For most of An Index of Metals, soprano Jane Sheldon is surrounded by a swarm of six naked men. With chiselled pale bodies lit by glaring lights or cast into dark foreboding silhouettes, they stalk around her, encircling and encompassing her, lifting her up and putting her down as if she is made of putty.
An Index of Metals is Italian composer Fausto Romitelli’s swansong and most famous work, written in 2003 a year before he died from cancer aged just 41. By opening with a sound sample from Pink Floyd’s Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Romitelli set the tone for a new kind of genre-bending opera: a fusion of spectralist techniques and heavy guitar strumming usually heard in rock.
The work is based on three hallucinatory poems by Kenka Lèkovich (translated into English) and was originally designed to be accompanied by abstract video art. For the first time, however, An Index of Metals has been given a theatrical staging. Taking the helm is Helpmann award-winning director Kip Williams in a production put on by Ensemble Offspring and the experimental Sydney Chamber Opera.
An Index of Metals has no characters or plot, revolving instead around an exploration of brooding sentiment. Layered on top of the music are synthesised electronics that create an uneasy, discordant beat, distorting the familiar sounds of the concert hall into something far grungier; meanwhile, Sheldon is also amped up, her strong, sometimes throbbing voice, warped and contorted for effect.
Williams has converted this for the stage by visualising his female protagonist’s disturbed inner world. Sheldon is trapped in a grid of ferocious light that flashes so strongly at times the audience has to look away. She is in a nightmare, beset by debilitating depression after the end of a relationship.
So who are the six men? According to the program, they are a chorus who represent the torture of abused hopes. In her poems, Lèkovich references a man named Brad, derived from pop art master Roy Lichtenstein’s Drowning Girl. The libretto includes the iconic speech bubble from the painting: “I don’t care! I’d rather sink than call Brad for help!”
Ambitious, yes, and some powerful images stick. In one the naked men gather around Sheldon as if around a witch’s cauldron and in another – close to the crescendo and the ultimate annihilation of the self – they appear again dripping in gory blood, the embodiment of horror.
Mostly, however, An Index of Metals falls flat. While nudity is necessary for the men, portraying a kind of hellish purgatory, when Sheldon also whips off her top to reveal her breasts it seems nothing but a shock tactic. Meanwhile, an endless repetition of actions (the knocking over of a vase and chair, for example) unnecessarily competes with the music, lessening its impact; it becomes tedious to watch.
Williams said he wanted to create a centre of “stillness” as a counterpoint to the “freneticism” of Romitelli’s score. Yet An Index of Power is so earnest in its quest for profundity the emotions appear overwrought, even silly. By the time the hour was up, I simply did not care what might happen to this woman with her neurotic singing and her naked posse of beautiful boys.
• An Index of Metal is at Carriageworks, Sydney until 19 November
