Irma

IRMA: World Première Programme (recto), 1972

IRMA: World Première Programme (verso), 1972

AMM & Tom Phillips
Matchless Recordings, 1988

Edited extract from Work & Texts 1992, p277-279

Irma: The Score

The general score of Irma comes from treated fragments of a Victorian novel, A Human Document, by W.H. Mallock. In that I originally bought this book for threepence in 1966, Irma is thus, authentically, a threepenny opera.

Irma was composed in 1969, first published in a small french avant-garde review (OU: ed. Henri Chopin) in 1970. The score exists as an autonomous artwork and is in the Altmann Museum in Vaduz, Liechtenstein.

The score takes the form of a large sheet with prose directions (each a treated fragment of the novel) for the libretto, the Mise en scène and the sound vocabulary of the piece, together with instructions, performance suggestions and a group of melodies. It is to be thought of as the surviving elements of a lost work whose performance tradition is unknown. Realisation of the opera involves the ordering and piecing together of these fragments to a performable work; as an archaeologist might reconstruct a possible coherent pot from scattered shards.

Irma: Performance History

The opera was first produced at the Bordeaux Festival in 1970 as a concert work. It was first staged by the Ceolfrith Arts Association at the University of Newcastle in 1972. An ambitious second production in 1973 was the result of a performance project for the postgraduate students of the music department at York University.

Except for one recorded version and the odd performance by a student group the opera became a sleeper until its first London performance in 1983 when it formed part of Adrian Jack's enterprising MusicICA series at the ICA: on that occasion it was presented as a double bill with itself, in two contrasting versions; one a spare chamber performance by Jean Yves Bosseur and the French group Intervalles (in which I sang the part of the Narrator) and the other an augmented revival of the original York version, lavish and erotic, in which Elise Lorraine created the role Irma. Thus two performers from wildly divergent productions come together in the 1988 AMM recording of Irma for Matchless Recordings.

An extract from a performance of Irma by AMM, Union Chapel, London, May 1988

This extract is taken from the CD version of Irma made by AMM for Matchless Recordings in 1988. Elise Lorraine sang the role of Irma and Phil Minton that of Grenville. The ensemble consisted of John Tilbury, Keith Rowe, Eddie Prevost, Lol Coxhill, Ian Mitchell, with Birte Pederson as auxiliary vocalist. I made yet another farewell performance as The Narrator.

In 2014 Phillips returned to Irma producing a revised score and libretto, Irma: An opera, opus XIIB published by the Talfourd Press.