Hadrian

Introduction to the Opera

by Daniel MacIvor

Hadrian creates the story of the last day of the Roman Emperor who ruled from 117-138 AD.  Hadrian seems best known for the building of the wall in Britannia that bears his name, and for his conflict with Judea against rise of monotheism. But he is mostly unknown for what might be his greatest legacy, his having lived openly as a homosexual and his deep, unshakable love for another man, Antinous.

Homoerotic relationships were acceptable within the Roman nobility at the time but only when the aim was carnal instruction between an adult male and a youth who was a slave and subservient to his master. Antinous was both a free man and too old for this relationship to be sanctioned, and most concerningly for Hadrian's entourage, Antinous was treated by Hadrian as an equal partner in their love.  

Hadrian met Antinous in Greece while on a tour of the Empire and they spent the next six years together continuing that tour.  Near the end of their travels, facing the happy the promise of a life together at Tibur, Hadrian's magnificent villa outside Rome, Antinous died under suspicious circumstances by drowning in the Nile.

In our opera we offer explanation for Antinous' death, and for Hadrian's politics. We expose his bottomless grief and hold up Hadrian's relationship with Antinous as one of greatest love stories of all time.

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The Pain and Legacy of Love

Wainwright/Hadrian/Mapplethorpe  

by Jorn Weisbrodt

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Idea

Two worlds seem to be ages and gigantic aesthetics apart. The world of opera, the world of Rufus Wainwright’s Hadrian and the world of photography and the world of Robert Mapplethorpe. But on closer look the crossroads between them, the connections of their themes, the subversion of classical forms through injection of a different form of sexuality become evident. Looking at Mapplethorpe’s pictures, a pleasure despite their seemingly controversial nature that one can hardly evade, makes it obvious how surprising, subtle and brash they are able to accompany the story of an Emperor who could have everything just not the one thing he really wanted. Who realized that his only legacy lied in the fact that he loved.

Robert Mapplethorpe’s work is singular within the history of photography. He has opened up the medium to new territories, interrupting the entire visual world, while at the same time creating some of the most iconic and classical images in photography.

Even Mapplethorpes themes are very classical. Love, death, desire, beauty, power are the building blocks of our emotional and sexual universe. They are at the same time the planets that revolve around the musical sun in the operatic universe. Music is our most intimate way of expressing the immaterial nature of our emotions, the harness and the explosion at the same time. And in opera, the human voice becomes the carrier not only of meaning but of emotion, it is the most extrovert expression of the most introvert human state possible. Opera is not about knowledge, about right or wrong, about progress, or learning but it is about suffering, torment, about realizing what is the one and only thing worth dying for. Mapplethorpe expresses these fundamental emotional states of our human existence with what is in front of his eyes through his unapologetical homosexual gaze. The classical materials of marble and paint are augmented and replaced by gelatin and leather. “I see things like they’;ve never been seen before“ Mapplethorpe says.

Rufus Wainwright’s Hadrian is a profound, complex and compelling piece of operatic theater, full of rich characters that all undergo deep and moving changes throughout the piece. It is written in the operatic tradition of the great 19th and early 20th century when opera was the truly popular musical art form when people sang operatic tunes on the streets.

While Wainwright’s approach to opera might be traditional in the way that he continues to believe in the power of story and emotion and opera as a “generator of emotions” his choice of subject and story makes it highly contemporary. Opera has been traditionally about the greatest and deepest love stories made impossible by society, class, intrigue, politics, war etc. It was always interested how the exterior world impacts the interior world and the love between two people is at its core as it is the most powerful and at the same time fragile and painful emotional mechanism we have, and probably the most human. Or as George Bernhard Shaw said “Opera is when a tenor and soprano want to make love, but are prevented from doing so by a baritone.”

All love stories of the great historical repertoire are straight. “Tristan and Isolde”, Mimi and Rodolfo, Pelléas et Melisande, Tosca and Cavaradossi. Rufus replaces that core theme of opera, that doctrine of our emotional existence and definition of who we are as loving human beings, loving the opposite sex, with a homosexual love story. He raises same sex love onto the same plinth as the great heterosexual love stories, giving it the same care, attention and thus grand opera approach.

Hadrian’s last sentence he utters is “In one way was I true in one – one way to be remembered – this final breath, my legacy: He loved.”