Writing to Vermeer
for soundtrack (1999)
Dutch
composer Louis Andriessen (Rosa, A Horse Drama; De Materie) and English film
auteur Peter Greenaway (The Pillow Book; The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and
Her Lover) have proposed a sensational answer in their second operatic collaboration,
Writing to Vermeer. This epic, multimedia opera fills the stage with breathtaking
images that combine 17th Century Delft with visual metaphors for the loss of
the invincibility of youth. The action revolves around 18 letters brimming
with domestic anxieties and coy affection that are sung by the artist's wife,
mother, and model. Luminous images of street riots and the actual letters they
wrote are projected above, beside, and around them, and Louis XIV's marauding
army invades both stage and screen. Directors Greenaway and Saskia Boddeke
revel in the Holland of 1672-when the Dutch flooded their own countryside in
an attempt at military defense, and the country's golden age was brought to
an end-a historical mirror for the instability of our own time. Vermeer's restless
chorus of women and children are finally brought to a standstill as the stage
is flooded with a deluge of water.
Van der Aa composed electronic music inserts for the opera. 13 inserts that happen when the video projections on stage show us the 'windows to the world'. Events that happened during Vermeer's life. French invasion. Murder of the de Witte brothers etc.