Universal Hall, Findhorn, 13 February 2010, and touring

LOGIC SUGGESTS that after sixteen years the concept of Opera Highlights, or Essential Scottish Opera as we used to know it, would have become jaded. But not a bit of it. This year’s tour is as fresh as the dew, and if the reaction of the sell-out audience at Findhorn last Saturday is anything to go by, the show’s appeal and popularity are as strong as ever.

Adrian Ward, Robert Tucker, Miranda Sinani and Louise Collett in Opera Highlights (photo - Drew Farrell).

So, how do Scottish Opera manage it? Other than a name change, the company remains faithful to the tried and tested formula of four young singers, a pianist and a semi-staged selection of well-known and little known operatic excerpts, all professionally directed so that the show runs smoothly.

Under its Emerging Artists Programme, Scottish Opera has a ready supply of talented singers to take on the road. Both the female roles, the Albanian soprano Miranda Sinani and the English mezzo Louise Collett, joined this programme after studying at the RSAMD in Glasgow.

For the male roles, both singers were making their Scottish Opera debuts – tenor Adrian Ward, and baritone Robert Tucker, who joins that long line of singers from the antipodes who come to the UK to hone their skills. Add to the quartet pianist Ruth Wilkinson making her first ESO tour, and David Hunter (who was a member of the Out of Eden team at Eden Court Theatre) to make his Scottish Opera directorial debut, and it is easy to understand why this production is so fresh.

Twenty-two excerpts in quick succession, each one linked into the programme, kept the audience enthralled. Starting with Robert Tucker’s rendition of the ‘Champagne Aria’ from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, right through to the quartet ‘I am easily assimilated’ from Bernstein’s Candide, the selection flowed, often with unexpected humour, such as the end-of-the-pier photo booth manner in which Acis and Galatea were scaled down against the giant Polyphemus for ‘The flocks shall leave the mountains’ by Handel, or Miranda Sinani as the drunken statue in the ‘Drinking Song’ from von Suppé’s The Beautiful Galathea.

These days the traditional stand-and-deliver style of opera is no longer acceptable, and acting has become an integral part of the young singer’s training. It is an accepted custom that the tenor gets the best of the male songs, so Adrian Ward was more restrained as he acted and baritone Robert Tucker was more rumbustious.

By contrast for the females, the soprano, Miranda Sinani, gets the best songs, but is also more animated, whereas the mezzo Louise Collett relied on her beautiful warm strong voice and was more subtle in her gestures, as in Walton’s “I was a constant faithful wife’, where the cocking of an eyebrow or the removal of a glove spoke volumes.

The Findhorn performance was but the sixth of twenty-one venues over a seven-week period, making this the longest tour ever undertaken by Scottish Opera. The company move on to Torridon, Ardross, Strathy and Gairloch before heading to Skye, Benebecula and Barra then back to the mainland for communities in the south, ending up at Livingston on Saturday 20 March.

They say that temptation is no fun unless you yield to it, and I am sorely tempted to follow them to one of those venues for a second memorable evening of musical excerpts as they are meant to be presented.

© James Munro, 2010

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