Border Crossings are well known for their innovative cross-cultural productions, and in this venture they have truly excelled themselves. The Mouth of the Gods is a lavish, hybrid work that encompasses opera, dramatic reconstruction, dance, puppetry, community singing and symbolic textile embrodery, all within a musical framework of Baroque and indigenous Latin American instruments. It is a supremely inventive cultural collage that celebrates the fusion of indigenous and Spanish colonial cultures while commemorating the often tragic history of repression and exploitation that resulted. It achieves this in a way that should make its mark on people of all ages.
The collage comprises two different categories of material – in the first half the performers reconstructed items from musical collections preserved in Jesuit communities in northern Peru, some vocal and some instrumental, but all the work of indigenous composers imitating European Baroque style. In the second we receiveed a performance of a whole opera written in Chiquitano, essentially a dialogue between St Ignatius Loyala and St Francis Xavier. Breaking up the musical elements were three dramatic episodes delivered by actors in English devoted to crucial events in Latin American history – the Valladollid debate of 1551 over the ethics of Spanish colonialism, the cruel execution of resistance hero Tupac Amaru in 1781, and the murder of indigenous environmental activist Berta Caceres in 2015.
As you might imagine from this summary, there was a huge number of themes and aesthetic strands in play at any one time, testament to the ambition of director Michael Walling. Not everything worked perfectly on press night, especially the surtitles, but never mind. If, as Wagner suggested, opera should aspire to be ‘the total work of art’, then this production hit that target as far as is humanly possible. There was hardly any aspect of Latin American culture and history that was not referenced or alluded to in some way. Moreover, the excellently detailed programme revealed how much research had gone into the show, with the embroiderers and puppeteers seeking inspiration from the British Museum and the instrumentalists investigating the resources of the Horniman Museum.
At the heart of the sequence were two singer-performers well versed in this repertory. Edith Ramos Guerra and Rafael Montero are equally adept in Baroque and folk styles, with Ramos Guerra in particular presenting great technical skill and tonal purity. Both of them were entirely abreast of a huge amount of text in various languages. The instrumental ensemble of El Parnaso Hyspano offered a fine blend of colours, with mournful cello and indigenous percussion very much to the fore. The puppeteers were prominent, indeed dominant, in two episodes where a human figure and a condor played symbolic roles, and professional dancers mingled with community performers to memorable effect in moods of merriment and lamentation. A chorus of local children interacted memorably with Ramos Guerra and Montero.
Three actors took on a variety of mainly unsympathetic roles, but to compelling effect. Danny Scheinman inhabited Sepulveda and a slick modern international businessman with chilling authenticity; Simon Rhodes found more humanity and conscience in the figure of Las Casas; and Tim Hudson developed a series of bluffly brutal characterisations as a Cardinal Inquisitor, a professional executioner, and a contemporary entrepreneur of assassination.
The collaboration between the design team was exceptional. A raised platform with two staircases leading up to it was covered with a symbolically detailed textile covering, and on this the main action took place. Specially woven mantles and costumes of rare device were ritually introduced at various points, and Hoxton Hall itself played a notable role, with its intimate combination of shabby chic decor and elaborate wrought iron balconies. Wiltons will have to look to its laurels!
There was a lot more in this evening than could register at first hearing, and it is very much to be hoped that further performances can be developed, not least in the Latin and Southern American countries whose heritage is here so richly evoked.
Conceived & directed by Michael Walling
Musical Director: Michael Morley
Singers: Edith Ramos Guerra and Rafael Montero
Actors: Tim Hudson, Simon Rhodes, Danny Schiemann
Until 1 December 2024
90 minutes, no interval
Photo Credit: John Cobb