The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is a chamber opera based on Oliver Sacks's book of the same name. A true story, it takes the form of a neurological case-study; Dr P, a professional singer, suffers from visual agnosia—an inability to recognize or make sense of what he sees—and the opera describes in simple, unpretentious dialogue two consultation sessions during which the other two characters, the neurologist (Dr S) and the patient's wife (Mrs P), by way of a sequence of tests and conversations, gradually penetrate the mystery of the symptoms. Beyond that, the opera possesses no story as such, reaches no great climax or conclusion. But drama there is in quantity, supplied largely by the protagonists' reactions and responses to one another. In its wistful way, it is also—inevitably often hilariously funny.
If there had ever been any doubt about the matter, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat firmly secures Michael Nyman as a composer of substance and significance. Although the score blatantly revels in its prosaic ordinariness, the effect has been calculated to avoid superficial theatricality, to underline the ridiculousness of the situation, to instil into the action a tension, a nervous energy, that sustain interest through an hour of what is virtually uninterrupted recitative. (The dialogue is broken only by moments of reflection as the neurologist, Dr S, steps forward and thinks aloud to the audience.) Ludicrously simple as Nyman's means appear at first, there is never any doubt that he is absolutely in control; by the end, one has the impression rather of a score of unusual power and pathos.
The performances are equally impressive. Pitched at a conversational rather than a conventionally operatic level, the three principals put as much into their acting as they do into their singing, and thus they are able to avoid caricature. Sarah Leonard's playing of Mrs P as the highlystrung, solicitous and over-protective wife, blind to the reality of her husband's condition, is nothing less than brilliant. Frederick Westcott as Dr P is cool, composed and bemused throughout. Dr S, proceeding through his deductions with efficiency and tact, is played by Emile Belcourt with quite uncanny realism. Beneath the dialogue a small ensemble directed by Michael Nyman himself provide solid support in the form of a series of intriguing rhythmic, melodic and harmonic patterns—some of them derived, more or less identifiably, from Schumann songs, which also have a place in the libretto. The full text together with useful essays by composer, librettist and Oliver Sacks himself, comes boxed with the CD in a generously fat booklet. Altogether this is an issue not to be missed; utterly engrossing from start to finish.R1 '8811117'