Talentdämmerung

Talentdämmerung (lit., “twilight of the subject matter experts” and subtitled “Der Kampf um Talente” or “The Struggle To Attract Talent”), is an unfinished opera by winsome Austrian librettist and amateur composer Otto Büchstein intended to be the culminating work in his Form und Substanz cycle.

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Never performed in his lifetime, nor for that matter since, a fully-formed script was recovered from his belongings in the opium den in Mandalay where he spent his last, fevered months.

There is some controversy about its provenance: some point to the self-interested work of Büchstein’s life-long antagonist Sir Jerrold Baxter-Morley, K.C., anxious to boost his consultancy fees.

Synopsis

Act I

It is Venice in the 1890s. A crisp packet blows across St Mark’s Square. Complicatio and Regolamento hurry to the reception room of the Presuntuosa family having been summonsed by its head, Provocatoria, a minor Venetian noble. Complicatio and Regolamento are part of her council of counsel — a kind of star chamber of her closest advisors — to plan the firm’s survival.

SCENE I. Venice. A street.

Enter Complicatio, Regolamento and Inclusivia, trailed by the Queens’ fool Nuncle.

Complicatio: In sooth, I know not why it is so hard:
These cursed rules confront our peaceable comportment.
But wherefore didst our meddling framers of our rules
Promulgate such screeds of wordsome bluster?

Nuncle: We can only wonder.

Complicatio: What manner of man comprehends this spidery realm?
“Shall be obligated to effect this”, “in the event of that ”
“and, as the case may without limitation be, or, the other” —
Yegads! What lacks from “must” and “if” and “or” and simple fare alike?

Regolamento: Let salving such bewilderment be mine Earthly quest.
Pray, friend: toss your troubled load upon my empty lot
Whereupon shall I guide that weight —

Nuncle: — and clip thy shabby ticket as you go —

Regolamento: — o’er your sea of angry incongruity.
Aye, these are beastly rules, beset with bastard expectations
Which o’erpeer the machinations of thy scattered petty staff.
Let handling this be Complicatio’s meat and drink.

Nuncle: And deeply drink thy countless charges will,
In obedient curtsy to this web of wonkish recipe.

Inclusivia: Slavish compliance would all be good and well.
Had not the predating force of contrary commerce moored its fleet
In easy pelting distance of our present comfy realm.

Complicatio: How now? Who goes there? Which boats?
Mean you not the mewling flannel peddlers of Luxembourg and France?
Fie upon thy windy malconfidence! We shall have them for their lunch-adoring breeches.

Inclusivia: The lowmen, aye, but fiercer yet the foes who eye our patch
From ’cross the ditch. New-worldsmen make landfall beyond the city gates.
As do those doughty wizards from the tigerish Eastern lands
O’er whom short years ago this storied house had dominion
Form up their aquatic configurations and negotiate their IOUs. That is my hunch.

Nuncle: I.O. double U: They learned our tricks and ate our lunch.

Enter Provocatoria

Provocatoria: How now, Complicatio. How fares thy P and L?

Complicatio: Flat, my lady.

The mercantile markets are in disarray: there are brigands on the Silk Road, pirates around the Barbary Coast, and the arrival of venal bankers from the New World is threatening the profitability of the Venetian families.

Following an embarrassing upset with the firm’s major client, Archewellgos, the Queen calls in her head banker, Infernalio.

Provocatoria: Now, our joy,
Although the last, not least; to whose young leverage
Thine holdings in thinly traffick’d names, rich in outrageous voguery
Did bunch, distil, concentrate and conspire their margin lenders yet to o’er-extend;
How fared thy numbers, Sirrah? What can you say?
Will a grimace itself engrave upon that storied countenance? What did you lose? Speak.

Infernalio: Nothing, my lady.

Provocatoria: Nothing?

Infernalio: Nothing.

Provocatoria: Nothing will come of nothing, fair squidly vampire: speak again.

“Our supply of gold ducats, once the envy of the world, is dwindling. I shall hand it over to those of you who can demonstrate their strategy for adapting to the new environment.”

The Queen’s counsel council comprises: Complicatio, who is responsible for workings of the firm; Ingraziatoro, who looks after the firm’s best clients, Regolamento, who is in charge of compliance, and the hapless Triago, who is general counsel. Also present is Nuncle, the Queen Provocatoria ’s diminutive special advisor — a sort of roving minister without portfolio, and Inclusivia Liberatardia from the personnel department.

Provocatoria: Meantime we shall express our darker purpose. I am tired.
Nuncle, pass the deck. Know this my council:
My departing wish: this house must hold its nerve.
Wherefore I divide, in quarters, all of its reserves.
Conferring them upon some younger lance, while I
Unburden’d crawl toward my place in France.
I have made this hour a will to put the firm
In firmer hand and stouter head than mine.
Is there one among you who can forsooth attest
To an acumen so sharp to shave the chin
Or cut the lunch of those cur-struck brigands from the west?
Thou art my likeliest inheritors. Who shall make it right?
Is there one or two who, perchance between you
Has both the stomach and the wisdom for the fight?

Nuncle: Now steady, here, my lady liege: one hears it oftly said:
One head per pair of shoulders is enough
Less than one a lack, for sure
But no less a lack there is if there is more.

Provocatoria: What mean you, Fool? Your riddle stays unspun.

Nuncle: One head’s a head ahead: co-heads are none.

Provocatoria: Must co-operation e’er be seen a fudge?

Nuncle: So try it, ma’am: you be the fool, and I the judge.

Provocatoria: And here to be answer’d. Tell me, my lords:
Should I divest my mandate to a worthy heir
Which heir was you: what wouldst be your best idea?
How wouldst you drive our sweetened chariot to the sun?
What wouldst you scheme to make the rabbits run?
He, or she, or they, who enthrall mine eyes:
Shall with royal leave possess our frittered prize. Speak.

Ingraziatoro, who speaks in buzzwords, complains that with insufficient quality salespeople to build the franchise bands of roving mercenaries are picking off the firm’s most lucrative trade routes and diverting traditional riches to the Americans. There is but one thing for it: we must pay these roving mercenaries to bring the trade back to our firm! Provocatoria asks Ingraziatoro where he got the idea from. He got it from McKinsey.

Ingrazio: Whereupon, going for’ard, in deliv’rance of client excellence
Our solutions can and shall and must and will
Across the piece and on, or off, the piste be best in class

Nuncle: Ma’am I do believe he’s piste!

Triago: (Aside) At very least, an arse.

Ingrazio: Our multi-touchpoints deign a seamless urge
Relentlessly to drive high-class returns
Across our sacred franchise and, net net,
This th’ gulfing delta b’twixt ourselves
And those who would intrude upon our mark’t share.
That our qualities are deep, they do not care.
In pairing hot ambition and a lofty sweep
Across the product landscapes, lo! They creep!
For this, milady — ’tis the crunch:
Spare no investment, lest they eat our lunch.

Provocatoria: What doth he say? What is this talk?

Nuncle: He wants more money, Queenie, or he’ll walk.

Provocatoria: Your speech o’erflows with epigrams I scarce can fathom
These pearly slogans buzz and flap and whine with contrivèd learning.

Ingrazio: I am, my liege, obliged.

Provocatoria: Be assured: ’tis naught of praise.
Why do you babble so, Ingrazio? Your vocabulary was ne’er before
So thin of meat but yet so fat with dry bewilderment.

Nuncle: It’s a mode of discourse, as they say —
Amongst those who claim learning by M.B.A.

Provocatoria: Is that your counsel, Ingrazio?
Shrill baubles wrought from mast’ry of administration?
Thy mealy couplets betray just such a whimsy.
Didst thy stanzas come from foundries of McKinsey?

Ingrazio: I am undone, I must confess.
That very firm it was, My liege:
How did you guess?

Complicatio, accompanied by his personnel manager Inclusivia, presents his plan to change: a programme to relocate the firm’s operations to Bucharest, to outsource those than cannot be transplanted to Don Inago Montega, a local celery peddler who supplies cheap labour under water-tight service level agreements. This, he assures the Queen, will instantly save thousands of ducats. Nuncle and Inclusivia snipe at each other throughout Complicatio’s windy speech. Queen Provocatoria asks Complicatio where he got the idea from. He says it was Ingraziatoro. Provocatoria: And Ingraziatoro, let me guess? He nods sheepishly and says McKinsey.

Complicatio: My division’s damned, by unfunny fate
To live unloved upon the ledger. We are but cost.
’Tis the rust and stain and curse of clammy gears
That require a ruinous peopling.
We’ve cut our cloth as best can do
But these myriad needed grunts, though housed in meagre lairs
Kept safe and well away from clientry, are yet a weight.
Each speaks the fractious tones of jargoned tongue
Such patter steep’d, til cup is cold, in leaves of dismal science.
Each a different dismal one, his language apt to smother.

Nuncle: We understand them not. Nor do they one other.

Inclusivia: “His”?

Complicatio: Pray forgiveness, Lady Inclusivia. Hers as well.

Inclusivia: And theirs.

Complicatio: Aye, them too. Yea, this is our strife: this bewild’ring ’scape
Of contraptions yoked and tethered as a many gender’d beast —
Upon whose discombobulating backs our common fate depends.
And, O! Dilemma! The very men who work these chainèd cranks —

Inclusivia: Men? Just men?

Complicatio: Oh! and women — and those unsure, or curious, or as yet unaligned—

Queen: The heavens doth anoint!

Complicatio: Milady?

Nuncle: Pray, spare your testy conjugation:
Their majesty doth get the point.

Queen: It is a pretty speech so far. But has it any meat?

Inclusivia: Or leguminous alternatives.

Complicatio: I — we — they — am and are and are obliged.
They whose allied cadence powers our truck —

Queen: The dismal ones?

Complicatio: Aye them, with all their rancour —
By their inevitable heft, they play as weighty anchors.

Nuncle: “Weighty anchors”? None call the Reverend Spooner!

Queen: There are eighty of these dismal scientists?

Nuncle: More like eight hundred —

Complicatio: Eager but, yegads, inconstant. Oafish! Fickle! Slow!
I wouldst speed my rate of stroke, only worser comes with sooner.
And so, my liege, my battle plan: we set these Morlocks free.

Queen: To do what?

Inclusivia: To see out their best and carefree lives, unchained of drudgery.
Uninjured by liv’d experience: happy, unstress’d — full, fair and abundant.

Nuncle: In other words, less gently put, they’ll make the lot redundant.

Complicatio: Thus, unbound by work-to-rule, we’ll drive the train
Around the clock, without relent
Night; day; rain; hail or shine — e’en upon the Sabbath.

Queen: Our crankshafts pedal not themselves, Complicatio.
You’ve said you’d let your experts go, so
Who shall turn thy grimy wheels, without fault or favour, food or rest?

Complicatio: You can hire them by the score in Bucharest.
They are legion: all thifty, keen and swift.

Queen: But unpossessed of needed knowhow that, by rank and yank, you sent away?

Complicatio: There are certain merchants, Ma’am whose special skill
Lies in collating squads of fruity youths, fresh harvested from school
And putting them at our bespoke disposal.
They bone them up upon our musty almanacks —
Service catalogues, hymn-sheets, psalters, taxonomies and the like
And see them train’d, at pace, to keep to and stay upon our message.

Queen: What is this “special skill” whereof you speak?
To coach a bunch of wet-eared boys —

Inclusivia: — and girls, and grades between —

Queen: — to outperform our veterans? It sounds to us like sorcery.

Nuncle: “Outsourcery”, they call it. An amiable conjury,
Well-known to bewitch a gawping treasurer.

Complicatio: ’Tis more than cheeky sleight of hand, my liege.

Nuncle: ’Tis not. You’ll see. The logic’s flimsy.

Complicatio: ’Tis tried, tested and pronounced a win
By no lesser than McKinsey.

It transpires that Pillochio, former functionary from Complicatio’s division has defected to a new-fangled competitor deploying homunculi

Pillochio: Thou art a fool, but know’st it not:
Thy hawkish overestimations
Of thine picklish acme
Lie as thinly ’cross the loaf
As a board-house scrape of butter
When served afore a banquet.
Best check thy tumid speech
Lest good Doctor Dunning prick his ears.

Nuncle: I am a fool, by trade, and surely know’t:
Herewith my coxcomb: it might suit thee.
Who glibly pleads the hitch
Of own-wisdom misreflected
To win — nay, in lieu of —
A trifling argument
Is a man who looks a-mirror
And, liking what he sees
O’erlooks the chasing hounds of irony.

Pillochio: Ho! Ho!

Regolamento has acquired a “homunculus” machine to surveil and ensure compliance with rules and procedures at a fraction of the cost, and with far greater speed and accuracy than humans can do. Queen Provocatoria asks Regolamento where he got the idea from was it McKinsey, by any chance? No! protests Regolamento. It was from a Conflittio, a secondee in his department — who on further enquiry turns out to have been seconded from McKinsey.

Queen: Good Regolamento. Your ornery battalion grows apace.
Why so many hands aligned in defensive form,
When ill-conduced to aid our onward march?

Regolamento: Th’untended thatch of shin-tangling rulery sleepeth not.
Slim principles of good behaviour — short days ago, a waxing star
Play out their scenes as half-recollected dreams.
O, happy reverie! Was there e’er so sweet a time?
Was compliant life so fair? Who knew what glinting jewels we held!
Jewels once, but crush’d to charcoal in our hands.

Queen: Doth mere statutory obeisance bring you low?

Nuncle: Not so low he couldn’t raise an army, liege.

Regolamento: ’Tis true: the count of heads giv’n to policery is fat —
But knotted perimeters o’erlap and contradict.
Bossy strictures grind upon our chasest industries
Our smallest act hemmed in by rainbow rules of ill-scop’d application.
Ours not to make reply nor reason why —
Ours to but be silent and, sans fuss, comply.

Queen: What causeth this?

Regolamento: The ropish scars of distant misadventure
Give the fib to saintly visage.
The watchers’ shrill response to past imprudence:
This misbegotten step, that ill-timed grapple
Each wormy bite we take of rotten apple — each one marks us deep.
If harmed or just abash’d, some fuss-pot regulators’ soon at hand
To apportion reprimand. And soon thereafter to encode
In cryptic ciphers fresh directives which, thereafter, he

Inclusivia: Or she.

Regolamento: Or she — or they — abstain from explication,
But fix confusing rules in stone and thereby codify.
We know not whereof they mean: it might be stop, it might be go.
No further light forthcomes about. We imagine neither do they know.

Queen: Canst thou not obtain a ruling?

Nuncle: A worthy thought. A pretty feeling.
And ask them, while you’re there, to nail your jelly to the ceiling.
Th’official who binds his fate to instruments unfathom’d
E’en if his own, is a rare and special bird.

Regolamento: We take our bitter medicines
E’en while we let this gleaming engine stack silt up
As like a discarded hulk, half-buried in the mud at Tilbury
In that rich and loamy sod low stunted shrubs
Whose thorny limbs the squalling wind doth shriek.
We set our team with adze and axe and secateurs
They hack at growling branches who mandate
This matchèd trade, that time-stamp, some other reckoning of pedantry.
But it is a labour more riskful then rewarding.

Act II

No sooner has Ingraziatoro wasted all the firm’s resources on useless investment bankers, he returns to Provocatoria.

Ingraziatoro: Good Queen, your humblest servant is beset around
By fiendish trials of others’ making.
Our staff are furious.
These new fancy-pants are lording their great riches over everyone
But they have not brought in any new business.
In fact, they are making it hard for us to keep the business we already have.
And now our own loyal staff are leaving.
We must therefore raise their salaries to match the new mercenaries!”
Provocatoria: We must what?
Ingraziatoro: We must compete! This daily war for talent is intense.
The necessary investment is immense.
Nuncle: Cometh down the man, cometh down the hour?
Cameth I down in the latest shower?

Highlights

Most famous rousing aria, accompanied by the string section playing “piccolini” — literally, “tiny violins”; shortened violin-type instruments specially-designed by Büchstein for this opera — comes when Prepostero, senior managing partner of Magic Circle firm Slaughter Cowards Later stands upon a white cliff overlooking jagged rocks of the tempestuous ocean between Albion and the New World, shaking his fists and wailing into the chasm:

It is more beautiful in the original Italian, so we set that out in full, with a translation below.

Oh, Fato, con le tue sfortunate oscillazioni ed errori di valuta scandalosa
Mi hai gettato nell’abisso della disperazione!
Non sono amato! Sono desolato!
Come posso cambiare le mie bollette senza valore
Per servizi giuridici di alto livello nel nuovo mondo?
Oh, fato, mi schiacci!
La guerra per il talento era già dura
Ma tu pesista nel renderlo più difficile!
Questo si aggiunge a quello che era già un ambiente difficile.
Dei, schioccati le guance!
Segna le mie parole! Ascolta quello che ho da dire!
Questo sarà un catalizzatore per più movimenti laterali

“O, Fate, with your unfortunate swings and errors of outrageous currency
You have cast me into the abyss of despair!
I am unloved! I am desolate!
How can I exchange my worthless bills
For top-tier juridical services in the new world?
O, Fate, you crush me!
The war for talent was already tough
But you must pesist in making it harder!
This adds to what was already a challenging environment.
Gods, crack your cheeks! Mark my words!
Heed what I have to say!
This will be a catalyst for more lateral moves”

The “More With Less” Aria

Another memorable moment is when Prepostero, having been told by his major client’s general counsel, Triago that the firm’s reserves are depleted and he will have to economise on external legal spend. Triago protests but Prepostero peremptorily snuffs out the candles and exits his client’s chamber with these harrowing words:

“Whose hand controlleth the whip, Triago?
Surely, thinkest not thou it is thee?
Mend thy juridical footsteps, re-cut your cloth.
Remember who approves your salty bills.
It is me.”

He spits, before leaving poor Triago distraught on the floor, from where he embarks on the beautiful, lachrymal aria Dovremo Solo Fare Di Più Con Meno (“We shall just have to do more with less”) only to be interrupted by the court jester Nuncle, listening from a nearby window, who snipes sardonic rejoinders to each of Triago’s complaints.

Triago: When the master says, “Thou shalt do more”
I am thus obliged: I shall do more:
For legal art is the whole of the law.
And when he says “thou shalt take less”
It is the same: less shall I take.
With crumbs and crusts do shall I make.

Nuncle: Whose legal income’s stretched so thin
To play so small a violin?

Triago: Oh manifold skill! Flow like a stream
About the smooth stones of demand!
Collaboration? Oh, blast my eyes!
How we strive to operationalise
But how to vouchsafe service deliv’ry
With fewer dressed in legal livery?
What wouldst thou give for this old rope?
A measley mill or two?

Nuncle: You’ll cope.

Triago: Oursource! Rightshore! By this peroration
I endorse the yen for automation.
I’ll take the strain and with aught stress
But living breath, do more with less.

Nuncle: Oh, bless.
It’s easier than that:
You’ll just do less.