Dear Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, let me cut straight to the chase: please reschedule this work and commission the composer and librettist to write at least one more new opera, ideally several more. Because this 'procedure' is it. This is a new form of opera, deeply rooted in the richness of the musicality of historical tonal operas.
The story 'Barzakh' (Arabic for the phase in Islam between death and resurrection on Judgment Day, somewhat like purgatory in Christianity): gripping, emotional throughout, profoundly honest, drawn from real life with no fabrications, no nonsense of any kind, no exaggerations, no downplaying, no romanticizing. Pure, authentically human, dramatic through and through because yes, it deals with the prison system in this country. It couldn't be more timely—barely a day goes by without something appearing in the press about it. Overcrowding, prisoners sleeping on 1.2 m² of floor space, understaffing, strikes, insufficient budget... It's quite a lot. It's so significant that it inspired people to create an opera about it, in close collaboration with current and former prisoners alike.
Is there no criticism then? Well, there is a bit, and it's a tip for the librettist right away. Next time, keep the dialogue shorter and be careful with the intelligibility of the spoken texts, which weren't always easy to follow. Let's say you could feel that theater people were at work here who don't come from the broader classical music world. On the other hand, the achievement is all the more remarkable, especially in content—musically flawless, scenically conveying the bleak, seemingly endless reality of prison life.
Text and composition convincing throughout
The prison system in our country has had a bad reputation for years on end. The Belgian state has strung together international condemnations like a failed string of pearls. Director Thomas Bellinck came into contact with prisoners during his student years as a theater maker for a project, and the impressions he gathered then never quite left him. When OBV commissioned him to write an opera, it immediately brought him into the world of crime. The collected operas throughout music history are indeed one long story of betrayal, jealousy, murder, deception and so on, and everyone seems to find that 'normal.' Of course, it's not real life, they're stories, but all those situations do occur in real life. There it's not opera, there it's harsh reality. Guilty and innocent, justly and unjustly convicted: you find it all in prisons, just as you find prisoners who wait (too) long for their trial while in pre-trial detention. All of this prompted Bellinck to develop a story about prison life. He wanted to involve prisoners themselves and succeeded remarkably well. The text is not only from his hand, but also from deliberately anonymous, some by now former, detainees.
For the music, he found the right person in the right place: the Iraqi autodidact living in Ghent and something of an all-around musician who had never heard an opera before: Osama Abdulrasol. A musical genius, a musical wonder. What a powerful composition, tonal, harmonious, very closely bound to the text which is supported sometimes very intensely, then again with remarkable subtlety. Nothing is far-fetched, studied over and over, quite the opposite—it's spontaneously created music, sometimes very gripping and moving with melodies that linger. How did he manage to pull it off? To receive texts to read that aren't immediately of a pleasant nature, to be drawn into the prison system to understand it as best as one can and to convey that musically and emphasize it. That really calls for more; let's look forward to his next opera or musically gripping spectacle that the future may have in store.
All of this is presented in a simple set that references the historical set of Beethoven's Fidelio, which appears a couple of times. The four seasons follow one another and that's all there is to it. Nothing more, nothing less. They only provide relief during the walk, that is if there's no strike because then there's no walk, no visit.
Actors: sometimes spine-tingling
The acting itself could quite charm me. Marjan De Schutter who manages to identify herself unimaginably with the woman whose situation she portrays. You could weep at how she plays the role of the mother who is imprisoned. Another strong performance was that of Atta Nasser, who is more the simple criminal who perhaps doesn't know better or doesn't fully understand or grasp what's going on, why there's so much violence within the walls, poor organization and so on.
Sometimes a bit harder to understand, depending on the language (the actors perform their roles alternately in four languages—Dutch, French, German and English), Edith Saidanha and Jeroen Van der Ven were already managing to immerse themselves very naturally in their roles. Personally, I would have chosen Dutch only, but given the international composition of the detainees and the sometimes poor or miscommunication, the somewhat difficult diction gave you an even more truthful performance.
Singing 'in the clink'...
Four actors and four singers. What voices! You would say that if they hadn't been there, they were made specifically for this opera. They were four discoveries for me—if you haven't reviewed an opera in a few years you get to know new people—who were strongly convincing in their performances, in their musicality, in their textual immersion and suffering both individually and as a group, in the confusion, in the uncertainty, in not knowing what, when or where. The names in a row: conscious soprano Katharina Dain, emphatic bass-baritone Maurel Endong, sorrowful tenor Nattha Thammathi and moving mezzo-soprano Lotte Verstaen. All of this very well conducted by a perfectly performing Symphony Orchestra Opera Ballet Vlaanderen with at the helm conductor Zoe Zeniodi.
In my opinion, this opera already belongs to the great repertoire. Like all operas that stand the test of time, this timeless work deserves to endure, much like Fidelio—rightly referenced here because the bond exists, doesn't exist, yet exists all the same. In closing: hopefully politicians will learn from this and find the courage and resolve to fix the serious problems in the Belgian prison system, bringing them in line with 2025 standards and values rather than those of nearly two centuries ago.
