plenty of outsiders have co-opted the term merely to inflate the importance of things largely unrelated to the stage tradition.

Now that we’re in the second decade of the 21century, we generally agree that opera need not be sung in “operatic” style (hip-hop and punk rock have been credibly co-opted), need not entirely eschew spoken dialogue, need not be long or even big. Having a story, though, is not negotiable.So I’ll go out on a limb here and say that as long as a work has some kind of dramatic narrative and some kind of musicalized vocalism, you can make a case for it as opera.

The Force of Things, alas, had neither. Oh, there were two vocalists, but they were simply abstract noisemakers treated just as impersonally as the wind players and percussionists involved. Nor were any of these sounds particularly original. The parts of the evening that were audible—many of the sonorities,audiences were told, were too low for humans to hear—owed much to a half century of modernist playing techniques. There’s a certain irony that the work first appeared in 2016 at the Summer Courses at Darmstadt, the site of genuine musical breakthroughs back in the 1950s.

When the piece finally made its way to New York,presented by Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival at the Gelsey Kirkland Arts Center in Brooklyn, the composer described it as a musical metaphor for the anxieties related to climate change and the slow pace of the natural world. To me, it was moderately interesting series of random sounds that moved from one to the next with little to engage the mind.

左頁、右：《我們的死亡不會傷害他人，第一部分》劇照

So calling The Force of Things an opera is rather like comparing a yoga chant to the Ramayana. But then, I think we all agree, a more accurate description like “philosophical sound installation” just wouldn't be as sexy.

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Even with its pompous program notes, The Force of Things wasn't the most pretentious thing I saw over the summer. That would be Our Death Won’t Hurt Anybody – Part 1—a plotless, formless, four-anda-half-hour rumination on Sun Tzu’s Art of War cocommissioned by Barcelona’s GREC Festival and Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District.

Again, think of the irony: it takes less time to read Sun Tzu’s military strategies in their entirety that it did to sit through “Part 1”—which incidentally reminds me of the late Norman Mailer, who once ended a 1300-page novel with the words “to be continued.”Fortunately for readers everywhere, Mailer died before he could contemplate a sequel.

As a collaboration between the Tang Shu-Wing Studio of Hong Kong and Enrique Vargas’s Teatro de los Sentidos of Barcelona, Our Death Won’t Hurt Anybody unfolded in English, Spanish, Catalan and Cantonese—and it seemed like there were snippets of Mandarin and French in there as well. Pretty much everyone in the audience was guaranteed to feel excluded at some point, and the effect will surely be similar—though in different places—when the piece travels to Hong Kong next season.

How much of the original production will remain is more difficult to gauge. Will the actors still initially lead audience members to their seats? Will one of the Chinese actors still stir-fry clams in black-bean sauce on stage and invite the audience to eat? Will audience members still be invited onstage to dance, only to confront a dramatized air raid?

Despite a few effective bits, the evening still had the feel of a workshop, where actors were still getting to know each other. And ultimately, its problem in achieving a climactic sense of devastation was that there was so little momentum to begin with.

Still, the show didn’t have the nerve to call itself an opera.

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Diagnosing why shows fail is so much easier that explaining why they succeed. After Our Death,It’s tempting to say that My Neighbor Sky, a piece inspired by Joan Miró’s sculpture Moon, Sun and One Star, was successful because it was only 50 minutes long, but that would hardly be fair. Nor did it thrive entirely because of dancers Naoyuki Oguri and Andrés Corchero performing the work (to a live soundscape by guitarist Nuno Rubelo) in front of that very sculpture at the Joan Miró Foundation.

Rather, the evening was a success because two artists—one Japanese, one Catalan—shared not only a physical idiom drawing on Japanese butoh and contemporary dance, but also possessed full knowledge of and could respond to each other’s physical strengths, limitations and idiosyncrasies. Still,such artistic intimacy alone hardly guarantees the endeavor’s ultimate success.

The pace of the evening, it must be said, was almost painfully slow. Reimagine Aesop’s “Tortoise and the Hare” as “The Tortoise and the Slug.” As staged by Robert Wilson. And yet, in less than hour,Oguri and Corchero had thoroughly wrung their emotional towels, arriving at a destination palpably transformed without ever signifying that they had ever been on a journey.

Seeing such a strongly expressive narrative exist without benefit of verbal language makes it much harder to endure people who use all the storytelling tools at their disposal and still can’t get it right.Another good example this month was John Luther Adams’s In the Name of the Earth, which also had its world premiere in August at Lincoln Center.

As expansive in personnel as My Neighbor Sky was intimate, In the Name of the Earth featured more than 600 choral singers led by a dozen or so conductors.Originally scheduled to be performed in Central Park,the piece was driven by rain into the shelter of New York’s massive Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

Adams—often called “the other Adams” (and sometimes just “Luther”) to avoid confusion with the composer of Nixon in China and other operas—won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for his orchestral work Become Ocean, which was characteristically inspired by the oceans of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. In the Name of the Earth was also aquatically inclined, with choral singers intoning the names of rivers and lakes—as well as mountains and deserts—in a thoroughly inclusive mélange.

Although St. John the Divine is famous for its messy acoustics, I tried without success to imagine Adams’s piece being performed outdoors as originally planned. Waves of sound were the order of the day,and while performing in the great outdoors might send the right signals, the actual sound would be defused beyond recognition. As far as indoor spaces go, any venue with greater sonic precision would’ve been entirely beside the point.

So let’s consider the tally. In only a fraction of the time of Our Death, Adams took his listeners on a far more convincing journey. In as comparably immersive a manner as Fure’s Force of Things (and in nearly the same amount of time), Adams similarly tackled topics of civilization’s struggle with primordial and environmental forces, yet delivered his message with far greater force.

Some of the credit, admittedly, goes to the Cathedral, which did lend the event a certain spiritual—if not particularly religious—gravitas. In literally every direction there was an undeniable depth of intent and an acknowledgement of forces greater than ourselves.

There’s often a fine line between ritual and genuine narrative, or between dramatic effect and an actual story. But aesthetically, the end result is more or less the same. I’m not sure what Adams himself calls the piece—probably a large-scale choral pageant—but if he ever decides to call it an opera, I won’t argue.

左頁、上：在圣約翰大教堂舉行的大規模合唱《以地球之名》現場