Scottish Opera Double Bill

St Mary’s Church, Haddington, 4/9/2025

Orchestra of Scottish Opera; Alexandra Cravero (conductor); Lea Shaw (mezzo-soprano); Jamie MacDougall (tenor); Daniel Barrett (baritone); Edward Jowle (baritone); Luvo Maranti (tenor); Chloe Harris (mezzo-soprano).

This year once again a Lammermuir Festival audience got to savour a preview of a Scottish Opera double-bill of comic one-acters before they are presented later in the year in the Glasgow season.  This year we got two farces of marital infidelity, Maurice Ravel’s ‘L’heure espagnole’ (Spanish Time) and William Walton’s ‘The Bear’.   St Mary’s Church, Haddington, was the venue, with the scene and action on the front of the altar space and the Orchestra of Scottish Opera behind,   French conductor Alexandra Cravero conducted.

Ravel’s 150th birthday is this year, so we can expect the feast of his goodies to continue.  That said, ‘L’heure espagnole’ is new to me and in the hands of Scottish Opera it is a gem.  It is sung in French with English surtitles.  Conceptión is the flirtatious and unfaithful wife of a clockmaker, Torquemada.  She is played by American mezzo Lea Shaw (a super Mercédès in ‘Carmen’, a mischievous Hansel in ‘Hansel & Gretel, a flamboyant Flora in ‘Traviata’, and Emilia’s chambermaid in ‘The Makropulos Affair’).  Her French diction is superb and she owns the role.  Scottish character tenor Jamie MacDougall (the Defendant in ‘Trial by Jury’, SpAd Sandy Hogg in ‘A Matter of Misconduct’, the Spy in ‘Marx in London!’ and the pompous Mayor, Mr Upfold, in ‘Albert Herring’) played her husband.  Tall, strong, handsome, honest and unpretentious muleteer Ramiro (Scottish baritone Daniel Barrett, SO Emerging Artist 2025/26) arrives to get his watch repaired, just as Torquemada heads out to check on the municipal clocks.  He offers to help out while waiting, so Conceptión sends him on unnecessary errands moving heavy grandfather clocks to allow her to entertain her paramours,  As these clocks serve the function more usually reserved for wardrobes in bedroom farces (the concealment of lovers from each other), the hilarity rapidly mounts in the 21 fast-paced scenes, set to Ravel’s ravishing Spanish-influenced score.  Her principal squeeze is Gonzalve, a pretentiously poetic bachelor, played by South African tenor Luvo Maranti, also on the Emerging Artist programme.  Already an attractive lyric tenor voice and a pleasing stage presence.  Banker Don Iñigo Gomez, an equally pretentious rival for her affections, arrives ‘to woo’ to little or no avail.  English bass-baritone Edward Jowle (SO Emerging Artist, PC Budd in ‘Albert Herring’, Usher in ‘Trial by Jury’ and Press Sec Hugo Cheeseman in ‘A Matter of Misconduct’) gave a vocally pleasing and comically unctuous reading of the role.  Scenery and costumes were colourful and clever (I am still theorising over how the lovers were sneaked out of the back of the grandfather clocks before Daniel had to carry them with such apparent ease).  Needless to say,  Conceptión falls for the ‘Catch of the Day’, Ramiro.  A final quintet muses over the not-very-moral moral of the story.  ‘L’heure espagnole’ is a hoot.

In the interval the same set was magically transformed from gay clockmaker’s shop to the sombre monochrome of a house in mourning for ‘The Bear’, Walton’s satire after Chekhov.  The shop counter loses its cogwheel decoration and becomes a bier with a black coffin.  Australian mezzo and on her second year as Emerging Artist, Chloe Harris (a charismatic Nancy the baker’s daughter in ‘Albert Herring’ and the learned Counsel for the Prosecution in ‘Trial by Jury’) plays a very different role, grieving widow Yelena Ivanovna Popova.  Family retainer Luka, played by Edward Jowle, chides her for her intense (and somewhat histrionically performative) expression of grief, vowing eternal celibate fidelity to his memory.  Irony builds as it emerges that the true memory is of an unfaithful philanderer who has left her in debt.  Enter Grigory Stepanovich Smirnov, a creditor of the deceased, played by Daniel Barrett, in “cash flow difficulties” as a direct result of those unpaid debts, demanding payment.  She pleads inability to pay at short notice and he refuses to leave until she stumps up.  The irresistible force meets the immovable object.  His aria bemoaning (over an exasperated vodka) the unreasonability of women betrays a grudging admiration for the feisty Yelena – it was excellent.  She finds him a boorish ‘Bear’, lacking in social graces, but, also grudgingly and as a result of his forthright directness, refreshingly different from her late deceiving husband.  And so the “will they; won’t they?” drama plays out.  Spoiler alert: they do.  But not before they come within a hair’s breadth of fighting a duel to the death with pistols.  When, over a few drams of his vodka, she unburdens herself with a frank account of her miserable marriage, with her hilarious aria ‘I was a constant, faithful wife’, the audience senses their compatibility before they do. Chloe rendered it to perfection and it was a highlight of the evening.  A great character aria which I last heard cleverly shoehorned into the plot of Scottish Opera’s Highlights 2023 tour.  We are kept guessing up to the very end but breathe a sigh of relief as they are united.  An additional pair of cameo character roles were ably delivered:  Luva Maranti as the stable groom and Jamie MacDougall as the cook.

A pair of delightful one-act social satires made for a great night out.  I can’t wait to catch them again with full sets and lighting in the Theatre Royal in October.