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.