Note from John G Davies on the Libretto
The Juniper Passion began as a feeling, an atmosphere, an urge to artistically engage with the experiences of my parent’s generation, and for me to then reflect my response outwardly; for all my life such reflections had been inward. We baby boomers grew in the shadow of the wars our fathers and grandfathers fought. The atmosphere of my father and his friends reminiscing, the brown beer bottles, the hand rolled tobacco, the wonder of their stories, the sombre tales of loss. The stories he told us as children, the profound effect that the war had on him and that entire generation remains a defining dynamic in my life, and I believe of the New Zealand character.
This is what I wanted to write about.
My first efforts began with a series of iconic scenes. Farmers and their families gathered at a small town cenotaph on Anzac Day, a battlefield, the awkward farewell of father to son, the antipodean war widow in a European cemetery. As each scene took shape in my mind I began to sense how they would connect, initially not through a logical plot but rather as a series of discoveries, one thought leading to another. Loss leading to pain, death to sorrow, acts of courage to homage, duty to gratitude. I allowed this progression to shape the sequence of events and scenes.
As a boy I proudly carried the fact that my father had fought in the two great battles of the 2ND New Zealand Expeditionary Force; El Alamein, and Monte Cassino. Of North Africa he spoke of the burning desert by day and the freezing star bright nights. Of Italy he spoke of the mountains, the ruins, the Italians who welcomed them and whom he and his comrades in turn fed, treating the children with chocolate and small gifts. And always he spoke of the men, Snow from Auckland, Joe from Motueka, some them alive, some having never come home. Even in the last months of his life I would see him turning over in his hands photographs of those long gone faces and places.
However opera is drama and for me more than catharsis and upon reading Hapgood and Richardsons Monte Cassino (1984), wherein they detail the extent of German activity and engagement with the archive and art of the Abbey, a sudden flash of recognition went off. Michael and I had already planned that the ultimate scene of the opera was to be a philosophical interrogation of the three forces impacting upon Cassino, the German, the Italian and the Allied, of whom the New Zealanders were of paramount interest to us. A story about the art and the intrigue surrounding the controversial bombing of the Abbey would provide a mechanism to get these philosophies into the same place, the Nazi appropriation of Nietzche, Catholic mysticism of the Benedictine kind, and Kiwi self reliance. To interrogate the dynamic of this difference might lead us to an understanding of sameness. To see all of us in this light of what we share, rather than what we hold separate, is the purpose of this work.
John. G. Davies.
The Juniper Passion began as a feeling, an atmosphere, an urge to artistically engage with the experiences of my parent’s generation, and for me to then reflect my response outwardly; for all my life such reflections had been inward. We baby boomers grew in the shadow of the wars our fathers and grandfathers fought. The atmosphere of my father and his friends reminiscing, the brown beer bottles, the hand rolled tobacco, the wonder of their stories, the sombre tales of loss. The stories he told us as children, the profound effect that the war had on him and that entire generation remains a defining dynamic in my life, and I believe of the New Zealand character.
This is what I wanted to write about.
My first efforts began with a series of iconic scenes. Farmers and their families gathered at a small town cenotaph on Anzac Day, a battlefield, the awkward farewell of father to son, the antipodean war widow in a European cemetery. As each scene took shape in my mind I began to sense how they would connect, initially not through a logical plot but rather as a series of discoveries, one thought leading to another. Loss leading to pain, death to sorrow, acts of courage to homage, duty to gratitude. I allowed this progression to shape the sequence of events and scenes.
As a boy I proudly carried the fact that my father had fought in the two great battles of the 2ND New Zealand Expeditionary Force; El Alamein, and Monte Cassino. Of North Africa he spoke of the burning desert by day and the freezing star bright nights. Of Italy he spoke of the mountains, the ruins, the Italians who welcomed them and whom he and his comrades in turn fed, treating the children with chocolate and small gifts. And always he spoke of the men, Snow from Auckland, Joe from Motueka, some them alive, some having never come home. Even in the last months of his life I would see him turning over in his hands photographs of those long gone faces and places.
However opera is drama and for me more than catharsis and upon reading Hapgood and Richardsons Monte Cassino (1984), wherein they detail the extent of German activity and engagement with the archive and art of the Abbey, a sudden flash of recognition went off. Michael and I had already planned that the ultimate scene of the opera was to be a philosophical interrogation of the three forces impacting upon Cassino, the German, the Italian and the Allied, of whom the New Zealanders were of paramount interest to us. A story about the art and the intrigue surrounding the controversial bombing of the Abbey would provide a mechanism to get these philosophies into the same place, the Nazi appropriation of Nietzche, Catholic mysticism of the Benedictine kind, and Kiwi self reliance. To interrogate the dynamic of this difference might lead us to an understanding of sameness. To see all of us in this light of what we share, rather than what we hold separate, is the purpose of this work.
John. G. Davies.
