VoxCarnyx

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh

The first two orchestral chords in the score of Missy Mazzoli’s new opera instantly recall James Bond movies at their Sean Connery peak and Goldfinger in particular. That’s the way to grab the attention of an Edinburgh audience, and make transparent this world premiere’s appeal to a global audience.

The centre pages of the printed programme for The Galloping Cure remember Frank Dunlop, director of the Edinburgh International Festival from 1984 to 1991, who died earlier this year. That is appropriate because this new opera would have sat well in one of his festivals, happy to co-opt circus skills and other Fringe-like ingredients in the service of contemporary opera. The Galloping Cure makes a shameless appeal to the broadest possible audience with its vibrant colour palette, mix of puppetry, dancing and aerial skills, night club lighting and knowing comedy.

From those first chords it looks like a winner. The team that made it – Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek, director Tom Morris, producers Opera Ventures with Scottish Opera and its music director Stuart Stratford – and workshopped its final shape in Scottish Opera’s studios in Glasgow, is substantially the same as the one behind the production of Mazzoli’s Breaking the Waves, which premiered at EIF 2019 and has been a hit around the globe.

Although its subject matter, the opioid crisis that strangely seems to be taken more seriously in the US than in Britain, is as dark as the narrative of that earlier work, there is – initially at least – much more levity in this one, not least in the clowning comedy of soprano Catriona Hewitson and baritone Edward Jowle as pet dogs Meg and Sam, a sort of Greek chorus who look to the supertitles to translate their barking, and an actual chorus of sheep, whose dramaturgical role is a less clear.

The story, written by Karen Russell and inspired by a Franz Kafka one, is of a local doctor, Theresa Hart (sung by Daniela Mack) struggling to cope with the ills of the community, including her own daughter, Noy (Gabrielle Turgeon), and grumpy pensioner Ivona (Susan Bullock). When the carousel ride of white-suited Stetson-wearing Lucky Mack (baritone Justin Austin) appears to alleviate everyone’s pain (and the first ride is, of course, always free), Dr Hart is dubious but eventually succumbs and endorses the product.

Allegory is a tricky sell in our cynical age but at first Mazzoli and her associates seem to have achieved a balance between style and substance, combining a difficult subject and entertaining story-telling. As should always be the case with opera, the music, and particularly dynamic, colourful playing from the pit, tells much of the story, and the libretto is simple and effective.

When Mazzoli cedes part of her compositional job to dancefloor-fillers Blume and Lorna Dune (credited with “Beats”) for a rave scene at the end of Act 2, and again during Act 3, much of that impetus is dissipated, and the narrative of the third act – becoming increasing lurid and tragic – also undermines the allegorical tone of the work’s inception.

Addiction (to hobby-horses at home as well as on the roundabout) is now paid for with real body parts (eyes and knees) as the twin threats of street drugs and big pharma are linked with organ harvesting. It is tough to watch as well as being less interesting to listen to. If an extended death scene that may be meant to parallel those in some classic operas had the musical pathos of, say, La boheme, it might have seemed a good deal shorter.

No blame should attach to the performers, however, who are uniformly excellent. Leaving aside the principals from across the pond, of whom soprano Gabrielle Turgeon is the stand-out singer, the cast is full of talent that has been developed by or worked regularly with Scottish Opera in recent years. They deserve the highest praise for their input to a fascinating new work that falls at the last fence.

Further performances Tuesday August 11 and Wednesday August 12

Keith Bruce

Picture by Andrew Perry