Scottish Opera: The Great Wave
Theatre Royal, Glasgow; 12/2/26
Orchestra of Scottish Opera, The Chorus of The Great Wave; Stuart Stratford (conductor); Daisuke Ohyama (baritone), Julieth Lozano Rolong (soprano), Chloe Harris (mezzo-soprano); Shengzhi Ren, Luvo Maranti (tenors). Edward Hawkins (bass), Collin Shay (counter-tenor), Shozan Hasegawa (shakuhachi)
Weblink: https://www.scottishopera.org.uk/shows/the-great-wave/
Glasgow’s Theatre Royal on 12th February was the venue for the world premiere opening night of Scottish Opera’s co-production (with KAJIMOTO) of ‘The Great Wave’. Named for Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai’s famous woodblock print ‘The Great Wave off Kanagawa’, Japanese composer Dai Fujikura and Scottish librettist Harry Ross's full-length five-acter explores Hokusai’s creative triumphs and struggles, and his bond with his daughter Ōi, a relationship that redefined Japanese painting and printmaking – and changed the global art world and popular iconography forever. It is set in the period around Hokusai’s death in the mid-1800s, flashing back in time to show his creative journey in the context of his time. The Orchestra of Scottish Opera, The Chorus of The Great Wave and a cast of principals are conducted by Stuart Stratford. The production is directed by celebrated Japanese theatre director Satoshi Miyagi. The opera is sung in English with English surtitles.
Perhaps not surprisingly for an opera themed on the visual arts, the production is extremely rich in visual elements, supported by a wealth of creative collaboration. Scenography designed by Junpei Kiz incorporates Hokusai’s own art, on six large curved rotatable panels and a number of flat ones, ably realised by the expert carpenters and scenic artists at Scottish Opera Production Studios. Projected video design by Sho Yamaguchi similarly stems from Hokusai’s art but reaches further in combination with the music to evoke time, place and the world of a fertile imagination. Standout examples include the colourful opening animated vertical montage and a Tiger-and-Snake dream sequence fusing puppetry and animated projection in Act V. The costumes by Kayo Takahashi Deschene and props by Eri Fukusawa further enhance the multimedia experience. The production is imaginatively lit by Yuka Hisamatsu, while the choreography by Akiko Kitamura extends beyond the 7 dancers to the motion direction of all the cast. A particularly stunning choreographed prop-enhanced sequence featured in the Act I storm sequence, with umbrella-carrying rice-field workers struggling against an imaginary strong wind.
In a first hearing for me, Colombian soprano Julieth Lozano Rolong (I missed her Nuria in ‘Ainadamar’ in 2022) created the role of Hokusai’s daughter Ōi. The silent, sombre, funereal Act I opening’s first sound is the evocative breathy tone of the shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) played by Shozan Hasegawa, joined by Ōi’s eulogy for her father, addressed to his spirit. The shakuhachi returns in Act V and appears to signify dialogue between the mundane and the spiritual. Ōi sings of how her father nurtured her talent and was her guiding light, her North Star, and still is, even in death. His spirit (actor/puppeteer Dan Armstrong in a non-vocal role) watches over her and is visible to the audience at various points in the narrative. Julieth’s soprano voice has a clarity and purity that blended perfectly with the shakuhachi and the huge range of other vocal and instrumental textures explored in Fujikura’s score. Her strong, charismatic stage presence delivered a complete characterisation of an emerging talented artist, devoted to and fiercely protective of her father, a strict teacher (withholding lunch noodles from her drawing class until they produce work to the required standard, in a richly and comically choreographed scene in Act III), her father’s carer in old age (an idyllic early morning yuzu tea ceremony in Act IV) and finally letting go, even as his spirit continues to watch over her at the end of Act V. Excellent.
Japanese baritone Daisuke Ohyama created the role of Hokusai himself, as mercurial, ambitious and creatively obsessive as Ōi is solicitous and pragmatic. Struck by lightning, he has an epiphany to strive for spiritual enlightenment through his art, visualises the scene that will become ‘The Great Wave’, with which he identifies, and craves the longevity through which he can attain the status of a great enlightened artist. The reality is a messy, chaotic life, with patchy health, frequent money worries, yet a dedicated work ethic, prolific output in a huge variety of genres, fame and some financial success, a catastrophic house fire and multiple house moves. He is mischievous, irreverent and quarrelsome (my Japanese companion was tickled by his pun on his own name, “Hekusai”, meaning “Stinky Fart Guy”). At the end, he realise that he has succeeded in producing every piece of work of which he was capable and had been granted just enough time in which to accomplish his destiny. Through all shines his affection for his daughter, whom he describes as “the true artist”. Music and libretto combine to paint this complex figure and it is hard to imagine a performer more ideally suited to realising the character than Daisuke. Another top-drawer performance. Lots of highlights, but the scene at the beginning of Act II when he paints a huge ink line portrait of the Bodhidharma on the floor of a market square, with huge broom-like brushes and buckets of ink, was magnificently theatrical not to mention elegantly choreographed.
Two of Hokusai’s publishers feature in the narrative of Act II. Tōshirō, sung by tall English bass Edward Hawkins, is a risk-averse businessman, dismayed at the artist’s inability to stick to a narrow range of genres and media, bad for securing commissions and building clientele, so his advance payments are cautious to say the least. Hokusai is unhappy with being held on a stranglingly tight leash. They quarrel (hilariously, but bitterly) and part company (though Tōshirō does conserve a lot of Hokusai’s work which might otherwise have been lost). Yohachi, sung by Chinese tenor Shengzhi Ren, sees the opportunity and proposes courting sales to and commissions from Dutch traders, which promises great revenue, but is strictly illegal. Hokusai agrees, so attracted by the creative freedom as to be dismissive of the risk. In a brief cameo role in Act III, French-American countertenor and multi-instrumentalist Collin Shay, as Dutch trader Dr Philipp Franz von Siebold, in a furtive rendezvous with Yohachi where he is unable to settle his debts, proffers instead “something more valuable than gold”, a pot of Prussian Blue, the accidentally-discovered pigment that launched German advances in colour chemistry through the 18th and 19th centuries. Receiving the pigment, Hokusai’s imagination is fired up and he plans a series of worshipful views of Mount Fuji and dreams of realising ‘The Great Wave’, a triumphant conclusion to Act III. Edward and Shengzhi cover two other minor roles. Edward plays Kōzan, a kindly merchant friend of Hokusai who offers him a house and studio in calmer Obuse after his Edo house burns down. Shengzhi plays Tozaki, a sweetshop owner who reminisces to Ōi at the funeral in Act I how, no matter how hard up her father was, he always visited the shop and bought sweets. Even the minor roles are finely drawn and seem crucial to the narrative. All three vocalists made them real.
Two vocalists participating in the Scottish Opera Emerging Artist scheme and featuring positively in previous reviews of mine delivered top quality work in this production. Australian mezzo Chloe Harris (a feisty Yelena Ivanovna Popova in ‘The Bear’, a vivacious Nancy in ‘Albert Herring’, Counsel for the Plaintiff in ‘Trial by Jury’, a tear-inducing Charlotte in an excerpt from ‘Werther’ in this year’s Opera Highlights Tour, and a hilarious premiering of scandal-prone Cherry Penistone in ‘A Matter of Misconduct’ last May) delivered as Hokusai’s second wife and Ōi’s mother, Koto, striving against the odds to impose some semblance of domestic order on the chaotic household South African tenor Luvo Maranti (the poseur poet Gonzalve in ‘L’heure espagnole’ and also appearing in the first tranche of the Highlights Tour) was Hokusai’s feckless grandson, who has run up gambling debts in an attempt to ‘help’. An unsavoury (though well choreographed and vocally trained) group of thugs show up in Act III to extract what he owes, either in currency or amputated bits of his person. Ōi and Koto (the latter gets to utter “stupid boy!” in the manner of Captain Mainwaring) attempt to placate the thugs and buy time with the promise of the imminent arrival Yohachi with money. The arrival of Prussian Blue instead initially bodes ill for the grandson’s toes, but as Hokusai gets to work, they are reluctantly spared. Hong Kong soprano Audrey Tsang, whose Fairy Godmother in Cendrillon in the RCS production two years ago was a coloratura triumph, and who made her Scottish Opera debut as Cis in Albert Herring, had a cameo as a child asking Hokusai for a drawing of a bird in the village square of Obuse at the beginning of Act V.
The music is modern but not in any way alienating. It is in fact absorbing, satisfying and very evocative. The drama of a thunderstorm, the glow of epiphanic realisation, the panic of oarsmen on a stormy sea, the bustle and chatter of a marketplace, the menace of impatient creditors, the idyllic calm of father and daughter at peace, the surreal world of dreamscapes; all these and more are made as real in sound as they are in vision. I had the opportunity to attend the Dress Rehearsal as well as Opening Night. There is a satisfying completeness in the fusion of elements that bears revisiting, and I am certain that if I were to see the opera again, I would find many more hitherto unremarked details at which to marvel. The Orchestra of Scottish Opera and the Chorus of oarsmen, creditors, street vendors, villagers etc, trained by Susannah Wapshott, delivered an integrated experience that did the score proud.
There is one more Glasgow performance on Valentine’s Night and two in the Festival Theatre Edinburgh on the 19th and 21st. Highly recommended.