‘A Singer’s Life’, Brian Bannatyne-Scott

‘A Singer’s Life: The Journals of a Modern Troubadour’, by Brian Bannatyne- Scott

reviewed by Hugh Kerr

Firstly I must declare an interest. As Brian recounts in his preface to his book, in 2020 I invited Brian to join the ‘Edinburgh Music Review’ (EMR), a new online magazine I launched with my partner and co-editor Christine Twine. Since then it has become the leading on-line music magazine in Scotland with over 10,000 regular readers. One of the major reasons for its success has been the work of a very good team of reviewers, of whom Brian was the first and arguably the most influential. After a serious accident in 2018, Brian called a halt to his successful operatic career, and was ready in 2020 to launch a new career as reviewer, writer, and occasional concert performer and promoter. In the latter role he draws on his deep musical experience, and his ten years as Honorary Professor of Singing at St Andrews University to support the careers of an exceptional group of young, mostly Scottish, singers, notable amongst them Beth Taylor, now going from strength to strength as a leading international opera singer. As a reviewer Brian has more than forty years’ professional experience to draw on, giving remarkable insights into performances. He is our regular Royal Scottish National Orchestra reviewer and works tirelessly to promote the work of other excellent musical initiatives, notably the Lammermuir Festival and the Paxton Festival. But it is his EMR Blog, ‘A Singer’s Life’, begun during lock-down in 2020, that forms the basis of this book. Here we have a fascinating account of a fine career, developing from his musical education, when he received tutorage from world renowned singers, such as Sir Peter Pears, Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Hans Hotter and others, to reflections on opera houses, orchestras and conductors across Europe, and latterly in North America and Asia. He writes with insight about the challenges of singing in operas, oratorios and Lieder, composed by a great variety of composers, but notably by Purcell, Mozart, Wagner and Benjamin Britten.

You will find much pleasure in this book; it is very readable and will give you great insight into the life of a singer. Of course another reason I personally enjoyed the book is that Brian’s career spans my own history in opera first as an audience member and later as a critic. Although ten years older than Brian (and no performer) I began my operatic experience back in the 1960’s at Covent Garden with ‘The Magic Flute’ and since then, as one of my T-shirts proclaims, I have become an ‘operaholic’ and have seen many of the operas and opera houses that Brian describes in his book and of course heard many of the singers he has worked with. I probably saw Brian in Jonathan Miller’s famous “Mafia” production of ‘Rigoletto’ at English National Opera in the 1980’s. Brian of course has lived opera and does not baulk at tackling some of the controversies of the genre. He is occasionally critical of composers, conductors and producers, including what we now know as “Regietheater“ where the directors ‘modernise’ the opera. Sometimes it works, like Jonathan Miller’s Mafia ‘Rigoletto’, but often as Brian points out it makes the opera very difficult to understand or enjoy. The book also has a good collection of black and white photographs of Brian’s operatic career. It will give you a very good insight into Brian’s life of a singer, and the cultural context within which it evolved, emphasising the ‘hidden elements of the profession - the necessary study and preparation, the rehearsals, the production and the performance, and hopefully will deepen your understanding and interpretation of future performances. It can be ordered from Amazon where it is currently the world number 2 in opera-related sales.