Staatstheater Mainz has just announced a new production of 4.48 Psychosis in the 2024/25 season. The production will be directed by Rahel Thiel and conducted by Samuel Hogarth. The premiere will be on 26th April 2025 in the small house. More details and tickets available here.
The Bayerische Theaterakademie in Munich has announced a new production this coming autumn of the opera 4.48 Psychose (the german-language version of 4.48 Psychosis, in the translation of the Sarah Kane by Durs Grünbein). The production, directed by Balázs Kovalik and conducted by Maria Fitzgerald, will be a collaboration between Masters Students from the Theatre Academy August Everding and Munich Conservatoire of Music and Theatre. The premiere will be on 23rd October 2023 in the Reaktorhalle, with further performances on 25th, 27th and 29th October. Tickets and more information here.
The Semperoper in Dresden has announced a third run of performances of 4.48 Psychose, postponed from 2021. The opera had its german premiere run at Semper Zwei in April/May 2018, with sold-out performances. The dates next season will be 16, 18, 21, 22, 25 and 26th March 2023, and tickets can be booked here.
The 2018 production by Tobias Heyder, conducted by Max Renne, will feature Sarah Maria Sun, Karen Bandelow, Samantha Price, Sarah Alexandra Hudarew, Karina Repova, Tahnee Niboro and the Semperoper Projektorchester. Design is by Stephan von Wedel, light by Marco Dietzel, video by Benedikt Schulte and dramaturgie by Juliane Schunke.
I was delighted to speak to Will Davenport earlier this year about my work in the context of LGBTQI+ issues, particularly focussing on my operas and my work with David Hoyle. This two-part interview features on the ConnectsMusic platform as part of their ‘Open Conversations’ series that focuses on queer music-makers.
Some production images from the Ensemble Intercontemporain concert performance of 4.48 Psychosis, December 2021, at the Philharmonie de Paris as part of the portrait of my work in the Festival d’Automne à Paris. The ensemble was conducted by Matthias Pintscher, the singers were Gweneth-Ann Rand, Robyn Allegra Parton, Karen Bandelow, Samantha Price, Rachael Lloyd and Lucy Schaufer, with video by Pierre Martin and Mise-en-Espace by Elayce Ismail. All images by Quentin Chevrier. They can be used for press purposes with the appropriate credit.
The Festival d’Automne à Paris and Ensemble Intercontemporain gave a concert performance of 4.48 Psychosis on 16th December 2021. The concert was part of the Festival feature about my work, and took place in the Cité de la Musique in the Philharmonie de Paris. The concert featured singers Gweneth Ann Rand, Robyn Allegra Parton, Karen Bandelow, Samantha Price, Rachael Lloyd and Lucy Schaufer, and was conducted my Matthias Pintscher, with Aurélien Gignoux and Gilles Durot taking the solo percussion roles. Nicholas Berteloot and Emmanuelle Corbeau did sound design, Elayce Ismail looked after ‘mise en espace’ and lights, and Pierre Martin the video.
The Philharmonie de Paris have just released this trailer video in advance of the concert performance of 4.48 Psychosis there on Thursday 16th December with Ensemble Intercontemporain, in a co-production with the Festival d’Automne à Paris. The 9-minute video features a short interview with me about the piece, and some clips of the staged production from Strasbourg.
An article about 4.48 Psychosishas just been published in the Tempo journal of new music, written by Tom Crathorne, about the interaction between music and libretto. The full article is available here. This is the abstract:
Some production images from the Opéra National du Rhin / Royal Opera production of 4.48 Psychosis, September 2019. Directed by Ted Huffman, Design by Hannah Clark, Video by Pierre Martin, Light by D.M. Wood, Sound by Sound Intermedia and Fight Direction by RC-Annie. The performers featured in the photos are Gweneth-Ann Rand, Robyn Allegra Parton, Susanna Hurrell, Samantha Price, Rachael Lloyd and Lucy Schaufer, with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg conducted by Richard Baker. All images taken by Klara Beck. They can be used for press purposes with the appropriate credit.
The French premiere of 4.48 Psychosis took place 18-22 September 2019 at the Opéra National du Rhin in Strasbourg, in collaboration with the Musica Festival. The Royal Opera production was performed by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg and Sound Intermedia under the baton of Richard Baker, with Gweneth-Ann Rand, Robyn Allegra Parton, Susanna Hurrell, Samantha Price, Rachael Lloyd and Lucy Schaufer as the six cast.
Semperoper in Dresden have announced more dates next season for their production of 4.48 Psychose. The opera had its german premiere run in Semper Zwei in April/May this year, with sold-out performances. The dates next season will be 7th, 9th, 10th, 13th and 15th September, and tickets can be booked here.
Sempoeroper have made a new video trailer of the production using rehearsal footage, which you can watch, above.
Some production images from the Prototype Festival / Royal Opera production of 4.48 Psychosis, January 2019. Directed by Ted Huffman, Design by Hannah Clark, Video by Pierre Martin, Light by D.M. Wood, Sound by Sound Intermedia and Fight Direction by RC-Annie. The performers featured in the photos are Gweneth-Ann Rand, Lucy Hall, Susanna Hurrell, Samantha Price, Rachael Lloyd and Lucy Schaufer, with the Contemporaneous Ensemble conducted by William Cole. All images taken by Paula Court. They can be used for press purposes with the appropriate credit.
4.48 Psychosis made its american premiere in New York City a few weeks ago at the Prototype Festival. The exceptional cast, orchestra and crew gave six performances of the Royal Opera production (directed by Ted Huffman) over eight days in the Baruch Performing Arts Centre. The performances were sold out, and the response from the press was incredible. Here is a small selection.
“there was no denying the sledgehammer power of Philip Venables’s “4.48 Psychosis” […] Venables’s bent for politically charged topics is all the more conspicuous because of his frequent use of speaking voices, which are coördinated with rapid-fire instrumental lines. Yet he is also a composer of considerable refinement, who can weave ethereal textures from a few carefully chosen pitches. This combination of savagery and economy makes for an arrestingly original musical personality.” — Alex Ross, The New Yorker
“In his opera, which had its premiere with the Royal Opera in London in 2016, the composer Philip Venables has found in Kane’s material a landscape of iciness and sensitivity, in which speaking and singing flow into one another with uncanny ease. […] All in all, this “4.48” avoids neither the text’s moments of pitch-black humor nor its passages of luminous air; it doesn’t prettify Kane, nor does it make her brutality unendurable. Elegantly ferocious, it is this unclassifiable play as music.” — Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times
“Despite violence, Venables gives a rendering of depression that accentuates tenacity, intelligence, and humanity.” — Lana Norris, I Care If You Listen.
“Venables takes full advantage of the play’s meandering stream-of-consciousness in a searing, kaleidoscopic score which foregrounds the lyricism and brutality of Kane’s text. Venables’ score has an unremitting intensity, endowing Kane’s play with a visceral impact so often missing from theatrical productions of the work. Textual contrasts are pushed to extremes in a score that alternates between Artaudian delirium and baroque detachment. […] Ultimately, 4.48 Psychosis is a heart-stopping, utterly devastating night at the opera, not to be missed.” — Callum John Blackmore, Parterre Box
The Royal Opera production of 4.48 Psychosis will make its american debut in New York City on 5th January 2019, headlining the Prototype Festival. Prototype is North America’s largest promoter of new opera and music theatre, and their January showcase festival takes place in venues across the city during the first two weeks of January each year. 4.48 Psychosis will run for six performances at the Baruch Performing Arts Center in midtown, and will feature the cast from the Royal Opera company, who revived the opera in London earlier this year. Tickets for the performances will go on sale on 1st October, here.
The recent performances of the Royal Opera production of 4.48 Psychosis have come to an end. We didn’t expect much press for a revival, of course, but the reviews there have been have been outstanding. The performances took place at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith in April and May 2018. Here are some links to some of the reviews:
4.48 Psychose will gets its premiere at Dresden’s Semperoper Zwei next year. This will be a new version of 4.48 Psychosis in German, based on the official translation of Sarah Kane’s play by Durs Grünbein. The premiere will take place on 26th April 2019, and there will be other events surrounding it, including a portrait concert of some of my chamber work. I’m excited to get working on the new score for the german version this summer – because of the tight knitting of text and music, about 40% of the opera needs to be re-scored. More information about the performances are here.
4.48 Psychosishas been shortlisted for the South Bank Sky Arts Award for Best Opera 2017. The awards ceremony is on 9th July at the Savoy Hotel in London, and covers all art forms from opera, dance, classical music, theatre, literature, comedy, television, pop music film and visual arts. The awards will be presented by Melvyn Bragg. The other shortlisted productions for the opera award are Glyndebourne Youth Opera for Nothing (David Bruce/Glyn Maxwell) and Opera North for their Ring Cycle. Fingers crossed!
I’m delighted to announce that I won the Royal Philharmonic Society Prize for Large Scale Composition for 4.48 Psychosis. The award ceremony took place at The Brewery Hotel in London, and was broadcast on BBC Radio 3. The award was one of two composition awards (the other for chamber music, which went to Rebecca Saunders for Skin). 4.48 Psychosis was also nominated in the Best Opera category, which was awarded to Opera North for their Ring cycle. So far two awards won out of four nominations…!
4.48 Psychosishas been shortlisted in two categories for the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards 2017. The opera was nominate for the Large-Scale Composition award and the Opera & Music Theatre award. Both shortlists, and the rest of the nominees, are quite a formidable bunch, including Rebecca Saunders, Enno Poppe, Liza Lim, James Ehnes, Pierre Laurent-Aimard and Andrew Gourlay. The announcement was made on BBC Radio 3, and the awards ceremony will be on 9th May. Fingers crossed!
4.48 Psychosis has been nominated for an Olivier Award, in the category Best New Opera Production. The award ceremony is at the Royal Albert Hall on 9th April, and we are up against Akhnaten (ENO), Cosi Fan Tutte (ROH) and Lulu (ENO). Fingers crossed! More info about the nominations is here.
I’m delighted to say that we have just won the award for Achievement in Opera at the UK Theatre Awards 2016. The Royal Opera and Guildhall School of Music & Drama, in association with the Lyric Hammersmith, were nominated for my opera, 4.48 Psychosis, and the other nominees were Welsh National Opera for Figaro Gets a Divorce and In Parenthesis, and Scottish Opera with Music Theatre Wales for The Devil Inside. It was such a pleasure for me to accept the award alongside Ted Huffman, Richard Baker and Julian Philips, and for 4.48 Psychosis to have been recognised by the British theatre community – Ted and I feel it’s a vindication of our mission to blur the lines between opera and theatre!
Here’s a copy of the introductory essay to my work that John Fallas very beautifully wrote as an introduction to 4.48 Psychosis. It was commissioned by the Royal Opera for the 4.48 Psychosis programme booklet.
A new kind of opera
John Fallas
Where does a composer begin, when planning a piece of music? With notes, one might imagine – a melody, or a chord – or with an idea about instrumental or vocal sound: the playing or singing that is going to bring the piece to life. For Philip Venables it is different. For several years now he has been concerned less with the singing voice than with the speaking voice, and with finding a place – and a reason – for that voice in contexts which can meaningfully be described as ‘music’ rather than, say, poetry or theatre (though they may be those things too).
This relative lack of interest in the voice as an instrument of song might seem an odd qualification for writing an opera. And yet it suggests a slantwise approach, one without preconceptions about ‘opera’ or, indeed, about ‘the voice’, which resonates with Venables’s chosen text – a ‘play’ with no named characters nor even, for the most part, clear dialogue – as well as with the deliberately blank slate with which he was asked to approach the writing of the ambitious piece receiving its first performances this week at the Lyric Hammersmith.
The project has come about under the umbrella of a joint scheme piloted by The Royal Opera and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Venables is the two institutions’ first Doctoral Composer-in-Residence, a position which builds on the practice-and-reflection-based nature of the School’s existing postgraduate composition programmes as well as drawing on the creative resources and environment of the Royal Opera House. It has meant that he has had opportunities to workshop and experiment over the eighteen-month period leading up to this week’s premiere, as well as time to reflect on what sort of work might enable him best to realise his vision for a new kind of opera.
The question of a libretto – even if it was not going to be a conventional sung libretto – clearly arose early in this process, and Venables was surprised to find his thoughts not going in the direction he had anticipated they would. “I spent a long time wanting to do an original piece and looking for a writer to collaborate with,” he said in a recent magazine interview, “but eventually it dawned on me that Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis had almost everything I wanted.”
Alongside the incorporation of spoken voice, another recurring concern in Venables’s work to date has been violence, whether directly thematised or more oblique. At perhaps the most literal end of this spectrum are the percussive thwacks which impel much of The Revenge of Miguel Cotto (a 2012 piece for two male singers and nine instrumentalists), though even this vivid musical present tense gives way to a vein of reflective sadness as the work’s narrative – a true story of revenge and honour between boxers – turns from action to contemplation and consequence. There is the submerged, sometimes surreally flaring violence of Simon Howard’s poetry, which Venables has set three times, for a variety of ensembles mixing voices, simple instrumental accompaniments and, in numbers 91–95, two tape recorders (here, the echo-chamber of memory is a feature right through the piece). The same combination of qualities recurs in an earlier operatic project, The Schmürz, after Boris Vian’s 1959 play Les Bâtisseurs d’Empire, which Venables describes as “a violent, surreal comment on war and colonialism”. (This project is still in development, but has a first visible trace in the short instrumental Fight Music, written in 2009 as a thirtieth-birthday present for the Endymion ensemble, of which Venables was artistic director from 2004 until stepping back in order to concentrate on the composition of the present opera.)
Does he see Kane’s text as violent? “Contrary to some readings of this piece we feel that it’s not about blood and guts,” he says, “but about inner conflict. […] That huge conflict between wanting love and wanting happiness and not being able to find it.” He also stresses the way the body is constantly implicated in the struggles voiced by the text: the body as another site of conflict (both ‘internal’ and ‘external’), of feeling not-at-home, of discomfort and confusion – about gender, for example, clearly a key concern of the play.
In terms of the transition to the opera stage, the six singers do not represent separate characters but might be understood as externalisations of the text’s consciousness – of what Venables and director Ted Huffman call the ‘hivemind’, the simultaneously plural and divided protagonist of this polyvalent, often disconcertingly borderless text. In the four scenes where the presentation of text on Kane’s page does imply dialogue, Venables avoids operatic convention in a different way, and dissolves the text/‘character’ nexus even further, with the speech rhythms ‘performed’ by two percussionists and the words themselves not heard but projected visually. (There is a visual similarity, at least, to the two percussionists in The Revenge of Miguel Cotto, stationed at the back of the stage with punch-bags.)
On both counts – the splitting/recombining of an indeterminately single/multiple character and the voiceless embodiment of dialogue – the work seems concerned to make something as new, authentic, and both thematically and formally uninhibited out of opera as Kane did out of theatre. It also recreates on its own terms the variety of register manifested by the original play text. “Nasty fucked-up computer game music: you lost,” while others just prefer to play video games to learn the overwatch team composition and improve their skills. Asking a patient to count down in this manner is a standard test for depression, but Venables treats it in TV gameshow style, with buzzers/bells for ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answers. To listeners familiar with Venables’s previous work, these passages may also recall two of the three abovementioned Simon Howard settings, numbers 76–80: tristan und isolde and numbers 91–95, both with texts drawn from a single long poem in 100 numbered sections. In Kane’s text as in Howard’s poetry, abstract frameworks summon forth and keep company with shards of vivid, sometimes unbearable reality.
Radical/experimental poetry has appealed to Venables consistently in recent years. The Revenge of Miguel Cotto was developed in collaboration with the poet S J Fowler, and another work – Socialist Realism, for speaking choir, ‘newsreader’ and solo violin – sets a text by a third London-based poet, Sean Bonney, whose fierce post-punk, post-Rimbaud intelligence informs this furious/sad meditation on what the government and mayoralty have wreaked upon our city in the name of profit.
All of these pieces include elements which draw them away from the conventional ‘setting’ of text, so that in Venables’s output to date the division between staged and concert music is not rigid. In other works different variables again are in play. In Unleashed, for example – a music/theatre piece for singer, five actors, tape and two instrumentalists, based on documentary recordings of gay men describing their sex lives – the instruments follow the rhythms and verbal cues of the spoken text, rather than having notated beats and barlines. In the numbers pieces, by contrast, the spoken and theatricalised elements take place against the background of unobtrusive yet tightly controlled harmonic and rhythmic set-ups, whose simple, pragmatic effectiveness perhaps reveals the guiding influence of Venables’s first composition teacher, Steve Martland, as well as Venables’s own practical experience working with chamber ensembles as a programmer and artistic director. 4.48 Psychosis finds an intuitive middle way between these two approaches – the primacy of the musical and of the textual framework – just as it also dissolves the distinctions between spoken and sung voice which might have appeared central to Venables’s earlier experiments in combining text and music. It is a brave and inclusive vision of opera, and an authentic staging of a brave and – for all its horrible intimacy with despair – richly textured, endlessly rewarding play.
The critics’ response to the world premiere of 4.48 Psychosis has been incredible. 4.48 Psychosis is my first finished opera, produced by the Royal Opera at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith in April and May 2016. Here are some excerpts from the reviews:
The Independent. ★★★★★ “Where this first-ever operatic setting by Royal Opera House Guildhall composer-in-residence Philip Venables succeeds is through simple honesty. With a score ranging guilelessly from motoric arrhythmia to wispy renaissance, director Ted Huffman and team attempt neither dramatic adornment nor explanation but allow the text to breathe within a kaleidoscope of inner-outer conflict. […] Duelling percussionists parley in a doctor-patient morse code. A tapestry of strings, accordion and saxes evoke polyphonies of yearning, while tenderly but inexorably we encounter hopeless recesses of the mind. Knowledge of Kane’s suicide shortly after writing the play can only make this humane and understated piece the more compelling.”
The Telegraph. ★★★★ 4.48 Psychosis opera is rawly powerful and laceratingly honest. “Venables’s high-pitched score is a soundscape that imaginatively penetrates and dramatises the heart of this darkness. Ferocious peremptory drum beats mingle ironically with cocktail-hour smooch broadcast from the radio; the vocal writing veers between monotonous chant and shrieking anguish; and there are even moments of melancholy beauty, when the women harmonise laments for a lost life of beauty, friendship, value. […] This is an urgent message from black-dog hell, and it should not go unheeded.”
The Guardian. ★★★★ Philip Venables proves he’s one of the finest composers around with an intricate score inspired by Kane’s very personal story of clinical depression. “But the yearning, intricate vocal writing – Monteverdian in its timelessness – poignantly reminds us that depression is also the absence of love. Even in despair, Kane could be a savage ironist, and brassy, postmodern toccatas accompany the endless prescriptions of anti-depressants. The word “silence” was her only stage direction; Venables fills those pauses with distant muzak, among the most unnerving sounds in the work. […] above all, it confirms Philip Venables’s reputation as one of the finest of the younger generation of composers working today.”
The Times. ★★★★ Every self-harming syllable of Sarah Kane’s angry play is clear as Philip Venables finds a musical vocabulary for the drugs that treat depression. “Chroma’s strings, saxophones, accordion and synthesizer smear and blur in parallel to the drugs, sometimes delicately, sometimes violently. Click here for more info. Every self-harming syllable of the text is clear. There are neon-bright salutes to Bartók’s Bluebeard (a blast of Door Five C major), and a lament derived from the Agnus Dei of Bach’s B minor Mass.”
The Observer. ★★★★ Philip Venables makes Sarah Kane’s final work sing. “The revelation is how Venables has enriched her play through music. He challenges the conventions of opera. Via an array of resources he ambushes and refreshes an old art form. His technique is that of a collagist. Text is variously spoken, projected, amplified, conveyed rhythmically with percussion and sung, often in aria-like lament or chorale outburst. Snatches of Purcell – a mini viola fantasia arrests the action for several moments – and Bach coexist with high-energy funk reminiscent of the late Steve Martland. On reading later that Martland was Venables’s teacher, I can hear that element as a tribute rather than an imitation. I need to know more of Venables’s music to find his own musical identity: my task, not his.”
The Financial Times. ★★★★ ‘Unhinged and chilling’. “Kane’s text is spoken, sung and projected on screens: it seems to emanate from everywhere. But Venables’ achievement is bigger than that. He manages to enhance Kane’s groundbreaking format with his own unbuttoned imagination. His score lurches between chattering polyphony, sounds of sawing wood, and post-romantic arias, spiced up with eerie violin shrieks. In the exchanges between patient and therapist, two percussionists thrash out rhythmic speech patterns as the text appears on screens beneath them. Then, when the din fades away, we’re left with the indifferent tinkle of elevator music. It’s unhinged and chilling, albeit laced with Kane’s trademark humour. Most of all, it is dizzyingly colourful.”
The Arts Desk. ★★★★ A musical dramatisation of Sarah Kane’s classic play finds both pain and consolation. “Picking his way through the chattering textual landscape with infinite care and understanding, cutting little text and adding none, Venables groups the material into genres. The structure that emerges is something like a sketch show; musical and dramatic tropes or textures return again and again, gaining weight and significance cumulatively through repetition and juxtaposition. […] Set against these fixed musical landmarks, stand-alone episodes make far greater impact. An exquisite aria for Clare Presland, sung over a synthesised accompaniment, is equal parts Purcell and pop song, a musical memory that offers a sustained moment of stillness, refusing to give way to the assault of other words and sounds. […] Venables’s orchestration (light on strings, heavy on saxophones and keyboards textures) is spare but telling, cultivating a mechanistic quality even when combining purely acoustic instruments that refuses to sentimentalise the outpourings of Kane’s speakers. Paired with the heady, giddy texture of so many upper voices, the result feels dangerously unanchored, unmoored from bass certainty and support.”
The Stage. ★★★★ “Philip Venables’ operatic version of Sarah Kane’s final play is both startling and immensely moving. […] a wide-ranging stylistic melange that counterpoints the freewheeling intellectual sophistication and through-the-floor psychological depths reached in Kane’s play.”
Music OMH. ★★★★ “Venables’ score, played by the CHROMA Ensemble conducted by Richard Baker, is poignant and atmospheric and suits the words very well. It allows some to be uttered slowly, and others to be rattled through in a haze, signifying how someone’s thoughts can rush in and pile on top of each other. While this 4.48 Psychosis undoubtedly constitutes an opera, the music is best understood as a contributory component to a sensory experience that is also created through word, setting, gesture, movement and sound in the widest sense of the word. We sometimes hear the radio play or ‘voiceovers’ from offstage. Similarly, ‘arias’, cries of despair or religious sounding music can be abruptly interrupted by other sounds, revealing how thought patterns can shift and some feelings drown out others.”
The Spectator. “Experimentation in the service of absolute emotional precision: Venables’ economical work is one of the most exhilarating operas in years, even while it gives voice to some of the darkest thoughts imaginable.”
Tempo Journal “I cannot recall having been as powerfully moved by an opera as this, much of it watched with my hand clasped over my mouth.”
Bachtrack. Powerful and assured. “Whenever the music made use of multiple layers, and particularly when these materials were somehow archetypal or reminiscent of other music, Venables’ clarity of conception as a composer really shone through. From lullabies through sad electric keyboard pop songs to the descending bass of Baroque laments that surfaced repeatedly, these musics were always tending towards the past; towards memory, and in connecting with our own memories of them, lent depth and empathy to the ‘character’ presenting them. […] Seeing a list of the formal devices used by Venables, it would be easy to think that these were used as crutches. But Venables’ opera is a very assured and crafted work, placing Kane’s words in a formalised and estranged context which manages not to make the emotions overwrought, but not downplaying them either.”
British Medical Journal. “The shimmering score, the choreographed moves of the singers, and the (often projected) words work well together, in verses and prose, staccato rhythms, and rich polyphonic sounds. During moments of “silence,” lighter music (muzak?)—probably recorded—was playing in the background, making me wonder whether this was somehow happening in the main character’s mind. Or maybe in my own mind? The production was incredibly tense, and every crisis that the protagonist experienced seemed worse than the preceding one, her sense of isolation, anger, and hopelessness more acute, her withdrawal into her despair more final. She sings about a previous suicide attempt by taking an overdose of her multifarious medications; this had been unsuccessful. […] It felt difficult to applaud after such an unremittingly bleak 90 minutes, but the performances and staging had been absolutely superb. The operatic format was an absolutely inspired choice as the words were rhythmical and music can convey emotions that words cannot, or convey them differently. Outstanding!”
4.48 Psychosis was the astonishing final work of the radical British playwright Sarah Kane, first performed posthumously in 2000. Detailing the experience of clinical depression, the play harrowingly reveals, through poetry, anger and dark humour, an individual’s struggle to come to terms with their own psychosis, the numbers in the title referring to the time in the early morning when clarity and bleak despair strike together.
This award-winning operatic adaptation of Kane’s play is the first ever permitted musical adaptation of any of her work. The search for love and happiness and the struggle for identity are explored through a fusion of opera with spoken and visual text, bringing a new resonance to the last creative utterances of one of the most courageous young British writers of her generation. The opera was first presented in 2016 by the Royal Opera in London, in a production by Ted Huffman, and has subsequently seen productions in London, New York City, Strasbourg, Dresden, Munich, Mainz and Paris. The opera was awarded a Royal Philharmonic Society for Best Large Scale Composition 2017, a British Composer Award for Best Stage Work 2017, a UK Theatre Award for Best Opera 2016 and it was shortlisted for an Olivier Award for Best Opera in 2017 and a Southbank Award for Best Opera in 2017. It has been chosen as one of the best operas of 2019 by The New Yorker Magazine, and was highlighted as one of the most groundbreaking operas of the decade by The Times Literary Supplement.
Details
4.48 Psychosis was written as part of the Doctoral Composer in Residence programme between the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden.
Text: Sarah Kane Duration: 90 minutes, no interval, in 24 short scenes. Text is in english, but foreign-language versions can be prepared (French, Italian). A German version is available from the publisher. Cast: 3 sopranos, 3 mezzo-sopranos Ensemble, 12 players: alto flute + picc, 3 saxes (all sop+bar), piano+synth with organ pedalboard, accordion, 2 percussion (female solo roles, some playing from memory), vln+vla, 2 vla, bass. Percussion: two bass drums, woodsaw & wood, other standard orchestral percussion. Sound dispersion: All singers and ensemble amplified. 1 stage speaker (central), surround sound in auditorium, click tracks to ensemble. Projection, single projector required. A significant amount of pre-recorded material must be recorded with the cast.
The Independent. “Where this first-ever operatic setting by Royal Opera House Guildhall composer-in-residence Philip Venables succeeds is through simple honesty. With a score ranging guilelessly from motoric arrhythmia to wispy renaissance, director Ted Huffman and team attempt neither dramatic adornment nor explanation but allow the text to breathe within a kaleidoscope of inner-outer conflict. […] Duelling percussionists parley in a doctor-patient morse code. A tapestry of strings, accordion and saxes evoke polyphonies of yearning, while tenderly but inexorably we encounter hopeless recesses of the mind. Knowledge of Kane’s suicide shortly after writing the play can only make this humane and understated piece the more compelling.”
The Telegraph. 4.48 Psychosis opera is rawly powerful and laceratingly honest. “Venables’s high-pitched score is a soundscape that imaginatively penetrates and dramatises the heart of this darkness. Ferocious peremptory drum beats mingle ironically with cocktail-hour smooch broadcast from the radio; the vocal writing veers between monotonous chant and shrieking anguish; and there are even moments of melancholy beauty, when the women harmonise laments for a lost life of beauty, friendship, value. […] This is an urgent message from black-dog hell, and it should not go unheeded.”
The Guardian. Philip Venables proves he’s one of the finest composers around with an intricate score inspired by Kane’s very personal story of clinical depression. “But the yearning, intricate vocal writing – Monteverdian in its timelessness – poignantly reminds us that depression is also the absence of love. Even in despair, Kane could be a savage ironist, and brassy, postmodern toccatas accompany the endless prescriptions of anti-depressants. The word “silence” was her only stage direction; Venables fills those pauses with distant muzak, among the most unnerving sounds in the work. […] above all, it confirms Philip Venables’s reputation as one of the finest of the younger generation of composers working today.”
The Times. Every self-harming syllable of Sarah Kane’s angry play is clear as Philip Venables finds a musical vocabulary for the drugs that treat depression. “Chroma’s strings, saxophones, accordion and synthesizer smear and blur in parallel to the drugs, sometimes delicately, sometimes violently. Click here for more info. Every self-harming syllable of the text is clear. There are neon-bright salutes to Bartók’s Bluebeard (a blast of Door Five C major), and a lament derived from the Agnus Dei of Bach’s B minor Mass.”
The Observer. Philip Venables makes Sarah Kane’s final work sing. “The revelation is how Venables has enriched her play through music. He challenges the conventions of opera. Via an array of resources he ambushes and refreshes an old art form. His technique is that of a collagist. Text is variously spoken, projected, amplified, conveyed rhythmically with percussion and sung, often in aria-like lament or chorale outburst. Snatches of Purcell – a mini viola fantasia arrests the action for several moments – and Bach coexist with high-energy funk reminiscent of the late Steve Martland. On reading later that Martland was Venables’s teacher, I can hear that element as a tribute rather than an imitation. I need to know more of Venables’s music to find his own musical identity: my task, not his.”
The Financial Times. ‘Unhinged and chilling’. “Kane’s text is spoken, sung and projected on screens: it seems to emanate from everywhere. But Venables’ achievement is bigger than that. He manages to enhance Kane’s groundbreaking format with his own unbuttoned imagination. His score lurches between chattering polyphony, sounds of sawing wood, and post-romantic arias, spiced up with eerie violin shrieks. In the exchanges between patient and therapist, two percussionists thrash out rhythmic speech patterns as the text appears on screens beneath them. Then, when the din fades away, we’re left with the indifferent tinkle of elevator music. It’s unhinged and chilling, albeit laced with Kane’s trademark humour. Most of all, it is dizzyingly colourful.”
The Arts Desk. A musical dramatisation of Sarah Kane’s classic play finds both pain and consolation. “Picking his way through the chattering textual landscape with infinite care and understanding, cutting little text and adding none, Venables groups the material into genres. The structure that emerges is something like a sketch show; musical and dramatic tropes or textures return again and again, gaining weight and significance cumulatively through repetition and juxtaposition. […] Set against these fixed musical landmarks, stand-alone episodes make far greater impact. An exquisite aria for Clare Presland, sung over a synthesised accompaniment, is equal parts Purcell and pop song, a musical memory that offers a sustained moment of stillness, refusing to give way to the assault of other words and sounds. […] Venables’s orchestration (light on strings, heavy on saxophones and keyboards textures) is spare but telling, cultivating a mechanistic quality even when combining purely acoustic instruments that refuses to sentimentalise the outpourings of Kane’s speakers. Paired with the heady, giddy texture of so many upper voices, the result feels dangerously unanchored, unmoored from bass certainty and support.”
The Spectator. “Experimentation in the service of absolute emotional precision: Venables’ economical work is one of the most exhilarating operas in years, even while it gives voice to some of the darkest thoughts imaginable.”
Tempo Journal “I cannot recall having been as powerfully moved by an opera as this, much of it watched with my hand clasped over my mouth.”
Staatstheater Mainz has just announced a new production of 4.48 Psychosis in the 2024/25 season. The production will be directed by Rahel Thiel and conducted by Samuel Hogarth. The premiere…
The Bayerische Theaterakademie in Munich has announced a new production this coming autumn of the opera 4.48 Psychose (the german-language version of 4.48 Psychosis, in the translation of the Sarah…
The Semperoper in Dresden has announced a third run of performances of 4.48 Psychose, postponed from 2021. The opera had its german premiere run at Semper Zwei in April/May 2018,…
I was delighted to speak to Will Davenport earlier this year about my work in the context of LGBTQI+ issues, particularly focussing on my operas and my work with David…
Some production images from the Ensemble Intercontemporain concert performance of 4.48 Psychosis, December 2021, at the Philharmonie de Paris as part of the portrait of my work in the Festival d’Automne…
The Festival d’Automne à Paris and Ensemble Intercontemporain gave a concert performance of 4.48 Psychosis on 16th December 2021. The concert was part of the Festival feature about my work,…
The Philharmonie de Paris have just released this trailer video in advance of the concert performance of 4.48 Psychosis there on Thursday 16th December with Ensemble Intercontemporain, in a co-production…
An article about 4.48 Psychosis has just been published in the Tempo journal of new music, written by Tom Crathorne, about the interaction between music and libretto. The full article…
4.48 Psychosis will be performed in concert by Ensemble Intercontemporain on 16th December 2021 in the Cité de la Musique at the Philharmonie de Paris, as part of the feature…
Both 4.48 Psychosis and Denis & Katya have appeared in a number of ‘Best of 2019’ or ‘Best of the Decade’ lists. Here is a selection: 4.48 Psychosis at the…
Some production images from the Opéra National du Rhin / Royal Opera production of 4.48 Psychosis, September 2019. Directed by Ted Huffman, Design by Hannah Clark, Video by Pierre Martin,…
The French premiere of 4.48 Psychosis took place 18-22 September 2019 at the Opéra National du Rhin in Strasbourg, in collaboration with the Musica Festival. The Royal Opera production was…
Semperoper in Dresden have announced more dates next season for their production of 4.48 Psychose. The opera had its german premiere run in Semper Zwei in April/May this year,…
Some production images from the Prototype Festival / Royal Opera production of 4.48 Psychosis, January 2019. Directed by Ted Huffman, Design by Hannah Clark, Video by Pierre Martin, Light by…
4.48 Psychosis made its american premiere in New York City a few weeks ago at the Prototype Festival. The exceptional cast, orchestra and crew gave six performances of the Royal…
The Royal Opera production of 4.48 Psychosis will make its american debut in New York City on 5th January 2019, headlining the Prototype Festival. Prototype is North America’s largest promoter of…
Some production images from the revival of the Royal Opera production of 4.48 Psychosis, May 2018. Directed by Ted Huffman, Design by Hannah Clark, Video by Pierre Martin, Light by…
The recent performances of the Royal Opera production of 4.48 Psychosis have come to an end. We didn’t expect much press for a revival, of course, but the reviews there…
4.48 Psychose will gets its premiere at Dresden’s Semperoper Zwei next year. This will be a new version of 4.48 Psychosis in German, based on the official translation of Sarah…
On Wednesday night, I won the British Composer Award for Best Stage Work, for 4.48 Psychosis. The awards, organised by BASCA and supported by the PRS for Music Foundation and…