VoxCarnyx

Beacon Arts Centre, Greenock

Even when hidden by masks, it’s impossible to ignore the pleasure concertgoers are feeling as live performances gradually reopen. That sense of release was self-evident from the pre-concert buzz among the Greenock audience at this week’s opening location for Scottish Opera’s Autumn Highlights Tour, which now moves on to halls and theatres as far afield as Peebles, Ayr, St Andrews, Stornoway and Ballachulish.

The formula is a familiar one. Four singers and a piano present a sequence of arias and ensembles from across the operatic repertoire, given a connecting thread by the careful choice of music and simply animated stage direction. Between them, Scottish Opera’s head of music Derek  Clarke and guest director Jeanne Pansard-Besson have concocted a theme that illustrates the stormy emotions experienced within human relationships. 

So we have ensemble works to open and close the hour-long entertainment – the misplaced optimism of “Over the dark blue waters” from Weber’s Oberon and bottle-popping fizz of Johann Strauss II’s “Champagne Song” from Die Fledermaus – between which, music from Handel and Mozart to Bizet and Tchaikovsky presents ample pick’n’mix opportunities to showcase the singers in various combinations.

And these are young singers who embrace the occasion diligently, two of whom – mezzo soprano Lea Shaw and tenor Glen Cunningham – are newly-engaged Scottish Opera Emerging Artists. Former Emerging Artist, Russian baritone Alexey Gusev, and Welsh soprano Meinir Wyn Roberts (in her company debut) complete the set, working under the onstage piano direction of Fiona MacSherry.

They make the most of a somewhat historically-compressed playlist. It might have been more interesting to see the musical timeline extended either end beyond Handel and Strauss, perhaps with some Monteverdi and surely something from the 20th/21st centuries. Even so, there were delicious moments: Shaw finding rich sonority in music from Donizetti’s La favorita; Wyn Roberts and Cunningham enacting gentle tensions from Bizet’s Carmen; Alexey Gusev bringing a genuine Russian earthiness to Tchaikovsky. It was something of a novelty to hear the two men duetting in a serenade from the now mostly-forgotten Julius Benedict’s The Lily of Killarney.

If only there could have been more spark in an essentially simple staging that took too long to establish its own invigorating momentum. That will probably happen naturally as the tour progresses. But on opening night it was the musical performances that mostly captivated, aided by MacSherry’s valiant accompaniment, and despite a piano that sounded somewhat ropy. 

Ken Walton

Full details of the Opera Highlights Autumn 2021 Tour are at: www.scottishopera.org.uk