Carnegie Hall, Clashmore, 22 February 2011

SCOTTISH OPERA might be placing itself as a hostage to fortune by going on the road in the winter months, but it has become something of a tradition to see the show now known as Opera Highlights reaching the far-flung communities of Scotland during February and March. As the show’s Director, Dafydd Burne-Jones puts it, “People in these communities pay their taxes and they have just as much right as people in the major centres to see opera of the highest quality; and if they cannot get to us, then we must get to them.”

Scene from Opera Highlights, with singers Catherine Hopper, Marie Claire Breen, Njabulo Madlala and Nicholas Watts (photo Peter Dibdin)

Three shows a week for five weeks, all contained in a minibus, might seem a tall order, but Opera Highlights have got the format down to a fine art as they tour Scotland from Sanday to Stranraer and from Crawfordjohn to Craignish with four singers and a pianist, plus all their costumes and props as they give shows of performed arias from operas, well known and rarely heard, covering three centuries of this grand art form.
I caught up with them at the Carnegie Hall in Clashmore, where as usual they had attracted a sell-out crowd, as they started the return leg of their tour from Sanday in the Orkneys back to Glasgow via Findhorn and Ullapool.
Scottish Opera’s Head of Music, Derek Clark had devised the programme from his bottomless knowledge of opera and then brought in staff producer Dafydd Burne-Jones to bring the show to life. Four young singers were recruited; RSAMD graduate soprano Marie Claire Breen from Scottish Opera’s Emerging Artist Scheme, mezzo Catherine Hopper from the National Opera Studio, tenor Nicholas Watts who trained at the Royal College of Music and the South African baritone Njabulo Madlala, a Samling scholar and a postgraduate from the Guildhall and Cardiff. The accompanist and music director was the Spanish musician Alison Luz, a former holder of the RSAMD/Scottish Opera Repetiteur Fellowship.
Quartets, trios, duets and solos, twenty-two pieces in all were crafted together to provide variety, from the opening quartet from Mozart’s La finta giardiniera, when both plot and music were the epitome of confusion, to the ever popular ‘Non più andrai’ from Le nozze di Figaro when perhaps Madlala’s tones were too warm and velvety for the cynical Figaro sending the luckless Cherubino off to the army.
The less known numbers included arias from Handel’s Giulio Cesare, Bizet’s La jolie fille de Perth, Rossini’s Le Comte Ory and the beautiful zarzuela-like ‘La maja y el ruiseñor’ from Goyescas by Granados. And it was a fascinating example to hear extracts from both versions of Il barbiere di Siviglia, the familiar one by Gioachino Rossini as well as the earlier version of the same story by Giovanni Paisiello.
Universally, the standard of singing was excellent, even if in such a diverse programme sometimes the singers were asked to sing roles that did not best suit them. For example, Marie Claire Breen who stood out vocally as the most satisfying of the quartet, especially in ‘Quel guardo il cavalieri’ from Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, seemed to have so much fun in everything she sang, making such good use of all her props, but she appeared a little coquettish as the princess Pamina in the extract from Mozart’s The Magic Flute. She would be ideal as Papagena, but lacked the gravitas of a princess.

Similarly Nicholas Watts has a tenor voice that is better suited to the comic roles, such as Don Basilio, rather than the more serious roles of Count Almaviva or Sesto in Giulio Cesare.
When transport space is limited, so too is the selection of props. Even so I lost count of the number of times the singers had a bottle and glass in their hands. However, it helped make the evening go with a swing, and it is just as well the contents were Ribena or cold tea, otherwise nobody can predict how the show would end. But end it had to, with a rumbustious performance of the ‘Champagne’ ensemble from Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss II, and even then Derek Clark had dug deep into his treasure trove of encores to extract an entertaining quartet rondo called ‘The Magic Carpet Ride’ in which the only discernable words came, on occasion, from Nicholas Watts, ‘whisky’ and ‘frisky’. A great night was had by all.

© James Munro, 2011

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