Interview Huba de Graaff and Bart Visser

by Jacqueline Oskamp

‘Disconnection is the key word in Diepvlees', explains director Bart Visser. ‘There is a type of alienation at work on every level of our society. Take the food industry: if you buy a piece of meat from a supermarket you usually have no idea from which animal it came, let alone from precisely where it came. It is difficult to remain in connection with the things around you.'

‘This piece is not intended as a complaint against the bio-industry, although we use the setting of a secret meat inspection board as a means of showing this disconnection. The director of the firm takes a bite out of his own flesh in desperation, creating yet another amalgamation of images, albeit in a bizarre manner. I have also used all sorts of spy-related images, such as a quantity of microphones, tapes and recording equipment for bugging. In the design for the performing space I laid importance on the type of materials used: hard contrasted with soft and penetrable contrasted with impenetrable. So we had to think about using bamboo, cardboard, brass, sheepskin etc. My work is not about morality or about the world, but about the human scale.'

The audience as eavesdropper
‘I remember how as a child I sang into a microphone and heard my own voice back through the loudspeakers. I was terrified.' This is composer Huba de Graaf's own illustration of the theme of disconnection. ‘Nonetheless, the microphone has made very different types of vocal technique possible. The classical opera singer is trained in the full grandiloquence that is necessary to reach the last rows of the audience. Thanks to the microphone, many subtler forms of expression have been developed that are used primarily in pop music. Diepvlees is an opera that is overheard, one in which the singers sing extremely softly. I have realised this by writing almost whiny melodies that make great use of minor thirds and by letting the director sing very softly into a memo-recorder attached to his collar. The audience then stands in the role of an eavesdropper - it is possible that they might also have to listen to certain scenes on an MP3 player. In contrast, an orchestra of twenty saxophones provides the necessary emotional release. In the office canteen hang speakers through which the orchestra joyfully blares forth. And if you pull that tape past the heads of a tape-recorder, the winds suddenly sound like pigs.'