KIESLOWSKI, PREISNER & ME

My young daughter was having a hair cut when I got the call from Lawrence Aston, the agent for Zbigniew Preisner, film composer synonymous with the films of legendary Polish film director Krystof Kieslowski.

For once, I was being approached by someone else with a concept rather than the other way round, which has been more typical of my creative life in general.

"Zbigniew and I were wondering if you might be interested in collaborating on a staged version of The Double Life Of Veronique? We need someone to write the text for him to set the music to."

I couldn't believe it as I looked at my 9 year old daughter through the salon window who was engaged in a deep conversation with a confused looking hairdresser. Sometimes in life, you find your obsession and destiny collide in such a way that you would have to believe in a higher power arranging such unlikely yet fortuitous circumstances for you. Here was one such occasion.

What I wanted to tell Lawrence was just how deep my love of Preisner's music was,  along with my passion for Kieslowski's movies, especially A Short Film About Love, Double Life and Three Colours Red, but it wasn't the time. I had to be grown up me pretending this was all very ordinary stuff. Getting a call from the agent of one of your heroes.

After the call I instantly cast my mind back to days travelling by bus to Cheltenham HMV and picking up imported CDs of the soundtracks to those iconic films and bringing them back to play at Gorodish's apartment where we believed our lives were some sort of extension of the Kielsowski universe. We'd even made a special pilgrimage with Rickshaw's older brother to see Kieslowski's final film Red at the Lumiere cinema in St Martin's Lane which sadly is no longer there.

There was something in Preisner's music that evoked the fragile atmopshere of old war torn Europe with new Europe and came to life especially late at night where his music would provide a perfect accompaniment to our romantic cineaste sensibilities.

Now I was being asked to work on an adaptation of a Kieslowski masterpiece with that very same composer who I'd worshipped as a teenager. It truly was a dream come true.

Coinciding with a break up with my girlfriend at the time, I remember having a deadline to meet where I needed to put together an outline document for the opera adaptation with scene breakdown and some samples of my libretto writing for Lawrence and Preisner.

Barely able to keep my distracted mind on the task at hand, somehow I came up with a unique concept that bedazzled me momentarily and helped me forget about my emotional turmoil.

In the original story of the film, a young French woman has aspirations to be a singer. Weronika, her polish doppelganger, shares a similar ambition though their personal fate is dealt two different hands with one dying and one living.

I realised that after Weronika dies at the end of the first half of the story, I could switch from opera to ballet. The absence of vocal music would represent the metaphorical death of Weronika as Veronique's story is then told in dance.

The idea of a hybrid opera/ballet with this particular story of doppelgänger just seemed perfect and the reaction from Lawrence and Preisner appeared to indicate that I'd hit the jackpot, concept wise.

From then on it was a question of trying to find an opera house/ballet company which would be interested in putting it on.

It was a question that was sadly never answered.

There is a snobbery toward film and television composers who wish to broaden their platform by moving into classical or opera. I experienced it with Geoffrey Burgon when I worked for him, and then learnt the same painful lesson with Preisner.

Meeting with associate director Mr John Fulljames at the Royal Opera House to discuss various projects proposals, I felt a bit like a door to door salesman showing my wares. Except in this instance, it wasn't cheap household products I was trying to sell but some substantial works for the stage, including Veronique.

He seemed interested enough to request that we send him all the relevant material and promised to discuss it in depth with Kasper Holten who was then head director of the Royal Opera House.

A month or two had passed by with no word from Fulljames or Holten and Lawrence asked me to chase it up. I was finally sent a measly one sentence reply from Fulljames saying that they didn't feel the Preisner project was quite right for them.

Lawrence said he would like all the material we sent them back and that he would be happy to pick it up from ROH personally which he duly did. Upon receiving the material from Stage Door, he discovered the padded envelope with all the provided content hadn't even been opened.

Ironically, soon after, there was an article in The Guardian where Kasper Holten actively claimed to be opening the doors of the Royal Opera House to new collaborators and projects. I took the opportunity to email him and ask him why the solicited material we'd sent remained unopened. He apologised but their position remain unchanged.

Heigh ho.  

A few months later, Preisner was giving a talk at the Barbican where they were screening Kieslowski's A Short Film About Killing as part of a film and music festival.

Lawrence phoned me and said Zbigniew would like to meet me afterwards. Finally, I was getting to meet this long time hero of mine and express my gratitude for his work.

In the foyer after his talk, he gave me a firm handshake and patted my shoulder.

"Krystof would have liked your treatment of his story. Very good."

We discussed Poland and its relationship with the European Union and the hope of our being able to work together.

I nervously admitted I had little experience of writing any text for opera or music theatre and he quickly re-assured me.

"Who cares? Together we can figure it out. You come and stay with me and we can work it out between us. That's what partnership is about, yes?"

As he was then swarmed by various people who wanted to ask questions of him, I left him with a final handshake and we exchanged warm smiles.

That, sadly, was the last time I saw him.

Although various conversations continued between the three of us, perhaps there was an underlying doubt that ultimately it would probably not happen. It may have been related to the film composer prejudice trope I mentioned previously. Or it may have simply been that when something is perfect in its original form, it doesn't need adding to.

Personally, I was just happy to be given the opportunity to prove my worth with someone I admired so greatly as a young film lover.

Kieslowski often touched upon the idea of destiny and serendipity in his films and I like to think some of that same magic was part of my meeting his long time collaborator, Zbigniew Preisner.