Eight Songs for a Mad King review – an opera recommendation for Donald Trump

Eight Songs for a Mad King, the musical monologue about King George III by composer, the late Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, is a thirty-five-minute blow to the solar plexus. It is also an assault on the ears, eye gouging, gut wrenching, a whack on the head, in short, opera delivering GBH with intent. It is an unforgettable experience.

I watched Bayerische Staatsoper’s production – currently available on their website via the Vimeo platform for £4.42. It was the eve of President Biden’s inauguration. I hope I can be forgiven for tastelessly regretting Sir Peter’s talents were no longer available to pen Eight Songs for a Mad President. That would be the one tramping the waking corridors of a White House he was about to leave for the last time the following morning.

The work opens with the monarch, head bandage bound in self-protection, emerging onstage, chalking on a wall: “Let us talk”. King George then proceeds, through the medium of eight songs, to deliver a combination of sometimes incomprehensible ramblings melded with shrewd insights, outbursts of rage, witty aperçus, tears of self-pity, blistering attacks on his oppressors, and a mawkish concern for “his people”. Remind you of anyone?

Donald Trump tweeted instead of singing in shrieks across a register of six octaves. We can be thankful for that. But the parallels are uncanny. For “his people” substitute Hillary’s “deplorables”.

I think the point of Sir Peter’s strange essay into this unfamiliar world of psychological analysis is to shake his audience out of conventional prejudices. George, dismissed by history as simply mad, was a complex character. In eight songs, Sir Peter unlayers that complexity and forces his audience to challenge their preconceptions. It is then but a short step to conclude that George is probably not the only character the audience has offhandedly prejudged. Maybe that batty old aunt who drivels on over her Christmas pudding has more to offer than boring family reminiscences.

It is a generous view of George, perhaps stretching credibility with Donald, but Sir Peter was a generous man, whose critical glass was always half full. I was privileged to spend two days in his company on Orkney in 1986. We were captives together on the BBC’s Any Questions, broadcast inconveniently from Stromness, presumably to make the point that the BBC licence fee reached parts of the UK commercial broadcasters ignored. Cue traditional folk song; Will Ye Stop Your Whingeing Jock.

The episode ended in farce as the weather closed in and having arrived on Friday lunchtime, the panel and the Any Questions (AQ) court of London luvvies was stuck until Sunday afternoon and a bumpy flight back to Aberdeen. Fellow panellists were John Smith and David Steel. The animosity of Any Questions trysting rapidly resolved into the camaraderie of Desert Island Discs, helped by an extended visit to the Highland Park distillery on the Saturday morning. At least BBC Scotland could organise a piss up in a distillery.

The traditional light-hearted pay-off AQ question had been “Which composer would you most like to have dinner with?” On the spur of the moment, I dreamt up the smart-ass, sycophantic answer, “Peter Maxwell Davies, of course. I enjoy his music enormously, but don’t really understand it. He could explain.” Nervous titter from the audience, all Sir Peter’s neighbours. Little did I know that over two days he would explain – at greater length than the thirty-five minutes it took him to depict King George III’s mental complexities. Sir Peter was a kindly, patient man.

Eight Songs for a Mad King

The songs are The Sentry (Minuet of the Prussian King); The Country Walk; The Lady in Waiting (Miss Musgraves Fancy), a Scottish air; To be Sung on the Water (the Waterman); The Phantom Queen (The queen of his dreams) The Counterfeit (The Deception). Country Dance (Scotch Bonnet); The Review (A Spanish March).

They range over royal ceremonial (The Review); personal obsession (The Phantom Queen). George had visions of Esther, a non-existent consort; and politics (The Deception). That speaks for itself! They stretch across the spectrum of George’s life.

Where does George find himself? The situation is oppressive. He talks to his animals; teaching your birds to sing is an impossible, pointless but all absorbing task. His world is fractured, but the mad monarch is capable of shining the occasional laser beam of truth that deeply affects people.

The text comes from eight poems written by Australian author Randolph Stow, based on original texts left by the king. This monodrama is soundly founded on the rock of source material. The king’s madness is clairvoyant, if provocative. The action onstage is provocative, too, as George grabs a violin from the ensemble and smashes it onstage.

Pete Townshend – the Who – famously destroyed his guitar onstage in 1964. Pete Max Davies has a king smash a violin onstage in 1969. Hilarious riff.

Bayerische Staatsoper sets the scene amidst an audience of superfluous mannikins – George’s people perhaps? – and places the king on a throne that resembles an electric chair. I think that’s a mistake. This is a monodrama and mannikins, deadly throne chairs and the like are distracting. All that is needed here are words, music and the action of the principal, the king.

George is played by German baritone, Holger Falk, noted for a flexible register. He needs it. The piece ranges over six octaves and is almost impossible to sing. Falk is brilliant, capable of delivering stiletto falsetto notes as faultlessly as his more conventional baritone. A sextet of violin (they have a spare), cello, flute, clarinet, drums and piano provide the music.

The sound is overwhelming, reeling from percussive atonality, through soothing melody to a jazz riff on Handel’s “Comfort Ye”, from his Messiah, a work familiar to George III. Squeezing the drama and sound into a straitjacket of thirty-five minutes is an almost miraculous accomplishment. That said, any longer exposure to Sir Peter’s high emotions would likely send audiences home in straitjackets of their own.

Compare and contrast. There is a 2013 version from the wonderful, north west England based Psappha New Music Ensemble, available on YouTube. They specialise in the works of living composers, and a fine job they make of Eight Songs. George is sung by Kelvin Thomas who, apologies to Mr Falk, has made this role his own. He has sung it over 100 times. Mr Falk died in 2019 at the age of 100. It is truly astonishing to reflect that he was 94 when he delivered Psappha’s tour de force.

This production, shorn of all externalities, is a true monodrama. Less operatic than the Bayerische Staatsoper offering perhaps; but, more compelling. And, for we Scots, it has the virtue of being free! Save that £4.41 and spend it on an online Burns Supper instead.

I am a bit ashamed I was unaware of Eight Songs for a Mad King until now. I certainly don’t regret hitting the PayPal button. This is Sir Peter Maxwell Davies at his quixotic, ineffable best. Donald, use those links. Something to ponder in Mar-a-Lago.