Morton Feldman "Neither"

 

“Neither” by Morton Feldman, words by Samuel Beckett 

Morton Feldman was a huge Samuel Beckett fan and he’d always talked about doing an opera with him, though he’d never done anything about it - it was a figment of his imagination, on his wish list as it were.  

Anyway, as sometimes happens, people at the Rome Opera heard the rumour and assumed there was something there. They contacted Feldman and said they would be prepared to pay $50,000 for the world premiere of his Beckett opera. 

So of course Feldman said OK and then contacted his publisher to ask: “How do I write Beckett?”.  They found out that Beckett was in Berlin rehearsing one of his plays at the Schiller-Theater.  So Mortie flew from Buffalo (where he lived and taught) to Berlin to meet Beckett. 

After a bad start - Feldman in his pebble glasses arrived during a lighting rehearsal, fell over Beckett in the dark and nearly dislocated Beckett's thumb - Feldman began:  “The Rome Opera offers us $50,000 for the rights to an opera with your words and my music.  How about it?”

“Well sure that’s very nice”, said Beckett. “Very nice of them. I don’t need the money. But in any case I've always thought my words, my words have their own music”. 

There was no answer to that. So Feldman had to agree, he went back to Buffalo, but couldn’t quite bring himself to break the news to Rome.

A few days later an aerogramme arrived. In tiny writing from Beckett it read: “Dear Mr Feldman -  Further to our conversation, here are some words I said I would not write". And it was a sonnet called ’Neither’.  

Of course Feldman was overjoyed, 14 lines no problem. So he writes this opera called “Neither”, and just as he is putting the finishing touches to it another aerogramme arrives: “Dear Mr Feldman - Further to the lines I sent you previously, here are another four lines.”  OK, so it’s 75 minutes instead of 60 minutes.

So the score is sent to the Rome Opera. They put it on. It’s a fiasco, it’s one of the most terrible failures and reported worldwide.

I spoke to Feldman after, what went wrong? 

“Listen”, said Feldman. “There’s an orchestra. The orchestra plays. The curtain goes up. There’s a woman. The woman sings. The curtain comes down. Everybody boos. It’s an opera!”

Feldman was a lovely man, self evidently.