Edition: U.S. / Global

ARTS ABROAD; An Electronic Swirl for a Claustrophobic Labyrinth

By Alan Riding
Published: April 5, 2001

Kafka's novel ''The Trial'' opens with the unfortunate Joseph K. being arrested without charges and ends with his throat being cut ''like a dog.'' Yet in between, rather than offering a linear narrative, the book traps K. inside a repetitious circle of bureaucratic and legalistic absurdities. As a metaphor for the surrealism of the totalitarian state, ''The Trial'' is hard to beat. But as the framework for an opera it poses special problems.

Philippe Manoury, 48, a French composer best known for his experimentation with electronic music, has now taken up the challenge with ''K . . ,'' a new opera based on ''The Trial'' that had its world premiere at the Bastille Opera in Paris last month. The 100-minute opera has had a mixed critical reception. But interestingly, both where it succeeds and where it fails, the opera throws fresh light on the novel.

Mr. Manoury's interwoven orchestral and electronic score emphasizes mood over melody and, as such, seems well suited to the loose structure of Kafka's enigmatic story. ''It is easy to see why such a novel, with its pervasive air of menace and mystery and dreamlike connectivity, should appeal to a composer,'' the music critic Andrew Clements wrote in The Guardian of London.

Yet the libretto, adapted by Bernard Pautrat and the opera's director, André Engel, so faithfully reproduces the claustrophobia of the novel that it conveys little dramatic tension. In this case at least, what works on the page (and, in fairness, also on screen in Orson Welles's 1962 movie version of ''The Trial'') works less well onstage.

The libretto portrays the key episodes of Joseph K.'s odyssey toward death in 12 scenes (and five different sets convincingly evocative of the Art Nouveau of early 20th-century Prague), with each scene separated by the lowering of the curtain so that it is unclear how much time has passed between each. The lyrics are in turn presented as conversational recitatives, which serve to underline K.'s solitude but also risk creating a sameness of rhythm.

The 13 singers in 19 roles do a creditable job with a score that gives them few chances to sound lyrical. The German baritone Andreas Scheibner works hard to bring K. to life, while the American tenor Kenneth Riegel shines as the painter Titorelli. The French bass Nicolas Cavallier plays K's lawyer, while the American soprano Susan Anthony is Leni, the lawyer's mistress. The American bass Gregory Reinhart in turn doubles up as the investigating magistrate and the prison chaplain.

Perhaps the biggest surprise, though, is that an opera commissioned by the Paris National Opera has a German-language libretto, which requires French audiences to keep their eyes pinned on the surtitles. Since Kafka wrote in German, Mr. Manoury explained, it was more authentic to use the novelist's own words. ''An opera in German also has more chance of being picked up than one in French,'' he admitted, ''because there is a larger German repertory and it's easier to find singers used to working in German.''

For contemporary composers, of course, the challenge is always to get a second hearing. ''They say that when a contemporary piece is performed, the composer hears it twice in the same concert -- the first and the last time,'' Pierre Boulez, one of Mr. Manoury's mentors, likes to joke. Still, having scheduled six performances through the end of last month, Hugues Gall, the director of the Paris National Opera, has promised to program ''K . . . '' again in 2003.

Pierre Gervasoni of Le Monde was one of few music critics to endorse the production in its entirety, noting that ''K . . . '' was ''much more convincing'' than Mr. Manoury's first opera, ''60th Parallel,'' which was presented at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris in 1997. ''Despite its deliberately fragmented conception,'' Mr. Gervasoni wrote, ''the opera displays true dramatic continuity, from the orchestra pit to the stage.''

But Jacques Doucelin, writing in Le Figaro, said Mr. Manoury failed to convey K.'s acute anguish. ''This is not an opera, but an atmosphere,'' he wrote. ''The recitative facilitates comprehension, but with a few beautiful exceptions it cannot escape sounding monotonous.'' Andrew Clark in The Financial Times of London makes much the same point, noting that the composer ''never releases his singers from a Germanic straitjacket of sung-spoken dialogue.''

That said, ''K . . . '' has already earned itself a place in the history of the decade-old Bastille Opera as the first production to make full use of the ultramodern theater's technological potential. Accompanying an 80-piece orchestra in the pit, Mr. Manoury's electroacoustical equipment creates a 16-track sound distributed through 16 speakers. The result is literally to fill the giant auditorium with sound so that audiences often cannot distinguish the orchestral from the electronic music.

What makes this experiment still more difficult is that, rather than being prerecorded, the electronic music is played in real time. The American conductor Dennis Russell Davies is nonetheless in charge, with one musician in the pit following his lead on a clavier linked to an electronic console on the balcony of the opera house. The special effects range from the loud whispers of a crowd and a ''virtual'' chorus to the cries of sea gulls blending with girls' voices.

Much of the technology for this has been developed at the Paris-based Institute for the Research and Coordination of Acoustics and Music, better known as Ircam, which was founded by Mr. Boulez in 1976 and where Mr. Manoury has worked extensively over the last 20 years. Ircam, which forms part of the Georges Pompidou Center, was credited as co-producer of ''K . . ,'' with its technicians working alongside Mr. Manoury in the Bastille Opera.

For many critics it was principally this electronic adventure that made ''K . . . '' memorable. In The Financial Times, Mr. Clark remained critical of the ''disappointingly lugubrious vocal music,'' but he distinguished it from the interlude music between scenes, which, he said, ''would make a highly expressive concert suite.'' Indeed, he asked, ''why aren't more composers conversant with the wonders of modern technology?'' As an experiment, then, ''K . . . '' seems to have made its mark; as an opera, less so.

Photo: Andreas Scheibner, right, with Susan Anthony and Nicolas Cavallier in ''K . . .,'' an opera based on Kafka's novel ''The Trial.'' It had its world premiere last month at the Bastille Opera. (Éric Mahoudeau)