Singing off the same song sheet – why Dundee needs an opera like Finland’s
The V&A opened in Dundee last week, and is already old news. Now the talk is of a new 6000 seat opera and performing arts venue in the city. Such a project would be expensive at the start and require regular massive inputs of cash to remain relevant. It has the power, however, to utterly alter Scotland for the better.
When news broke of this projected plan in my home city, I happened to be in Helsinki, within a stone’s throw of the Finnish National Opera. Curious about the potential benefits and drawbacks, I got a blether with the assistant director. I wanted to find out what a national opera with a fixed abode could do for a small northern European country of five million people.
The Finnish National Opera and Ballet is part of a conurbation of ‘National’ buildings in the centre of Helsinki. The bombproof National Parliament is just down the road, the romantic National Museum’s cathedral-like spire rises nearby. As a building, the Opera House is chunky and inelegant. Once inside, however, its mile-high ceilings, white marble surfaces and 15 euro gin and tonics let you know you’re in a vault of high culture.
The assistant director, Anna, welcomed me and led me to the cafeteria for a chat. Around us plump, cheerful operatic and orchestral types tucked in to hearty plates of meat and potatoes, whilst a scare of ballerinas sulked in a glass smoking chamber, sad-eyed and silent.
I asked in what sense an opera could embody the ‘nation’. With Finland, like Scotland, being distant from the places where opera emerged as an art form, using opera as a means of furthering the national discussion seemed problematic.
Anna said: “Of course, we do the classic operas. Tonight it’s Tosca. Soon we have The Flying Dutchman. But there’s lots of original Finnish productions. We have produced much work based on the Kalevala (the Finnish folklore book) and works in Finnish.”
Finnish creatives, writers, producers, directors, singers, are all given a target to aim for: work with the National Opera. This drives standards and provides opportunities, often outwith Finland itself.
Anna added: “Thanks to the platform we provide here, Finnish people are over-represented in the world of opera. There’s Finns working in opera everywhere, directing, performing, composing. This is something we do rather well.”
A backstage tour was enlightening. Beneath and above the empty stage is a multiverse of workshops, studios and offices, peopled with bustling designers, labourers, stagehands and apprentices moving in uniformed gangs.
The set builders were masculine metalheads: arms crawling with tattoos, their instructions barked above birling circle saws. The costume designers were dyed-hair lassies, soft music playing, warm welcomes for me and my tour guide Anna. In some ways they seem as larger-than-life and scripted as the characters in that evening’s Tosca.
A 7ft cobbler with a frantic mane of hair made an interesting observation, as he delicately repaired a ballerina’s pump. “I once ran a business as a shoemaker. I ran it for some years but...europe and Finland does not demand many shoes. So now I work here. Sometimes I make my own things,” he said, holding up a glamorous ladies heel.
In a sense the opera incubates these skills, which couldn’t thrive in the wild. Of the 530 employees, only a fraction are performers. The rest are like the muckle cobbler. They are well-paid and highly-skilled craftspeople enabling world-class performers to stage world-class performances. I left convinced that we should see not merely an opera, but a national one in Dundee.
The Scottish National Opera in Dundee would be more than its productions. It would be a thriving hub for Scottish tradespeople to reach the peak of their craft, a space for apprentices to learn old skills and receive an education. It would be a source of good-income workers to support Dundee’s economy.
Vitally, it would be a way for Dundee and the north to tell stories of national importance. Imagine an opera on the tale of king-killer Finella of Fettercairn, or of the Angus cannibal who drank the blood of travellers through Denfind, or of Dundee’s battles with Winston Churchill. Imagine an opera brave and aware enough to raise up our rich folk culture and celebrate it.
The blueprint of success can be seen at the Dundee Rep theatre. This Dundonian jewel has for decades provided a high-quality platform on which to tell its stories, whilst acting as a window to the world. Plays set in the berry fields of Angus, the coal pits of Fife, the town itself, find expression there, alongside touring national and international works. With the Rep also seeking a new home in the coming years, the projects may yet fruitfully elide.
Scotland needs to listen to Dundee, and the world beyond the Central Belt. We are a cripplingly centralised country. The talent suck to the south is a more powerful force than anything Stephen Hawking ever studied. Scottish Opera is part of the problem, being based in Glasgow and touring north. Let’s reverse that. A National anything north of the Tay would be a huge indication of respect for the rest of the country.
A National Opera would be a tremendous expense. Finland’s costs around 60 million euros a year, dwarfing the £12m spent by Scottish Opera. The cost would be nearly that of building a new V&A in the city every year forever. This would be a huge redistribution of wealth.
But a new National Opera in Dundee, alongside the new museum, the ancient university, and Dundee Rep, would birl Scotland on its axis, dragging the fulcrum of the nation north, to the benefit of all.