Quartet
Director: Àlex Ollé
Writer: Luca Francesconi
Based on: Heiner Müller‘s play which is in turn based on Pierre Choderlos de Laclos‘ novel Dangerous Liaisons
Cast: Allison Cook, Robin Adams
Part of: Wiener Festwochen

Plot:
The Marquise de Merteuil (Allison Cook) and the Vicomte de Valmont (Robin Adams) had an affair a long time ago. Since then their relationship has turned more into one of hate and rivalry. One day the Marquise feels a strange nostalgia about the Vicomte, just before he comes to visit her. She makes an attempt to rekindle their relationship but the Vicomte tells her that he has freshly fallen in love. That in turns leads to a kind of battle between the two where they alternately try to seduce and destroy each other.

I wanted to see this opera even though I am not a huge fan of modern operas – and this one didn’t change my mind one bit. But I liked the book and the various movie adaptations and I was interested to see what they would make of the source material. The results are mostly interesting but it’s the stage and production design that really made the evening for me.

Quartet was really short – only about 80 minutes – and that was honestly a good thing as the music was extremely grating and unnerving. I don’t think that I have enough music vocabularly and understanding to appreciate modern classical music of this kind – to me [and yes, I feel like a very old person saying this] it sounds like noise. Disharmonious noise.

As far as I can tell, Robin Adams and Allison Cook had their work cut out for them and did a good job, though Allison Cook didn’t really manage to transport the last scene where the Marquise freaks out. There was no real freaking and more tiredly throwing stuff around the room. It lacked a certain intensity.

But I did like the approach of the adaptation. I probably would like Heiner Müller’s play – maybe I should check that out at some point. There’s a lot of room for interpretation and discussion there and maybe I’ll get around to a re-read of the book and re-watch of at least a few of the adaptations and then I’ll make one huge comparison project out of it.

As I said, the most brilliant thing about it (and practically the only thing that kept me there until the end, apart from its short duration) was the stage design. The action took place in a suspended box in front of a huge screen and not only did the video projections on the screen give them a lot of room for playing around with a rather simple set-up, it also looked absolutely fantastic.

Summarising: You might get more out of it, if you like modern opera. Otherwise you might want to check out one of the other versions of the material.