Opera: Anthropocene
Scottish Opera, at King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, then Hackney Empire, London E8 Running time: 2hrs 20mins ★★★★
As if “bang on cue”, in the week that David Attenborough told Prince William (and the rest of the Davos crowd) that we are living in the Anthropocene age, here comes a superb new opera with the same name, said Richard Morrison in The Times. For the uninitiated, Anthropocene refers to a mooted new geological epoch defined by the harmful impact of humankind on the Earth’s ecosystems. “Hard to sing about?” Not when you have artists as imaginative as composer Stuart Macrae and librettist Louise Welsh to turn the environmental destruction theme into “gripping” opera. Can there be another living composer who can extract such “terrifying shrieks, spine-shivering string effects and histrionic harmonies” from a conventional orchestra – yet still ensure that every word of the (excellent) libretto is audible? The final five minutes alone, in which the whole ensemble seems to “slither downwards” in quarter-tones, is an “orchestration masterclass”.
Macrae’s musical language has softened since his early days as a composer of “uncompromisingly modernist works”, said Rowena Smith in The Guardian. His score here is a “wonder of skilful orchestration” conjuring icy-cold landscapes and the “fear in the hearts of the protagonists”. The plot – about a research trip to the Arctic that discovers a millennia-old body trapped in the ice – is a long way from being a “crudely topical parable of climate change”, said Rupert Christiansen in The Daily Telegraph. Rather, it’s a bold psychological thriller that touches on the Frankenstein myth and the “primitive belief that the blood of a scapegoat will purge, redeem and fructify. No further spoilers, but I was gripped by every minute of it”.
The first showing of this outstanding new work will surely “presage an early revival” and international stagings, said Keith Bruce in The Herald (Glasgow). For now, though, the last few performances can be caught this Saturday (2 February) at the King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, and then next Thursday and Saturday at the Hackney Empire in London. If you can make it, go.