Northings

JAMES MUNRO is tempted to take to the road for another helping of Scottish Opera’s scaled-down highlights package

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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• Opera Highlights

KENNY MATHIESON relishes two very different but equally unmissable approaches to classic Italian operas.

SCOTTISH Opera’s tongue-in-cheek rationale for staging these two Italian comedies side-by-side – that a bit of Italianate warmth and colour might not be unwelcome in another damp-ish British summer – was more than vindicated by the gales and lashing rain of this particular weekend.

It was vindicated on stage, too, in two very different approaches to staging classic comic operas. Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love is a revival of Giles Havergal’s 1994 production (actually a second revival ­ it was also done again in 2001), and it has more than stood the test of the passing years.

Russell Craig’s stage set is literally framed in a huge picture frame, and looked a treat from start to finish, if occasionally a shade crowded in the full chorus scenes. The cast was not only new to this production, but largely new to Scottish Opera, including the excellent principals, Elena Xanthoudakis as Adina and Edgaras Montvidas as the love-struck Nemorino.

Both were excellent singers and strong actors, as was Francesco Facini as the quack doctor Dulcamara, a gift of a comic role which he seized to the full without ever overdoing it. Much the same can be said of Marin Bronikowski as the pompous sergeant, Belcore. Both are fine singers, and neither ever lapsed into turning their characters into simple caricatures.

Sarah Redgwick – a more familiar face in Scottish Opera productions – was a characterful Giannetta, while Martin Docherty clowned in amiably Chaplin-esque fashion in the silent role of Gaetano, Dulcamara’s companion. The cast worked well as an ensemble, and the large chorus added colour and movement as well as strong singing to a hugely enjoyable take on a well-loved classic.

Francesco Corti, the Musical Director of Scottish Opera, was in the pit for these performances, but James Grossmith will be on the podium for the two performances in Inverness (see below).

Rossini’s The Italian Girl in Algiers will also be seen in a single performance in Inverness, but if The Elixir of Love received a traditional style of production, the opposite was the case in an imaginative re-invention of Rossini’s opera. The production originated in New Zealand, where director Colin McCall has acknowledged that they are less bound by European traditions of opera.

Those with firm ideas on how Rossini should look would do well to leave their preconceptions at home – but on no account pass up the chance to see this hilarious production. The action takes place in a television studio rather than the Mustafa’s harem, where a Latino soap opera called Algiers is being made, complete with all the paraphernalia of cameras, mixing desks, etc (the set and lighting design by Tony Rabbit is wonderful).

The traditional chorus of eunuchs are now the television crew, while the actors perform on an area of lurid green, where their actions are projected onto a huge screen using green screen technology to create various backgrounds. The technical ingenuity at work here is superb, and is matched by the comic imagination which has gone into the show.

The visual jokes come thick and fast, but Rossini is not forgotten in the midst of all this wizardry. The Italian Girl is one of his most attractive and effervescent scores, and an excellent cast – led by Karen Cargill as Isabella – do full justice to the music, while entering equally fully into the fun.

Scottish Opera debutant Tiziano Bracci was a fine Mustafa, and Adrian Powter (Taddeo), Mary O’Sullivan (Elvira), Julia Riley (Zulma) and Paul Carey Jones (Haly) all provided strong support, as did the chorus, clearly relishing their re-invented roles, and orchestra under Wyn Davies.

Special mention on this occasion for Christian Baumgartel as Lindoro, who had flown in that day from France to replace the indisposed Thomas Walker, whose understudy was also unwell. Baumgartel sang the role in the original New Zealand production, and reprised it in fine style here on the back of a single run-through.

Presumably Walker will be restored to vigour by the time this unorthodox but irresistible production reaches Inverness.

The Elixir of Love is at Eden Court Theatre on 4 & 6 November 2009, and The Italian Girl in Algiers on 7 November 2009. The Elixir of Love Unwrapped is on 5 November 2009.

© Kenny Mathieson, 2009

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• Scottish Opera

KENNY MATHIESON enjoys a successful small-scale touring production of Janácek’s opera.

SCOTTISH Opera’s admirable reduced scale touring programme in which a full opera is performed with piano accompaniment has generally focused on the lighter end of the operatic spectrum in productions like The Marriage of Figaro, Hansel and Gretel or Die Fledermaus.

Joanne Boag as Kátya Kabanová (© Eamonn MacGoldrick)

In that context, the decision to take on Janácek’s Kátya Kabanová as this season’s touring show is a bold one. Right from the ominous opening chords, it is clear that what lies ahead will inevitably be tragic, and Jan·cek’s operas are not yet common currency in the popular operatic repertoire in the same way that those of Mozart or Strauss are.

It is good to be able to report, then, that the gamble (if it is one) has paid off. The production was well-cast, and the set worked well even in the cramped confines of Victoria Hall, the smallest stage they will encounter on their tour. I suspect in the larger venues there will be more separation between the two areas representing the Kabanov household and the banks of the Volga.

Not for the first time, Ian Ryan’s superb pianism allowed us to forget the absence of an orchestra – the music was all there, and in some respects was thrown into even more intense relief in this form.

Joanne Boag (last seen in the Highlands & Islands on the Essential Scottish Opera tour earlier this year) and Nadine Livingston are sharing the role of the tragic Kátya. Boag sang it powerfully here, catching the tormented emotions and guilt-ridden grief of the doomed heroine very well. Jonathan Finney stood in for Michael Bracegirdle (who was unwell) as her lover, Boris, and acquitted himself soundly in the role.

Caryl Hughes, who sang Cinderella in the touring production of Rossini’s opera a couple of years ago, was a lively and vivacious Varvara, and Emma Carrington suitably icy as Kátya’s mother-in-law and nemesis, the heartless Kabanicha. Kally Lloyd-Jones, in her first foray into directing opera, rather compromised the latter character’s unforgiving stoniness by suggesting a moment of remorse over Kátya’s body at the end, not part of Janácek’s vision of the character.

The other twist in the finale was the means by which Kátya commits suicide, a bottle of poison being rather easier to stage than the traditional end, where she throws herself in the Volga. Lloyd-Jones did a convincing job on her debut, and drew playfully on her dance experience in the scene in which Varvara and Kudrjash (Ben Thapa) meet by the river prior to the more momentous encounter of Kátya and Boris.

Simon Crosby Buttle played Kátya’s husband, Tikhon, and captured perfectly his dithering, anguished confusion at being caught between his wife and hostile mother, with Anders Östberg as Dikoy, Raphaela Mangan as Glasha, and Paul Reeves as Kuligin.

The show tours until late October, with performances in Stornoway (19 September), Elgin (22 September), Aboyne (24 September), Lerwick (26 September), Kirkwall (29 September), Wick (1 October), Strontian (3 October) and Fort William (8 October) on their itinerary. The production will also be seen in Aberdeen and at Eden Court in Inverness in May 2010.

© Kenny Mathieson, 2009

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• Scottish Opera