THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
First staged at the Galway International Arts Festival in 2019 this is another feather in the cap of the increasingly significant Irish National Opera. Their last visit to Covent Garden with Vivaldi's Bajazet won them the Olivier Award.
The Kennedy Family are of course great subject matter; Irish icons and de facto American Royalty. You just need to consider Prince William's recent visit to Boston where he paid a formal visit to Caroline and son.
It all began with Joe and Rose and their 9 children, and this chamber opera tells the story of their eldest daughter Rosemary who was born in 1918 with an intellectual disability then left permanently incapacitated by a forced lobotomy. This was a brutal brain operation, ordered by her father, which left her immobile, unable to speak and with the intelligence of a two-year-old child. She was effectively hidden from the world and institutionalized from 1941 until her death in 2005. Rosemary's lobotomy and its devastating outcome were kept secret from her wider family and even her siblings for decades.
This piece is a savage indictment of both society's and the mental health system's institutional abuse of those who did not fit the mold. Practices which are horrific to us today were commonplace and, interestingly, Rosemary's elevated social status was not enough to save her, in fact it only made it worse.
Composed by Brian Irvine and directed and designed by Netia Jones this 70 minute opera features the up-and-coming Irish soprano Amy Ní Fhearraigh who has the presence to anchor the piece and also brings a poignant tenderness to Rosemary, who at all times appeared to crave her parents' approval.
It's told in a series of fragments with the solo soprano joined on stage by actors Ronan Leahy and Stephanie Dufresne who, with Aoife Spillane-Hinks acting as a voice-over narrator, act out signature moments.
Ní Fhearraigh's solos serve as a clever counterpoint to the narration, and it is all enhanced by some spectacular video design, also by Netia Jones, and choreography by Muirne Bloomer. That design incorporates scrolling texts of both the diagnoses of her by various quacks, and the medical handbooks of the time for treating the 'feeble minded', which display a horrific disregard for humanity. 'Low intelligence' was linked to sexual immorality and so incarcerating and even sterilizing offenders was viewed as a moral imperative.
Interviews with Mother Rose from 1974 give her side of the story and are astonishing in their blithe carelessness, all couched of course in religion. The text makes the point that the obliterating of difference or weakness wasn't just something Rosemary encountered when she got ill but was a key part of her upbringing. Rose kept detailed medical record cards on all the children, and they were weighed and measured each week. The kids weren't allowed a moment not competing with each other and a wonderful section illustrates the general knowledge quizzes that dominated each evening's dinner. Rosemary 'falling behind' soon set her apart and sealed her fate. But it wasn't just her mind that didn't match up. When she got overweight they packed her off to a school for dieting and so the measuring continued. In all she was prodded and poked like prime livestock but with less care and attention.
When the craze (later discredited) for lobotomies arrived Joe saw it as perfect solution to calm the 'troubled' girl and prevent social embarrassment. It was embarked upon with astonishingly little thought or second opinion and carried out by a quack. This echoed her birth, when the obstetrician (another quack) was late and so the baby's head was forced back in the birth canal until his arrival. This was most likely a key factor in her condition.
The piece is a sober reminder of the horrors of societal oppression of the time but, importantly, it works as a piece of musical theater, has a great emotional punch, and is given a visually and aurally stunning production.
