East meets west

There is, it seems, something uniquely surreal about playing international phone tag with German film directors. Having called to find the artist away from home, I later receive a voicemail message: “Hi, Evan, this is Dorris Dörrie from Munich. I'm terribly sorry I was not in when you called. I got held up and I was late and, I'm just so sorry you missed me. And, well, I promise to be home tomorrow!”

Duly returning the call, I do indeed get though to Dörrie the following evening: “Hi! I'm so sorry I missed you last night.” She pauses, somewhat guiltily. “In about two minutes I have to run off to the airport. I'm going to Spain! We'll manage something. Eventually,” she giggles. It’s a game that could feel a little frustrating were her unflappable chirpiness and mild scattiness not so endearing. Anyway, it’s hardly surprising she’s a bit busy: since 2000 Dörrie has directed 20 feature films, several documentaries, five operas, written 15 books and eight children's books. She is currently writing the script for her next screenplay – which she intends to start shooting by the end of September.

Fortunately, we do eventually manage "something", and a few days later I find myself speaking to Dörrie at far greater leisure as she relaxes in Spain. “I'm supposed to write this screenplay, but I cannot bring myself to start.” she admits. “I don't dare tell you more about it because it's so beautiful here! It's 30 degrees in the shade and, well, it's just lovely.” There's a playful campness which, at the risk of sounding crass, sounds unusual in a German accent. Speaking of exchanging the Spanish sun for the bustle of Edinburgh in August, she continues: “I'm looking forward to some rain after all this sunshine!" It’s the first time I can recall being teased by an interviewee.

"Rain, Dorris, I can guarantee you."

"Terrific!" she hoots.

Dörrie will be risking the possibility of inclement weather to bring her production of Handel’s opera, Admeto, re di Tessaglia to Edinburgh. It’s an interesting production, not least because it’s the first staged version of the opera—which sees King Admeto’s wife, Alceste, rescued from Hades by Hercules only to find Admeto in love with another woman, Antigona—since 1754, reportedly making it the last of his own operas that Handel ever saw. Is this novelty what Dörrie found attractive about the piece?

“It’s because I like the story,” she says bluntly. “I like the story of the faithful wife going to hell and then coming back and finding out that her beloved husband has fallen in love again already. And it gave me a chance to cooperate with one of my close artist friends, [Japanese Butoh dancer] Tadashi Endo, who appeared in my last movie.”

And there’s the second point of interest: quite unusually for rediscoveries and revivals, this production eschews period authenticity, opting instead to transpose librettist Nicola Haym’s Greek setting to the Samurai court of eighteenth century Japan. The setting allows incorporation of the contemporary, highly-controlled Japanese dance form, Butoh. “[Endo Tadashi] is this fabulous, fabulous dancer, and he does a lot of ghost-like things with his Butoh, and Butoh is very much related to death and ghosts and the immaterial world. So I had this flash where I saw him being Alceste's ghost, so when she comes back from hell she's being followed by her spirit.”

It’s a clever touch, allowing for the relics of Alceste’s experience of death to remain visible until the end, undermining the format’s convention whereby unresolved moral dilemmas are swept under the operatic carpet. And it’s an upset which Dörrie seems to relish: “it's just like our world – a very bourgeois world where everybody pretends that they are behaving, but we all know that that's not true. In our version of Admeto, you can really see that everything is not OK, because the spirit is the one who survives at the very end, and everyone else becomes ghost-like.”

In reality, as is typical with much Baroque opera, the plot is far more labyrinthine than Dörrie seems to admit, involving numerous disguises, pictures and mistaken identities: “Yes, but our production is very clear,” she protests. “But that's always my main purpose with these operas, to make them crystal clear so you really understand the story." It's a refreshingly pragmatic approach, since it's a ball opera directors can sometimes be accused of dropping.

She continues: “And then, of course, there's the music as well. What I like about Handel is it's almost like a screwdriver. He drills into the human psyche again and again and again with these little musical themes.”

Despite her apparently perceptive musical ear, Dörrie’s background is not as “an opera person,” she insists: “I'm a writer; I'm a movie director.” These days, however, this isn’t entirely true: she scooped a fairly helpful leg-up in 2000, receiving a phonecall from legendary conductor Daniel Barenboim with a request that she direct his production of Mozart’s Così Fan Tutte. “It was one of my lucky days,” she says, modestly. “He became my teacher, which was such a privilege. And he kept telling me to just really trust my instincts, to trust my ear, because I don't have much theory to fall back on.”

Barenboim, it must be said, isn’t a bad tutor to have, and it’s clear that he has provided Dörrie with a keen sense of how opera combines music and drama. Hardly surprising, then, that the director appears to have overcome what could prove to be a real disharmony between the production’s wildly contrasting components, matching Handel’s startling variation within tight musical forms to the emotionally repressed codes of the Samurai: “When you transfer to the Japanese court and have everyone behave in a very strict Samurai way, it makes perfect sense, because, like Baroque times, you have this very strict outer form and this very very wild and interesting inner world.”

And it’s this inner world that Dörrie seems intent on teasing out of her operatic work: “There's always a lot of subtext in film, and I'd say the same is true in the opera. You can decide not to hear it or not to see it, but if you try and see it in another way, there's just as much subtext going on. Because everyone knew at the time that there were conventions that had to be fulfilled at the end of an opera, but that didn't really mean that the message was being changed.

“Every one of us is basically a very wild, uncivilised animal," she says, wryly. And she’s right. Politely enquiring whether she is going to have another stab at the screenplay this evening, I’m met with more shameless goading: “No, it's back to the pool. I could torture you some more!”

In truth, I wouldn’t mind. Her approach to opera—“It’s got to be fun!”—seems to extend to a playful approach to most things. It makes for a thoroughly enjoyable interview. And it might just work for Handel, too.