There was a very rare event in western theatre and an important advancement for Caribbean literature when a new opera, “The Knife of Dawn” (2016), opened at the Royal Opera House in London on October 24, 2020. It was a doubly historic occasion being the first production by a Black director performed on the main stage of the Royal Opera House, and the first time the work of a West Indian writer was composed as an opera on the West End stage in London.
“The Knife of Dawn” was composed by Hannah Kendall from a libretto provided by Tessa McWatt and directed by Ola Ince. It is about the incarceration of Guyanese poet Martin Carter who, as a PPP political activist, was imprisoned at Atkinson Field (Timehri) in 1953 when the British suspended the Guyana Constitution and occupied the country to remove the PPP government from office. The text of the opera focuses on the hunger strike carried out in protest in the prison camp and relies heavily on Carter’s poems. The performance was streamed free between October 22 and 24 this year, as the theatre’s feature for Black History Month – UK.
In presenting “The Knife of Dawn”, the Royal Opera House brought the work of Black composers and writers to its long and honoured theatre tradition. It integrated West Indian literature in a way that is rare on the mainstream stage.
“The Knife of Dawn” has been accorded an importance and dignity not always present in some productions of history, such as the satirical opera (a type of play with music) of the eighteenth century with which the Royal Opera House has historical roots and connections. West Indian plays and themes were valued for their humour and exoticism, not seen as really worthy of tragic treatment.
By featuring this production, the Royal Opera House recognised and gave greater exposure to Black British composers and directors as well as a Guyanese/Canadian writer, in addition to the life and work of a Guyanese poet, and by extension to Guyanese history.
Ola Ince was honoured as the first Black director for a production at the Royal Opera House when “The Knife of Dawn” opened there in October, 2020. A very accomplished and prolific director, she is a native of London, who has already assembled an impressive track record in theatre, film and the opera, including winning a number of awards. Of importance here is her work on power, race and injustice, which brought her close to the work of Martin Carter and the 1953 episode in Guyanese history.
Composer Hannah Kendall was born in London of Guyanese parents and is a very accomplished musician. She, too, has accumulated an impressive record of achievement as a young composer. This was recognised when she was featured and honoured on the BBC Proms, a very prestigious series of concerts broadcast in the UK.
Tessa McWatt was born in Guyana and taken to Canada when her parents moved there. Her career as a writer is decorated by a number of published novels in Canada, fortified by her work in England and the writing of the book for this opera. She is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia in the UK.
The work these three women have collaborated to produce is a chamber opera for a solo baritone with two sopranos and a mezzo-soprano, alto, accompanied by violin, viola, cello and harp. It was played on a simple but striking and functional set designed by Vicki Mortimer – a bare stage with three beds on two levels against a façade suggestive of an encaged area, like a prison. There is a single performer – the baritone soloist Peter Brathwaite, who plays the young poet and political activist Carter confined in his place of imprisonment.
In a stately, controlled and very effective performance, Brathwaite sings as he moves slowly around the set that is quite precisely and appropriately highlighted by lighting which enhances the symbolism and the movement within the confined environment. The main lines sung by the soloist carry the narrative and the thoughts and mental struggles of the character (the poet). He begins alone, but is soon echoed, complemented, refuted and questioned by voices – an unseen chorus from off-stage, sung by sopranos Nia Coleman and Sarah Dacey and mezzo-soprano Beth Moxon.
The poet/activist has embarked on a hunger strike to protest his incarceration and carries on a confrontation with his jailers, who try various means to get him to end the strike, as well as with himself, as he struggles to remain resolved. By remaining unseen, Coleman, Dacey and Moxon may be Braithwaite’s own counter-thoughts testing his resolve and the wisdom of his actions. They could be messages, letters, thoughts expressed by his supporters out in the town, but they carry on a debate about the role of the poet as activist and the effect of sacrifice.
The confined activist as he moves around, encounters the occasional symbolic props such as what looks like paper boats and the fires that he lights at the end. The performance is an interrogation of the poet’s mind, of his role as activist, of the political situation in occupied British Guiana, colonialism, oppression and the pressures imposed by the British government and its agents at the time. There is much focus on the possibility of the poet dying from starvation and whether that would serve the purpose any more effectively than if he remained alive to fight the cause with effective poetry. The question is asked, ‘who does he serve if he dies?’ A tension creeps in between poetry and political activism.
McWatt interrogated Carter’s poems in the creation of her own long poem, which is the text of the opera. She integrated not only lines from the poems, but volumes of meaning to serve the themes she communicated. She drew from the collection Poems of Resistance from British Guiana by Carter (1954), interspersing several lines of Carter’s with her own, occasionally quoting the entire poem – for example, “This Is The Dark Time My Love”.
There are also quotations from Poems of Shape and Motion which Carter wrote in 1955, long after the episode covered in the opera, but which relate to the poet’s mental state during incarceration and the debate about his role and function. He wishes to transform himself; he longs for the ability to shape thoughts, feelings, passions in ways as perfectly as natural elements, such as fire.
Some of the quotations are from “Not Hands Like Mine”, which have to do with existence and survival, sometimes against hostile environments like flooding that threatens rice crops, and a reference to Carib rituals against the environment. The dramatic text plays out many poems from prison, that Carter wrote while in captivity, including “On The Fourth Night Of The Hunger Strike”, the “Letters” to his wife Phyllis Carter, in which he contemplated family life, his deprivation, or his thoughts on notes sent in to him by supporters, which he hid from the guards. Quoted and referenced repeatedly is “I Am No Soldier”, in highly ironic fashion. During his debate with the unseen voices, the activist repeats “I am a soldier” referring to his role as political activist, arguing that he must act accordingly in the struggle against oppression. Yet, that is countered in the repetition of lines from the poem: “I am no soldier with a cold gun on my shoulder”. These lines reinforce his creative role as a poet, since he means, “I am this poem like a sacrifice”. This, of course, includes the notion of a hunger strike.
“The Knife of Dawn” was first staged at Roundhouse’s Sackler Space in London in 2016, directed then by John Walton with Eric Green as the baritone, and it was broadcast on the BBC. But the new production by Ince at the Royal Opera House with Brathwaite as Carter certainly gave it more prominence and a wider audience.
The Royal Opera House has quite a history as a privileged theatre. It goes as far back as post-restoration theatre, the Neoclassical or Augustan era and the Theatre Royal of Covent Garden. Those associations also include truly distinguished names such as playwright John Gay in particular, and producer John Rich, important protagonists in the development of English drama in the eighteenth century. But the history also includes far less noble involvements such as the comedic opera “Inkle and Yarico”, the dramatisation of a Caribbean legend. It is the love story of an English gentleman and an Amerindian woman, of Guyanese and Barbadian origins. The treatment of the young lady is quite barbaric but the European theatre found it rich for comedy.
This association with “The Knife of Dawn” in contemporary times re-establishes the dignity of the Royal Opera House as a civilised institution. Occasionally, Caribbean theatre finds its way into the London mainstream in sincere and progressive fashion. Another good example is “The Odyssey” written by Derek Walcott for the Royal Shakespeare Company and performed at the Swan in Stratford Upon Avon and at the Barbican in the London West End.
These remain rare intrusions in the London mainstream, but the achievements of “The Knife of Dawn” are worth noting.