Tag Archives: The Scots Opera Project

The Magic Flute

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Perth Theatre

Superficially, Die Zauberflote looked an odd choice for the Scots Opera Project. Although purists will always want to hear operas in their original language, the convoluted masonic nonsense of Mozart’s The Magic Flute makes singing it in English a sensible step to some clarity. For all that many people in Scotland know – and even speak – more Scots than they realise, Michael Dempster’s new version of the libretto potentially added a different hurdle for the audience.

Beyond that, on paper a Da Ponte opera like Cosi fan tutte or even Don Giovanni would appear to offer more opportunity for the sort of Scots characterisation that has made adaptations of Moliere successes in the theatre. In reality, however, this opening attraction of the 2024 Perth Festival of the Arts was ideal for the job, and that had little or nothing to do with the libretto.

When it was audible, Dr Dempster’s translation sounded just the dab, but with no surtitles (always an asset, even for operas sung in English) a great deal did not make it over the footlights and the six musicians in the pit under the musical direction of pianist Gordon Cree.

Nonetheless, the fact that this cast and chorus had learned an entirely new book spoke volumes for their commitment, and that was evident in every other facet of the production, musically and theatrically a huge success.

Multi-tasking tenor David Douglas was not only our hero Tamino but also the director and producer of the show. Setting the scene during the overture with the retro-tech assistance of an overhead projector, his prince was a patient in an asylum, tended, none too caringly, by the three nursing assistants (Rachael Brimley, Cheryl Forbes and Ulrike Wutscher) to Colleen Nicoll’s imposing matron of a Queen of the Night. The scrubs, metal trolleys and drapes, doubling as projection screens, recalled Milos Forman’s film of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and into this secure ward Douglas Nairne’s Papageno arrived as a Pest Control warden to find Catriona Clark’s Pamina held in a straitjacket and wheeled around in a skip, like a character in a Beckett play. Michael Cameron-Longden’s gentle Sarastro subsequently appeared as the trusted consultant physician in this febrile clinic.

Within such a restricted environment, the company zipped through an abbreviated version of the score, accompanied by a string quartet and Andrea Kuyper’s flute. There was quality singing from everyone onstage, including the community chorus of other inmates that arrived later, each of them demonstrating their own disturbing affliction.

With Wutscher doubling as Monostatos, and Brimley donning a few feathers to become Papagena later – in a splendidly vulgar and inventive behind-the-curtain love tryst with Papageno – a generously-cast staging demonstrated high production values (even the instrumentalists were costumed) and made effective use of the auditorium as well as the stage. There is, sadly, just one further opportunity to see it, at Sunday’s matinee performance.

Keith Bruce

Picture of David Douglas as Tamino by Fraser Band

Perth Festival / The Seal-Woman

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Perth Theatre

While Granville Bantock’s name may have fallen into relative obscurity today, the English-born Birmingham-based composer of Scots heredity was notable enough in British musical circles during his lifetime (1868-1946) to have found himself the dedicatee of Sibelius’ Third Symphony, such was the great Finnish composer’s gratitude for Bantock’s muscular UK championship.

His own music is interesting, at times inspired, a style emerging out of Wagner but with a curiosity for the modal adventures favoured by Vaughan Williams, Delius, even Debussy. Exotic whole tone harmonies vie with folksy pentatonic melodies, the latter no doubt emanating from his direct Scottish bloodline (his Highlands-born father was an eminent surgeon) and evident in such major works as his Celtic and Hebridean Symphonies.

But what of his 1924 opera The Seal-Woman, written in partnership with the Gaelic singer, collector and song writer Marjory Kennedy-Fraser, and currently enjoying a timely revival by The Scots Opera Project? It received two performances at this year’s Perth Festival, featuring a cast of upcoming professional opera singers, a pop-up community chorus, with musical direction and solo piano accompaniment by Scots pianist Hebba Benyaghla. Stage direction was by Ayrshire tenor David Douglas, who also sang the key male protagonist, The Islesman.

As for plot, think of variations on a theme of Disney’s The Little Mermaid or Darryl Hannah’s film Splash transported to a tiny Hebridean community, where a Seal-Woman and her sister enjoy the option of being human on land or mammal at sea so long as the magical robes they discard on dry land are there to reverse the process. In this case, the Islesman snaffles them, forcing the Seal-Woman to stay. They fall in love, have a child, but the call of the sea is too strong and the mother sacrifices family life to return to the deep.

In a production that played safe and fairly simple, strong performances were required to make up for limited action. The strongest of these came from Sioned Gwen Davies in the title role, a ripe vocal performance, particularly in the second half duet with her sister, sung sweetly if a little less assuredly, by Colleen Nicol. As the island’s matriarchal Cailleach, Ulrike Wutscher cut a suitably morose sage, her biggest challenge being to make something special out of Bantock’s overly monotone writing (Britten does that much better), but that was perhaps asking a lot. Michael Longden, as the Fisherman and Water Kelpie, gave what was necessary in his functional roles.

Hebba Benyaghla’s marathon 2-hour piano performance gave comforting impetus to the production, tastefully-spun in a way that appreciated Bantock’s clustered, often misty-eyed textures and folksy melodic inflexions. Could a single instrument ever replicate the colours envisaged by Bantock, a man noted for his skill as an orchestrator, in his original scoring? Who knows? We’d need to hear a full reconstruction of the opera to give a definitive answer to that pressing question.

Ken Walton