THE OPERA IN ONE SENTENCE

Bess is shunned by her strict religious community for carrying out a series of extramarital encounters she believes are miraculously healing her paralyzed husband, Jan.

BACKGROUND

Breaking the Waves is based on a 1996 film by Danish director Lars von Trier. Starring Emily Watson and Stellan Skarsgård, the movie was awarded the Grand Prix at Cannes. It’s part of von Trier’s “Golden Heart Trilogy,” which also includes The Idiots (1998) and Dancer in the Dark (2000). Each of these unconnected stories deals with a virtuous heroine who holds so steadily to her morals and convictions that she’s driven to self-destruction, sacrificing herself for a cause or for a loved one.

Premiered by Opera Philadelphia in 2016, Breaking the Waves is the second of six operatic collaborations between composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek. In researching the work, the pair traveled throughout Scotland, including to the Isle of Skye where the opera takes place. Here, they drew inspiration from natural landscapes, local dialects, and bagpipe music. They also consulted with members of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, the strain of Calvinism that Bess and her neighbors belong to.

WHAT TO LISTEN FOR

Act I opens with a striking orchestral seascape: crashing chords conjure coastal cliffs, woodwinds mimic screeching waterbirds, and the scraping of a brake drum (made from the actual car part) evokes the industrial din of an offshore oil rig. These sounds abate for Bess’s aria, “His name is Jan,” which encapsulates the key features of the character’s vocal line. Her wide, childlike leaps and halting, hesitant phrases gradually lengthen into joyous flights of bell-tone lyricism. After her wedding, she and Jan share an intimate love duet, “Your body is a map,” in which their voices intertwine like the converging lifelines Bess traces on Jan’s skin. During the orchestral interludes, listen for the overlapping, downward scales in the orchestra that recall the ceaseless roll of waves.

Act II introduces Dr. Richardson, whose baroque-influenced vocal line is filled with Handelian coloratura runs. When Bess attempts to seduce him, she dances to a pre-recorded track—Mazzoli’s convincing imitation of 1970s rock. In Act III, Bess’s Mother rebukes her daughter on a rigid oscillating figure resembling a ticking clock. Just before Bess interrupts the church service, listen for the elders’ staggered chanting. This technique, indebted to Gaelic psalm singing of the Scottish Highlands, can also be heard throughout the opera, whenever the male choristers embody the voice of God. Backed by blaring electric guitar, they echo Bess’s strange half-sung, half-spoken utterances—a form of vocal delivery known as Sprechstimme.

FUN FACT

Breaking the Waves is the second of three major operas based on the films of Lars von Trier. Selma Ježková (2007), by Danish composer Poul Ruders and librettist Henrik Engelbrecht, is an adaptation of Dancer in the Dark. More recently, in 2023, Breaking the Waves librettist Royce Vavrek collaborated with Swedish composer Mikael Karlsson on an operatic version of von Trier’s Melancholia (2011). The world premiere starred soprano Lauren Snouffer, who plays Bess in HGO’s production of Breaking the Waves.

SYNOPSIS

Setting: Isle of Skye, Scotland, mid-1970s

ACT I

Bess, a young Scottish woman, addresses the Councilman and elders of her Calvinist congregation. She asks them permission to marry her sweetheart Jan, a Norwegian oil-rigger who is an outsider to their small village on Skye. Sometime later, Jan arrives by helicopter from the rig, and he and Bess are wed. Dodo, a nurse and the widow of Bess’s departed brother, gives a speech at the reception praising her sister-in-law’s golden heart. Bess leads Jan to the bathroom where they make love for the first time—a moment of sexual awakening for the virgin Bess. Alone, she thanks heaven for her husband, answering her own prayers in the gruff voice she imagines belonging to God.

The couple lies naked in bed after the wedding, and Bess traces an imaginary map of their life together on the contours of her new husband’s body. Jan asks why there were no church bells to celebrate their wedding, and Bess explains that her strict congregation flung them into the sea long ago. When Jan reminds Bess that he will soon have to return to the rig, she breaks down. Bess’s Mother reprimands her daughter, telling her that it’s a woman’s duty to endure. After his departure, Jan phones Bess from the rig, and the two share an intimate conversation. The call is cut short, and Bess begs God to bring her husband home sooner than the ten days until his next visit. Back on the rig, Jan suffers a brain injury while saving his friend Terry and is rushed by helicopter to a hospital on Skye.

INTERMISSION

ACT II

Dr. Richardson, an English physician, explains to Bess that Jan will be paralyzed for the rest of his life. Humiliated by his inability to satisfy his wife, Jan sets Bess with a task that will grant him the will to live. She is to have sex with other men, and when she describes these encounters to him afterward, it will be as if Jan and Bess are making love themselves. Hesitant to commit adultery, Bess consults with the voice of God, which commands her to prove her devotion. Following a humiliating attempt at seducing Dr. Richardson, Bess manages to pick up a man at a bar. Meanwhile, Jan’s heart stops during surgery but restarts at the moment of Bess’s liaison.

ACT III

Bess’s Mother warns her daughter that she risks being cast out of the church for her increasing promiscuity, which neighbors have begun to notice. But Bess believes her acts of love are healing Jan. Dodo and Dr. Richardson worry Bess is falling victim to the delusions of Jan’s addled mind. Bess propositions a pair of sailors aboard a red boat, but she flees when their treatment turns violent. Seeking refuge at church, she interrupts the Councilman’s sermon and is excommunicated by the elders. Rejected by her mother and abused by the villagers, Bess learns from Dodo that Jan is dying. In a last-ditch effort, Bess gives herself over to the sadistic sailors on the red boat, who brutally rape and mutilate her. Bess dies, and Jan immediately recovers. He and Terry bury her body at sea as the sound of unseen church bells miraculously peals over the waves.