Interview: Urgently compelling, relevant, staging Trial by Media, world premiere, presented by Cape Town Opera, SHORTS-A Festival of Pocket Operas

The first staging of a new theatre work is like a “birthing” – the transfiguration from page to stage. There is tremendous excitement for the world premiere of Trial by Media (composer, Conrad Asman, libretto Schalk Schoombie), which is being presented as part of Cape Town Opera’s inaugural SHORTS – A Festival of Pocket Operas [season runs April 11-21, 2024]. There are three concise operas in the programme, with set design by Allegra Bernacchioni. Trial by Media grapples with the murder trial of Oscar Pistorius and how it played out in the media and social media, in particular. The directors of Trial by Media are Fred Abrahamse and Marcel Meyer of Abrahamse & Meyer Productions. Meyer has also designed the costumes. Meyer provides insights into staging this new opera and contextualises it in the oeuvre of Opera Seria [Italian for Serious Opera]. Meyer: “Trial by Media is much more than just another fatal boy-kills-girl-romance. The devastating tragedy of Steenkamp’s untimely death was followed in 2014 by a trial that was sensationalised by the media and scrutinised and ‘tried by proxy’ by the public on various social media platforms. It is this aspect of the work that makes Trial by Media an urgently compelling, relevant, and vital addition to the existing repertoire.” Read on for more:

TCR: Exciting to work on something brand new? The first production sets the bar for future productions? Did Cape Town Opera approach you and Fred to direct, following on your collab with them on Cendrillon?

Marcel Meyer: Trial by Media is an incredibly powerful and potent new South African opera composed by award-winning young South African composer, Conrad Asman, to a cutting and concise libretto by the late, great Schalk Schoombie. The marriage of Asman’s thrilling music with Schoombie’s erudite yet emotive text, drawn from actual court transcripts and social media posts, makes for an unforgettable, thought-provoking, deeply moving, yet intellectually stimulating piece of new music theatre. It is always a great privilege and huge responsibility to be the creative team behind the “birthing” of any new work. Our collaboration with Cape Town Opera on the South African premiere of Pauline Viardot’s Cendrillon was in many ways like staging a brand new opera. That production had new orchestrations, along with a new libretto in English and so on. Cape Town Opera’s Artistic director, Magdalene Minnaar and general manager, Alex Gabriel, thought that Fred [Abrahamse] and myself, along with music director, José Dias – the music director/conductor on Cendrillon]- would be the right team to bring Trial by Media to the stage for the world premiere this month.

Each great classic opera in the standard repertory was a new work once, and if opera is to maintain its enduring place as a vital cultural institution it should be encouraged to express in song the narratives and concerns of contemporary society. Conrad Asman and Schalk Schoombie’s Trial By Media is a profound new work that addresses pressing and pertinent contemporary social issues in a compact and compelling operatic form.

TCR: Trial by Media started out as a musical but it then developed into an opera. Fred and you have the theatrical and musical theatrical experience so you will bring that to this staging. You have said that the tragic story “references opera standards- jealous lovers grandiose – opera seria”.

MM: Dense and complex in its musical structure and dramaturgy, Trial by Media bravely and boldly examines a subject worthy of its operatic proportions. In the early hours of the morning, on Valentine’s Day 2013, supermodel and Instagram sensation, Reeva Steenkamp was shot dead by her then boyfriend, Paralympic gold medallist, Oscar Pistorius. The tragic love affair of Oscar and Reeva is every bit as captivating and heart wrenching as the great love stories sung by their doomed operatic predecessors: Don José and Carmen in Bizet’s Carmen (1875) or Canio/Pagliaccio and Nedda/Colombina in Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci (1892) or even Wozzeck and Marie in Alban Berg’s Wozzeck (1925).

With Trial by Media, Asman continues this distinguished legacy by providing music of haunting beauty for the lovers. But Trial by Media is much more than just another fatal boy-kills-girl-romance. The devastating tragedy of Steenkamp’s untimely death was followed in 2014 by a trial that was sensationalised by the media and scrutinised and “tried by proxy” by the public on various social media platforms. It is this aspect of the work that makes Trial by Media an urgently compelling, relevant, and vital addition to the existing repertoire. The opera’s complex exploration on the theme of justice in an age of social media elevates the piece beyond the realm of romantic tragedy into the formalised, mythic grandeur of Opera Seria [Italian: “serious opera”). Trial by Media is an Opera Seria for the 21^st century.

Both Oscar and Reeva can be viewed in their respective fields as close to a contemporary understanding of a “god” and “goddess” as one can find, he – the golden boy of South African sports and she – supermodel extraordinaire and social media sensation. Both portrayed in the media (social and otherwise) as untouchable deities, yet finally proving to be fallibly and fatally human. Likewise, The Judge’s pursuit for justice in Trial by Media is every bit as earnest as Tito’s quest for benevolent clemency in Mozart’s La Clemenza Di Tito or Idomeneo’s growing understanding for the need for redemption in Mozart’s other great Opera Seria, Idomeneo, King of Crete. But the Mozart operas were written during the Age of Enlightenment where reason could ultimately prevail. Asman & Schoombie’s opera holds up a mirror to a very different age: an age of misinformation, an era of “alternative facts” and a deeply ambiguous “post truth” society we currently find ourselves in. It is therefore fitting that the opera doesn’t postulate any easy conclusions or verdicts but sets out to confront us with a series of questions on how we relate to each other in this nebulous netherworld of the World Wide Web we currently co-exist in.

TCR: Insights into the costumes?

MM: The overall palette for the costumes in Trial by Media is starkly monochromatic to complement the austerity and graveness of the content and form of the piece – the Chorus in all black: gentlemen in black suits, with black shirts, ties, shoes, sunglasses, everything black, likewise with the ladies, black dresses, black headscarves, black shoes, black sunglasses. The dark glasses and uniform-like costumes for the Chorus act as a mask for them, hiding their true emotions, concealing their true identities like the countless anonymous profiles of commentators on the internet. The Judge, the Defence and the Prosecuting Attorneys are also, for the most part in all-black, classic black judicial robes, with only a hint of white in the barrister’s bands around their necks.  Oscar is costumed in the iconic black suit, with white shirt and black tie, which he wore during the actual trial.  The only colour in the entire design has been reserved for Reeva’s costumes: which, in her various looks, alternate between a profusion of vibrant red roses, to shimmering saint-like white, which then transforms into a beaded bloodstained gown and finally apotheosises – into a glittering gold creation.

TCR: Valentine’s Day: V Day is emblematic of a lot – it was the day that Reeva was murdered – the day of love – which she wanted- the day to bolster her cache as a celebrity and being the squeeze of Oscar (although things were not going well). Can you talk about the imaging in your designs and how both of you – Fred and you – are positioning the staging?

MM: Valentine’s Day has been associated with love and lovers in popular culture as far back as the days of Geoffrey Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales when he wrote, that on the 14^th of February birds would pair up with their chosen mates. The day is named for three different Saint Valentines who were martyred respectively in Rome, in Terni and the third in Africa.

The inevitable tragic and torturous death associated with saintly martyrdom is paralleled with the untimely passing of Reeva Steenkamp on Valentine’s Day in 2013. The Prologue of Trial by Media is set in a stylised re-imagining of that fateful Valentine’s Day. Schoombie’s text for this sequence conjures the commercialised content of many a Valentine’s card, these familiar clichés are set by Asman to a lilting, yet slightly dissonant waltz that gradually destabilises itself until it culminates in the tragic climax of Reeva’s death. In the staging of this sequence, we have chosen to intensely magnify the Valentine’s imagery, firstly in the brilliant projections by the amazing, Kirsti Cummings, who has created a visual fantasy of cascading emoji hearts superimposed over a plethora of roses in bloom. The rose imagery is further advanced in Reeva’s haute couture inspired costume for this scene appliqued with an abundance of red silk and organza roses. Reeva in this moment, becomes the physical embodiment of all the ideals of romance and romantic love.

TCR:  You are not going for realism. Can you talk about the conceptual staging? You spoke about “heightening the drama. Rolling scrolling of comments of internet- on a screen. You said: “Everyone is on stage the whole time – this is not realism”.

MM: We have opted for a highly stylised and conceptual staging of this work giving the production a stoic, reverential formality more often associated with oratorio rather than traditional opera staging. The “movement” and “drama” of the piece resides wholeheartedly in the turbulent yet magnificent ebb and flow of the music, enhanced by the motion inherent in Kirsti Cumming’s impressively vivid and layered video and projection design aided by Kobus Rossouw’s stark yet sculptural lighting design.

TCR: Levels: You mentioned – three realities – human social media (chaos, trolling) court and justice and three physical levels: Raised platform – Oscar. Chorus – jury social media and then another level – judge. The spirit of Reeva is moving, hovering.” You said everyone is static. Reeva wasn’t present at the trial physically – she was dead- and perhaps in this opera- we hear her side?

MM: Inspired by the “mansions” of the Medieval Mystery and Morality plays, each set of characters – Oscar, the Chorus of Commentators, the Judiciary- are statically rooted to their particular “mansion” on Allegra Bernacchioni’s simple yet striking set: Oscar is on his raised platform, imprisoned in his cell of light. The Judiciary is suspended between heaven and earth and the Chorus of Commentators is on their bleacher-like grandstand. Only the spirit of Reeva is free to roam about the entire stage; metaphoric of her existence in the spirit rather than the corporeal world. The opera very much aims to re-humanise and give voice to Reeva in the aftermath of this tragedy and the subsequent sensationalism of this devastating event. Asman has given Reeva the most breath-takingly beautiful music in the opera, sublimely sung and embodied by the multi-award-winning Brittany Smith. The nuanced complexity of Brittany’s portrayal of Reeva will leave audiences profoundly moved.

TCR: Morality/cautionary tale or excavation of social media or both? It was a trial by media and justice … well… You said: “The opera explores social media and how that polarizes us and how we quickly jump to judgements and how it complicates our relationship with justice and ourselves.” As I understand it, tins opera is not about judgement and invading privacy. Reeva as one of the first influencers in SA on Instagram. I did not know this. She put herself out there. She was a public figure – in life and death- the golden girl. Oscar was the golden boy who overcame disability. He was a champion. They led “Curated Lives”, as you put it. You are curating this tragic story in this staging?

MM: That is the extraordinary brilliance of this piece that it encompasses all that and more. It functions on so many levels simultaneously. At times it is classic tragedy: a heroic person orchestrating their own tragic downfall. In Oscar as in Othello’s case, a brilliant man blinded by jealousy, killing the person he loves most. Then full-blown operatic romantic tragedy, with a pair of doomed lovers, while all the time functioning on an almost Brechtian didactic cerebral level as a powerful comment on the power and dangers of social media and how it impacts us on every level of our daily lives. The opera is rich and complex and layered and like most pieces of great art it invites its audience to question deeply rather than purport any easy solution or moral.

TCR: Trial by Media is not a docu-opera?

MM: No, this is not a docu-opera. It is far more complex and nuanced than that. Although the opera is inspired by true events, and a lot of the text is transcribed from the actual court case or from social media posts and communications; in the opera, the tragedy of Oscar and Reeva becomes a mythic metaphor for any big event that is judged and “tried” on social media. Of late we have seen this happen, more and more frequently, time and time again, often with negative and harmful results. The devastating fallout of how differing opinions can polarise us, is evident in the social media interaction of any number of recent events like the 2016 and 2020 USA elections, the COVID-19 Pandemic and the ensuing world-wide lockdowns, the COVID-19 Vaccine, the War in Ukraine, the War in Gaza, to far more banal examples like the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial.

TCR: Influences from trials in films and plays which have drawn on for this staging?

MM: The oldest surviving drama in Western culture is Aeschylus’ The Oresteia, a trilogy of plays exploring the themes of murder, revenge, alongside our need for justice and restitution. These themes have been explored in many other great works like Shakespeare’s Hamlet or the films you listed above. They still resonate today. How do we reconcile our primal need for vengeance in the aftermath of a terrible event, that Old Testament need to have “An eye for an eye”, with a more compassionate, New Testament understanding of “turning the other cheek”? There is no easy answer to these questions, but the purpose of all great art is to confront ourselves with big, complex ideas that we can reflect on and after reflection ultimately become more nuanced and compassionate human beings.

✳ Featured image: Marcel Meyer’s costume designs for the opera, Trial by Media (Conrad Asman (composer) and Schalk Schoombie (libretto), world premiere, Cape Town Opera’s SHORTS – A Festival of Pocket Operas [season runs April 11-21, 2024 at Artscape, Cape Town].