Hidden in Plain Sight

by Matias Travieso-Diaz

After taking over the nation’s prime performing arts center and appointing himself its new artistic director, the Leader — who had never set foot in the center before — felt obliged to attend selected performances of plays and musical events. The Leader’s musical taste ran to classic rock, 1980s anthems, and country music.

However, when a new opera by Severo Mestre, one of the country’s leading composers, was to be premiered, he consented to attend the opening night’s gala performance. He sat in the presidential box, in full view of a packed house that included foreign dignitaries, members of the administration, glitterati, and wealthy political donors, in addition to common folk.

As soon as the first bars of the opera — a modern restaging of a Shakespearean tragedy — sounded, the Leader became irritated. He found the music coarse, dissonant, vulgar and devoid of the simple musical language to which he was accustomed.

The Leader soon became so restive that it took two of his aides to keep him in his seat until the first act ended, whereupon the Leader rose violently and demanded to be taken to his limo. In the middle of the night, he wrote on his website a scathing article assailing the music and its composer.

Severo was stricken by panic at the unexpected attack. His livelihood and his personal safety had been compromised. These days, drawing negative attention from the Leader could only result in serious trouble. And it did: soon after the article was published, some of the Leader’s sycophants stated orally and in print that Severo was clearly corrupt, that his citizenship should be revoked and he be deported to Venezuela, the ancestral homeland of his family but a place he had never even visited.

Severo feared for his life but was loath to leave his country and drag his family to an exile in some foreign destination. However, his entire future was at risk, and he realized that he needed to take immediate measures to restore his good standing with the government. He set to work with fierce determination on a new composition that might serve to rehabilitate him.

He was a fast worker; within three months he completed a new symphony. The work was raw at the edges, and its orchestration was uninventive, but he judged that it was in good enough shape to be performed. Any polishing details could be provided later, as needed.

He composed the fourth and final movement first: a march, a triumphant and heroic resolution of the conflicts raised in the rest of the work, which was yet to be written. The movement was replete with identifiable quotations of popular tunes; yet, it was hollow, sarcastic, and reeking of forced jubilation.

He then inserted, just before the final onset of martial music, a haunting motif that Dmitri Shostakovich had employed almost a century earlier to accompany words from the poem “Rebirth,” by Alexander Pushkin: “Thus do delusions vanish from my tormented soul and, in it, visions arise of primal, pristine days.” With this quotation, he was declaring that what followed was nothing more than forced bombast.

To further express his true feelings, Severo interjected other melodies and phrases in the rest of the work that made it clear to an attentive listener that he was voicing his distress as an artist forced to sacrifice art and toe the party line. Most significantly, he ended the slow movement with an oboe soloist playing a disconsolate tune, followed by a double bass shriek and a scream by the full orchestra, and then an abrupt silence. At this point in the premiere of the symphony, a good portion of the audience broke into tears.

The new symphony was a big triumph and was performed multiple times. Severo was vindicated, and the Leader was reported to be pleased with the nationalistic tone of the march that crowned the composition. Nobody in government circles caught on to the meaning of the work, even though it was hidden in plain sight. Severo had restored himself to the good graces of the establishment, while at the same time satisfying his conscience to the greatest extent he could.

It is unclear how many people in the country caught on to the full meaning of what Severo had done, but those who did gained a valuable lesson in ways to resist tyranny. It may take artistic ingenuity, but those in power in a totalitarian regime may be obtuse enough to let pass expressions of opposition to their rule, even ones hidden in plain sight.

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[Author’s note] When I was young, I thought Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony was his best. It was not until later, when I listened to the music carefully and read the story of his efforts to save himself from the gulag, that I appreciated how clever he was. As I see so many artists abstain from displaying their work under an oppressive regime — a feeling I understand — I appreciate more what Shostakovich did and wish there would be more people like him.

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