Roll up for a Big Top experience to start season
THE list of iconic operatic venues easily trips off the tongue – Covent Garden, La Scala, The Met, the Sydney Opera House, the Paisley Opera House… the what?
No, you read it correctly. Scottish Opera will be opening its 2018-19 season with a new production of Leoncavallo’s muchloved Pagliacci in the venue it has decided to call Paisley Opera House.
To be a little more accurate, it’s a tent in Seedhill Park. To be absolutely fair, it’s a series of state-of-the-art tented structures that will, hopefully, help to deliver a performance the like of which the company has never given before.
It’s the circus opera in the Big Top. The open-plan scenario in July will apparently see an audience of 400 mixing with 200 performers, including singers, musicians and circus artists. Scottish Opera music director Stuart Stratford told me: ‘It’s about what’s real, what’s life, what’s art?
‘Who’s that next to you? Another audience member? Or a performer? Hopefully, audiences will be confused, excited, perplexed and delighted.’ It sounds fabulous. I, for one, can’t wait.
While we’re on the subject of iconic venues, Scottish Opera actually will be going to The Met this season.
Yes, the company’s groundbreaking BambinO – an opera for children aged six months to 18 months – is to be presented at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, after it’s been to Paris. Where else?
At home, there will be four major theatre productions. The season will be topped and tailed by revivals of two of the company’s most highly acclaimed productions of recent years – and both are among the most popular operas ever created.
Starting the season proper in October will be a revival of award-winning director Matthew Richardson’s 2011 production of Verdi’s Rigoletto.
With its dark and dangerous underworld setting, this is a gripping interpretation of one of the great tales of seduction, revenge and a suffocating love that can only end in tragedy.
Bringing the season to a close in May next year will be a revival of Sir Thomas Allen’s superb 2012 staging of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Set in the past but looking to the future, its inspiration lies in the fantastical Victorian imaginations of Jules Verne and HG Wells.
As well as allowing Sir Thomas to continue his long and fruitful association with the company, this revival also features Richard Burkhard returning as Papageno, the laugh-out-loud portrayal he created in the 2012 production. Between those bulwarks of bookends will be two new productions, one a world premiere. This will be Anthropocene, the company’s latest collaboration between composer Stuart MacRae and novelist/librettist Louise Welsh.
Their gripping new work is set in the Arctic wastes. After a scientific expedition becomes trapped, tensions rise and relationships crumble. Then something appears out of the ice…
IF you think you’ve seen a 1950s B-movie with a similar plot, you may not be far wrong. But is the thing from another world or this one?
Just in case you were wondering, Anthropocene is not a tragic classical Greek heroine. Rather, it is a proposed epoch dating from the start of significant human impact on the Earth’s geology and ecosystems, including, but not limited to, climate change. Scientists have not yet set an actual date for when it started, but somewhere around 1945-50 seems to be the current favourite.
The fourth staged production, in March next year, is a new production of Janacek’s Katya Kabanova, in conjunction with Theater Magdeburg. An intense drama set in the vast landscapes of Russia, it is a heartrending exploration of a struggle between love and duty.
Outside the major productions, the company will continue its Opera in Concert series with Puccini’s Edgar, Mascagni’s Silvano and, in its Lammermuir Festival debut, Britten’s The Burning Fiery Furnace.
The Opera Highlights and Pop-Up Opera tours will continue all over Scotland. In all, the company is set to appear in 53 venues. If that doesn’t make it a truly national treasure, I don’t know what does.