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Svenska Dagbladet's review on Four Nights of Dream
Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Irresistible Dreams

by Karin Helander

There is every reason to visit Vadstena Castle to experience Vadstena Academy's chamber opera Four Nights of Dream, based on Japanese national bard Soseki Natsume's book Ten Nights of Dream. The music is composed by New York-trained Japanese Moto Osada, who has chosen four dreams, each with a very specific character. There is no cohesive story of personal or societal conflicts and character psychology. Instead, existential questions about the meaning of life and death are discussed and the subconscious is interpreted; doubt, anxiety, lust and love. The dreams are embraced by a somewhat surrealistic tone and a meditative stillness.

The audience is given slippers to tread on the white carpet in the completely white Zen room, which exudes concentration.  The spectators are placed close to the stage floor on three sides of the soft carpet.  At the center of the backdrop is the orchestra, dressed in white, a group of young musicians who are falling in with every rhythmic accent and shimmering change under the distinct leadership of David Björkman.  Ulrika Wedin's costumes, along with the singers' masks and makeup associate to Japanese theater in the same playful way that Nils Spangenberg's direction is colored by the aesthetic keys of the No theater: minimalistic stylization, Zen Buddhist philosophy, samurai ethics, symbolism, dreamlike mystique and in addition, the farce-like intermezzo.

Four Nights of Dream is an irresistible mix of Japanese and western influences. The music is easily accessible, dynamic and often breathtakingly beautiful. The sweep of notes and clipped motifs vary and shift from meditation and frustrated resignation to absurd comedy, suggestive ghostly mystique and metaphysical poetry. A samurai wrestles with the mystery of nothingness. Joa Helgesson's intensively singing warrior fights an inner battle in a race against time. The clock strikes, ticks and demands attention through rhythmically frenetic percussions. In the comic intermezzo that follows, a young man spends too much time watching beautiful women and is punished by a herd of licking pigs. The music sparkles lightly with fun effects borrowed from anime cartoons. Astrid Robillard is a lusciously tempting geisha, exquisitely dressed in a pink floral kimono dress and floral headdress. She sings elaborately gracefully and becomes the doom for John Kinell's poor adorable man, who is destroyed by the lively piggies. The ensemble, orchestra and conductor all sport snouts and tails.

A completely different musical temper characterizes the dream where a father carries his blind son on his back, nicely solved by using a puppet but with the pithy voice of a spirit.  The boy was murdered by his father a hundred years earlier.  The course of events is to a great extent sung in a No fashion by a male choir, as Akeo Hasegawa's restrainedly anxiety-ridden father meets his son's ghost.  The austere and slow motions contrast against the music's dull dreamlike (or nightmarish) ghostly atmospheres and disturbing outbursts.  The poetic final scene describes a man by a dying woman's grave.  She promises to return after a hundred years, and after a long wait he sees her reborn through a flower.  Phrases are repeated, the repetitive becomes contemplative in a floating, lyrically quivering impressionism by among others string quintet and piano.  Scenically, this particular dream is somewhat lacking in excitement, but the room is filled with the beautiful singing voices of Sara Sandström and John Kinell.

The dreams are lit by sunlight through the windows of the wedding room, by spotlights and fluorescent lights. It is not the darkness of night but rather the symbolically theatrical interpretation and the imagination-inspiring power of the music that create the dream in this different and fascinating opera event which is very well worth seeing.

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