Tama Matheson is a writer, director and actor working in England and Australia. He also is Artistic Director of the Brisbane Shakespeare Festival, in Australia. He performed and directed shows and operas all over the world.
Beethoven – I Shall Hear in Heaven is a powerful fusion of drama and music that brings the life and genius of Ludwig van Beethoven to life.
This production is written and performed by Tama.
- Your play avoids a traditional biographical format and instead blends drama with Beethoven’s music to explore his inner world. What drew you to this particular approach, and how did you decide which compositions would best serve the emotional arc of the piece?
In writing about a composer, you must put the music in the foreground. It’s the music, after all, that makes a composer what they are. The essence of all artists lies in their art, and their life is fascinating chiefly for the way their art emerges from it – either consciously or unconsciously. As such, the biography of a composer, in order to be really complete, must be as rooted in the music as it is in the drama. I always want to show how an artist’s life translates into their art – or, perhaps more interestingly, how it doesn’t. In a sense, an artist’s art is actually the realer portion of their life. It’s certainly the more enduring portion – the part that remains when the actual life is gone. Who knows the life story of Shakespeare, for example, or Shelley, or Bach? Yet everyone knows something of their work – and their work expresses something about life itself. The wonder of art is that it speaks beyond the season of the artist’s life, and addresses the life in all of us. Art is, I think, not just an expression of one particular life, but of life itself. Thus, to my mind, you can only get a full picture of Beethoven – a gestalt picture, to be pretentious – by having his music play as large a part in the play as the drama itself. By blending drama and music, I Shall Hear in Heaven, gives, I hope, the fullest picture of Beethoven you can find.
- Beethoven’s hearing loss is such a defining element of his legacy. How do you, as both writer and performer, navigate portraying the psychological impact of that silence while surrounded by sound and music?
Curiously, the music itself does that, to a great extent. Of course, as actors, we have to speak up and shout, and so on, as the play goes on, for the sake of verisimilitude (though you have to be careful not to overdo it – you don’t want the audience to feel they’ve been shouted at all night), but for Beethoven, silence, in the end, meant music. In the silence of his deafness, he also found greatness – the potential for unprecedented creativity. Thus, silence becomes, at last, a sort of liberating imprisonment. Within it, he outsoars the music of the hearing world. Thus, in Beethoven’s most agonised moments of isolation, the music sweeps in to fill the silence, and lade it with meaning.
And when we do use silence – real silence – the effect is devastating.
- You’ve written plays about several major composers. What is it about Beethoven that continues to resonate so deeply with modern audiences—and with you personally?
There are three things: first, and most powerfully, he seems to be the embodiment of the unconquerable human will – the dauntless mind which refuses to submit to the buffetings of fate. If there was ever anyone who could embody Henley’s wonderful line, “under the bludgeonings of chance, my head is bloody, but unbowed,” it was Beethoven. The arch-Romantic, Beethoven appeals deeply to our modern sensibilities, which were, to a great extent, formed by the Romantic movement (even if we don’t realise it). So, in Beethoven we see our own ways of thinking being formed – actually being thought up and brought to life by the force of titanic effort and inspiration. That is thrilling.
Second, Beethoven was uncompromisingly honest. As a composer, he was never satisfied until he had set down exactly what he wanted to say – exactly. He would throw away draft after draft, rewriting and rewriting – tormenting himself – in order to set down on the page the precise idea he wished to convey. And the result is that his music has an incredible mingled feeling of surprise and inevitability. You think to yourself, “good lord, what a marvellous piece of invention – yet, how could it have been another way?” I think his honesty coruscates throughout his music.
And last, he was unapologetically himself. He didn’t care who he was with, in what exalted palace or chamber, under what precedent – he would be entirely and utterly himself. Irascible, gruff, volatile, unkempt (and probably unhygienic), unconcerned about fashion or appearance, untouched by status or degree, he was totally and utterly himself. He was a kind of modern Diogenes, with music as his lamp: “I am looking,” it seems to say, “for truth.” He didn’t care whether you were a prince, a duke, or a king, all that mattered to him was talent. The status of a person, to him, depended entirely on their merit – not on the imaginary baubles of title or fashion. On one occasion, as he was walking through the Prater with Goethe, the royal party passed by; Goethe removed his hat deferentially and made a low obeisance; Beethoven, furious, jammed his hat further down on his head and cut directly across them. That sort of integrity is pretty seductive – especially in a world governed by status and appearance. Another time, after a fight with Prince Lichnowsky, he wrote to him: “Prince, what you are, you are by accident of fate. What I am, I am by my own talents. There have been, and always will be, thousands of princes. There is only one Beethoven!” Pretty exciting stuff.
- This production has been performed across different countries and settings. What does bringing it to an open-air space like Opera Holland Park add to the experience for you and the audience?
At Holland Park, we’ll be on a stage big enough to reflect the titanic grandeur of Beethoven’s own life, and the vastness of his art. I did perform the play on a big stage in Brisbane, and the dynamics of the drama seemed enhanced by it. Somehow the hugeness of the playing space helped to express the hugeness of Beethoven’s life. Certainly, as actors, we can really let rip on a big stage. I also think that the open-air setting will enhance the play in one particular respect: Beethoven was a great lover of nature – he did some of his best composing in his head while he was out walking in the fields – so a touch of nature coming in will, I hope, add a kind of Beethovenian authenticity to the play. Plus, Beethoven himself performed outdoors sometimes, so the setting ought to have many resonances. I think – I hope – you will get an experience of the play in Holland Park unlike any you can get in a conventional theatre. You will certainly be incredibly entertained – that I can promise you!
It runs 6 and 8 August. More info: here.