King George III, despite hav­ing been a learned and enthu­si­as­tic spon­sor of sci­en­tif­ic and indus­tri­al progress, a faith­ful hus­band and father, and in many ways very lib­er­al for his time (except pro-slav­ery, just say­ing), is basi­cal­ly famous for hav­ing gone mad.

That mad­ness has been scru­ti­nized, diag­nosed, and mocked round­ly in mod­ern lit­er­a­ture, film, TV, and the­atre, and no doubt was sim­i­lar­ly treat­ed in the scan­dalous print media of his own time, like a 1700s real­i­ty show..  It’s gross, it’s sad, and it’s hyp­o­crit­i­cal, as we’re all real­ly only one or two events away from break­down.

So I felt uncom­fort­able at the start of last night’s show, seat­ed out­side the new(ish) RNZB Dance Cen­tre.  We peered through the many-paned win­dows, shift­ing to see around the frames, the poles of the mar­quee, and the heads of oth­er audi­ence mem­bers, try­ing to watch poor mad King George per­form for us.

Eight Songs for a Mad King is a thir­ty minute oper­at­ic mon­odra­ma by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.  His friend, nov­el­ist and poet Ran­dolph Stow, took Maxwell Davies to see a small mechan­i­cal hand organ that George III had owned.  Appar­ent­ly the king had tried to teach his cap­tive birds to sing along, while his own voice was rav­aged by inces­sant rav­ing.  An idea blos­somed.  Derived from eight of the songs the organ played, Maxwell Davies com­posed the piece, with Stow pro­vid­ing libret­to based on real records of the king’s words.

Thomas de Mal­let Burgess, Gen­er­al Direc­tor of NZ Opera, has acknowl­edged the chal­lenge in stag­ing excit­ing mod­ern pro­duc­tions to attract a larg­er (and younger) audi­ence, with­out los­ing the loy­al­ty of long­time fans of the genre.  Choos­ing to direct this show is extreme­ly brave in that con­text, as it’s a con­fronting piece in sub­ject mat­ter as well as deliv­ery.  He split the audi­ence in twain, one out­side the win­dows, and one inside, with the out­side half expe­ri­enc­ing the per­for­mance through head­phones.  After com­ple­tion of the piece, a short inter­val, and then the two audi­ences switched places for a repeat.

I start­ed out­side, and I think it was the best way around.  With the head­phones on and a very lim­it­ed view of the action, I could only real­ly focus on the audio.  And dear God, what an expe­ri­ence that was.

Robert Tuck­er is wild­ly tal­ent­ed.  In a con­ven­tion­al part, his deli­cious­ly res­o­nant bari­tone warms your cock­les, and his charis­mat­ic and sen­si­tive char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion brings a part to life.  He is, tru­ly, a bril­liant oper­at­ic star.

As King George, his freak­ish­ly large range becomes appar­ent.  Maxwell Davies intend­ed the per­former to illus­trate King George’s men­tal state through an extend­ed vocal tech­nique, includ­ing howls, growls, whines and shrieks.  With all sens­es dulled except my hear­ing, I sat almost immo­bilised by Tuck­er’s voice, tense­ly strain­ing to glean from the libret­to some idea of what he was going through to pro­duce such nois­es.  It was unnerv­ing and con­fus­ing and what lit­tle I could see through the win­dow only made it worse, as he appeared to throt­tle a flautist, smash a vio­lin, and romance a light fix­ture.

I had a moment of sick dis­con­nect.  It felt like a par­o­dy…  men­tal health is a com­plex and per­son­al issue to be treat­ed with respect and com­pas­sion, and this guy was ram­pag­ing up and down screech­ing like a car­i­ca­ture of “crazy”.….  and we were all oohing and aahing delight­ed­ly like pay­ing vis­i­tors to Bed­lam, hop­ing to see a lunatic.  How revolt­ing.  But then, this was writ­ten in the 60s, exper­i­men­tal and intend­ed to shock, and based on his­tor­i­cal records of King George’s con­di­tion, which also would have been very much of their time.

The first per­for­mance end­ed, and after a short inter­val, we moved inside.  And here my dis­com­fort sub­sided.  Now able to see the per­for­mance as well as hear it, I realised that Tuck­er, under de Mal­let Burgess’ direc­tion, was gen­uine­ly try­ing to cre­ate from this part a real per­son.  His George was strug­gling, yes, to love his peo­ple and his coun­try.  To artic­u­late through his delu­sions feel­ings of loss, of con­fu­sion and pain, try­ing to explain to us that he fought his con­di­tion, and some­times suc­cumbed, some­times won.

Some of the tropes were cliched; remov­ing cloth­ing, smash­ing things, howl­ing like an ani­mal, the min­i­mal­ist light­ing wrenched from order­ly to hap­haz­ard…  the score was script­ed 50 years ago, so I can’t judge that era’s ideas of men­tal ill­ness.  In fact, Tuck­er found a truth with­in that.  His expres­sions, his phys­i­cal­i­ty let us see a real vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, and a strength.  And his voice, dear God…  the pub­lic­i­ty said he has five octaves, but tru­ly I was dumb­found­ed.  For a bari­tone to pro­duce such strength in the high­er reg­is­ters, rather than just a weird falset­to…  it’s a tri­umph.   It’s pos­si­ble that Tuck­er isn’t human.  Just say­ing.

I know that de Mal­let Burgess did­n’t mean to par­o­dy men­tal ill­ness, and he’s lucky to have found a lead with not only the tal­ent for this vocal part, but also an actor will­ing to com­mit to it with sen­si­tiv­i­ty and kind­ness.

Hamish McK­e­ich con­duct­ed the Stro­ma New Music Ensem­ble per­fect­ly, and they deliv­ered the score bril­liant­ly, as well as being will­ing and able par­tic­i­pants in our king’s delu­sions.  The score is not easy — it’s dischor­dant and arrhyth­mic and dis­joint­ed.  I espe­cial­ly appre­ci­at­ed Luca Manghi as a prop and pup­pet, play­ing flaw­less­ly even as Tuck­er shook and spun him about.  I could say more about the harp­si­chord themes and bird­song moments, but if I’m hon­est they fad­ed into the back­ground of Tuck­er’s wild and frag­ile per­for­mance.  Suf­fice it to say, the ensem­ble was exact­ly as they should have been; immac­u­late and hum­ble.

It’s always hard to stage pro­duc­tions with antique social per­spec­tives.  Madama But­ter­fly, for exam­ple, por­trays dev­as­tat­ing assault of an inno­cent girl, “mar­ried” to an Amer­i­can against her fam­i­ly’s wish­es, then aban­doned, dis­hon­oured, and ulti­mate­ly end­ing her own life as her child is tak­en to be raised by her for­eign abuser and his real wife.  Jesus, what the actu­al fuck?  It’s a tragedy, and Puc­ci­ni knew it was, but he still basi­cal­ly glo­ri­fied it for the Likes.

This, sad­ly, is opera.  But it’s also block­buster movies these days, books, TV.  We, like the vis­i­tors to Bed­lam, like the audi­ence last night, are eager voyeurs to oth­ers’ mis­ery.  The themes are endur­ing, human, and time­less.  And we have been creepy peep­ing Toms for cen­turies.

What this means for opera, and for any art form which repro­duces these clas­sics time and time again, is that we need to find ways to make it top­i­cal.  Oth­er­wise the gen­res will gen­uine­ly fade into obscu­ri­ty.  As we shake off monar­chy, will Shake­speare still have impact?  Of course, because human themes endure, even though roy­al­ty goes out of fash­ion.  So it is with opera, but those of us who love it must embrace new inter­pre­ta­tions.  It’s a duty but also a world of pos­si­bil­i­ty.

In the back of my mind I feel like we have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to reframe these pro­duc­tions into some­thing more appro­pri­ate to our new under­stand­ing of social issues.  But King George was a vic­tim of his time as well as his mind, and it’s equal­ly impor­tant to show that time, and to high­light how these issues were seen and treat­ed in our his­to­ry, so we can be bet­ter.  Most­ly I’m real­ly glad I got to see this weird and won­der­ful pro­duc­tion, and also to see the audi­ence around me, pri­mar­i­ly old­er opera stal­warts, open them­selves to con­fronting new styles of per­for­mance.  I mean, we all fuck­ing love La Boheme, but last night was a roller­coast­er, and good on them for rid­ing it with me.