Before the lobotomy, Rosemary Kennedy loved opera. In Irish National Opera’s Least Like the Other: Searching for Rosemary Kennedy, art imitates life in the deepest irony.
This is an opera about Rosemary Kennedy’s lobotomy. It’s medical misogyny set to music. Joe and Rose Kennedy’s gloss-finished Camelot, of which JFK was their triumph, unravels to reveal the Kennedy curse. Intelligence tests, weight loss schemes, and the oppressive push towards perfection culminate in Rosemary’s ill-fated medical procedure. The American Dream cuts towards incoherence.
Netia Jones directs a production of profound contrasts. The opera begins with Rose Kennedy giving birth to her eldest daughter, Rosemary. We are acclimatised to Rose’s Stepford perfection through index cards and cognitive capacity tests. The tests beg their taker “Which of these is least like the other?”
Rosemary is the answer. Rosemary prefers swimming and dancing. Her most important test is learning a proper courtesy for the Queen. In a house with Joe Jr., Jack, and Robert, Rosemary is least like the others.
The frenetic frenzy of the Kennedy ambition is contrasted with interludes of release. At first, wobbling static cut the building tension as the Kennedy children prepare for IQ tests. Later, the stage fills with projections of water as Rosemary drowns in the mounting scrutiny of her mental state.
These contrasts create the emotional depth of the opera. The release is welcome. Even the static and pulsing projections outage create a sense of relief. Least is startling and upsetting, but that is what carries the operas larger themes of suffocating societal expectations.
Musically, Brian Irvine has composed a soundscape of conflicting jazz bands. With two conductors leading two separate ensembles, the music clashes more than complements.
My ears dig through the neural pathways of the piece to find some semblance of melody, unsuccessfully. Often, the piece’s vocal lines are atonal, leaving little room for mezzo soprano Amy Ni Fherraigh to convey any emotion as Rosemary Kennedy.
Is this music or this noise? In its most orchestral, the strings slide into one another and the brass crash, but it works. It’s the musical equivalent of watching a traffic jam, engines stall, horns blast, people shout, but if you step back, the experience has a relaxing effect.
The orchestra goes beyond music and harnesses a modern ability o create soind effects. Slaps. Bangs. Beeps. Both orchestras are swimming in sound effects.
The orchestra effectively recreates the sound of water in a way that is profoundly musical. Melodies are fleeting and the crash of competing bars is compelling.
I have never been more thrilled by a headache in my life. (And I truly did have a headache.)
In Least Like the Other, the American dream comes in conflict with itself. Despite painting a world of fragmented and fleeting ideas, Netia Jones and Brian Irvine have created a complete thought.
The ending is as unresolved as every movement of Irvine’s music, as distracted as every scene of Jones’ staging, and as tortured as every note song by Ni Fherraigh.
In Least Like the Other: Searching for Rosemary Kennedy, the picture-perfect farce of Camelot dissolves into the shuttered face of the Kennedy curse. In the story of Icarus we are warned about the boy who flew too close to the sun, but what ever happened to the daughter?
All photos are promotional photos from Irish National Opera and Pat Redmond.
London Show Cap 
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