It is surely one of the cruellest fates for any artist to have the very faculties that make their art possible taken away. For Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), the eighteenth-century German musical prodigy and composer, this is precisely what happened when, in his mid-twenties, he started to lose his hearing. ‘I shall hear in heaven’ were allegedly the composer’s last five words, a testament to his unwavering faith and indomitable spirit in the face of life-destroying adversity. They also make up the title of a new show at Opera Holland Park by actor, writer and all-round creative powerhouse Tama Matheson. Beethoven: I Shall Hear in Heaven entwines key biographical events in the composer’s life with rich offerings from the different phases of his musical oeuvre, enabling the audience to experience his work afresh by dramatising the tumultuous circumstances from which it sprung.
Matheson’s production, which is realised with the help of two adept multi-roleplaying actors (Robert Maskell and Suzy Kohane) covers considerable historical ground in intoxicating poetic language. First, we are taken into the hearth of the Beethoven family, bearing witness to a childhood dominated by patriarchal tyranny and domestic distress. This is followed by the recognition of the composer’s talent, which is soon threatened by progressively worsening deafness. Romantic relationships (particularly with young female students) blossom and duly shrivel. His sansculotte spirit feels uncontainable rage at Napoleon’s betrayal of democratic principles. And finally, as his deafness drives him inwards, he realises that what most torments him is the greatest source of his imaginative power.
As Beethoven, Matheson exudes Byronic darkness. His movements – like those of the composer’s music – are distinguished by erratic jolts and thunderous tension. He produces a portrait that is at once sympathetic to the composer’s private anguish yet admirably remains critical of his foibles, especially the way he conducted his relationship with his adopted son, a failed wunderkind. Supporting actors Robert Maskell and Suzy Kohane make for engaging narrators throughout the production, but due to its scale and their sheer number of bit parts, key relationships are only superficially developed.
The Opera Holland Park stage is a perfectly realised artist’s domain: a gloomy parchment-strewn room (the composer’s lack of hygiene and tatterdemalion ways became undesirable trademarks). Beethoven, for the most part of the show, sits at his desk by candlelight scratching away at music sheets and duly scrumpling up compositions that don’t meet his meticulous standards. The Quartet Concrète, who brilliantly punctuate each episode of the composer’s life with his various symphonies and sonatas, are housed in the heart of the stage just behind the action, visually underscoring its centrality to his being. The English Chamber Choir line the back of the stage and are called upon to further intensify the emotion of the piece but are regrettably underused.
Beethoven perhaps needs no more eulogies. His talents are universally acknowledged and annually celebrated, which is to say his spirit – and the tempestuous music it made – unequivocally lives. Even the musical novices amongst last night’s audience will have recognised the wave-like peaks and troughs of Symphony No. 9 as well as the dark stirrings of Moonlight Sonata. He may have been scared of thunder—one of the few sounds he could hear as his days dwindled and which sent him running to the basement in fits of fear—but, as Matheson’s Beethoven: I Shall Hear in Heaven shows, he heroically transformed personal misfortune into artistic triumph. He was the iconoclastic architect of musical storms.
Beethoven: I Shall Hear in Heaven
Artistic Director: Tama Matheson
Music Director: Jayson Gillham
Cast includes: Tama Matheson; Robert Maskell; Suzy Kohane; Quartet Concrète and The English Chamber Choir.
Until: Friday 8th August 2025
Running Time: 2 hours and 25 minutes including a 25-minute interval
Review by Olivia Hurton
6th August 2025