Jane Eyre (review)

Interviewed shortly before the premiere of Jane Eyre, Michael Berkeley summed up the new work in a couple of telling sentences: "The great thing that music can do is point up an inner turmoil of frustrated desires. And that's what this piece is all about." ¹ That element of inner turmoil may well account for much of the popular success of Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel and for its continuing hold on the public imagination. Nowhere else had the injuries and injustices of childhood been recreated more vividly or revenged more thoroughly; nowhere else had a plain, socially insignificant woman been permitted to be so outspoken about her desires—the "suppressed eroticism" (p. 24) Berkeley finds in the novel is barely suppressed—and eventually to have them realized.

While the powerful emotions of the novel make it apt for musical expression, its scope is daunting. Wisely, Berkeley and his librettist, Australian novelist David Malouf, have not tried to reproduce the events of the novel but have concentrated instead on what Berkeley calls "the central, gothic story at Thornfield, with the mad woman upstairs" (p. 25). Omitted are Jane's unhappy childhood with her aunt and cousins and her miserable years at Lowood School, as well as the time she spends with the Rivers family after she has fled Thornfield following the discovery of Mr. Rochester's mad wife. Instead, the drama is set up as a flashback that takes place a year after her flight. At the opening of act 1, hearing the voices of her past, she relives the events that have led to that point, beginning with her arrival at Thornfield as governess to Adèle (Mr. Rochester's ward). The first act concludes with Jane's acceptance of Mr. Rochester's marriage proposal following Bertha Rochester's unsuccessful attempt to burn Thornfield. The second act begins on the evening before the marriage, when Jane finally learns that the figure she glimpsed during the fire is, in fact, Mrs. Rochester. With Jane's parting from him, we return to the chronological point at which the action began. As she again hears the voices of her past, we see flames rising at Thornfield. Mrs. Rochester dies in the fire she has set, and Mr. Rochester is blinded as he tries to save her. He again calls out to Jane and, realizing that the voice she hears is not a voice of the past, she goes to him and they are reunited as the opera closes quietly.

Reviews of the Cheltenham performances suggest that Jane Eyre is highly effective in the theater, evidently staged so that Mrs. Rochester is a constant presence above the action. Heard without stage trappings, the music is often effective. The composer's description of the atmosphere as "almost Bluebeardian" and his characterization of the prevailing sound as "dark, glissandoy turbulence" give a good general sense of the opera as a whole (p. 25). The opening low string glissandos, reminiscent of the opening of Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream, are suitably ominous, and the fading away of that same glissando at the end of the opera is a musical reflection of the dramatic resolution. Similarly, at the beginning of act 2, as Mrs. Fairfax and Adèle wish Jane well on the eve of her wedding, the uneasy orchestral music provides ironic commentary. Without the visual element, however, the music sometimes seems a bit thin. The ascending and descending timpani glissandos near the beginning of the opera are repeated so often that they begin to suggest horror film clichés. Berkeley's repeated use of a phrase from Lucia di Lammermoor also strikes me as a miscalculation at times. In the interview, Berkeley referred to this music (sung to the words "Verranno a te sull'aure i...