Scottish Opera: Opera Highlights Autumn 2023 Tour
Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh - 23/09/23
Katy Thomson, soprano | Katherine Aitken, mezzo-soprano | Innocent Masuku, tenor | Jerome Knox, baritone | Toby Hession, music director/piano/composer
“They want all plum and no pudding” – Ralph Vaughan Williams’ wry remark at the popularity of his ‘Fantasia on Greensleeves’ and the cantata ‘In Windsor Forest’, both adapted from his opera ‘Sir John in Love’, in comparison with the opera itself. But it’s true. Even the most seasoned opera-goer appreciates the occasional ‘basket of goodies’, and indeed many of them were first hooked on the genre, not by 3-hour leviathan staging, but by a track or two from a compilation of ‘best bits’. Scottish Opera are old hands at catering for both the ‘bistro’ needs of the cognoscenti and the ‘appetiser’ needs of the curious, and everything in between, with their annual tour of Opera Highlights. Its Opening Night in Giffnock clashing with that of the BBCSSO in Glasgow, I caught the second show of the 2023 tour, its musical programme the last to be devised by SO Music Director Derek Clark before retirement, in Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre on 23rd September.
The stage was set as the dining area of the function room of a hotel hosting a gay wedding. The eclectic mix of numbers from operas, operettas and music theatre had been woven into a narrative around the lives of guests and staff at the venue, certainly significantly less tenuous, it must be said, than many a repertoire libretto, by supremely gifted writer/director Laura Attridge. The show was designed by Ana Inés Jabares-Pita, making her Scottish Opera debut. Scottish Opera repetiteur Toby Hession was Music Director, provided the piano accompaniment to the vocalists, seated stage right, and was the composer of one of the numbers, more of which later. The four vocalists were Scottish soprano Katy Thomson (SO debut), Scottish mezzo-soprano Katherine Aitken; South African tenor Innocent Masuku (SO debut) and English baritone Jerome Knox (RCS Alexander Gibson Opera School graduate).
After 8 bars of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March, Toby launched the festivities with ‘Brindisi’, the drinking song from Verdi’s ‘La Traviata’, with Innocent and Katy in the roles of Alfredo and Violetta and the other two picking up the chorus parts. Eugene Onegin’s haughty rejection of young Tatiana’s love letter from Tchaikovsky’s opera, sung in Russian by Jerome addressed to a seated mortified Katherine, was sung and acted beautifully. But Katherine’s character has caught the eye of an admirer, played by Innocent. The duet ‘Un soave non so che’ from Rossini’s ‘La Cenerentola’, shows the feelings to be mutual, though she bashfully scampers away. In this fashion, with costume changes, the vagaries of a number of different romances were charted. Handel, Donizetti, Gounod and Massenet goodies were artfully woven into the mix and performed with flair. Special mention must be reserved for the ‘Barcarolle’ duet from Offenbach’s ‘Tales of Hoffmann’, sung by Katy and Katherine, which was absolutely exquisite, and also Rodolfo and Marcello’s duet from the beginning of the final act of Puccini’s ‘La Bohème’, where they unconvincingly feign unconcern about splitting up with their girlfriends, superbly acted and sung by Innocent and Jerome. Mozart’s ‘Magic Flute’ (in English) closed the first half of the show, with Jerome (and then Katy), in matching vaguely Tyrolean vogelfänger getup, deliver Papageno’s despairing aria ‘Papagena! Papagena!’ followed by the delicious duet ‘Pa, pa, pa …’. Utterly delightful.
The curtain rose for the second half to reveal the set altered to suggest the dancefloor of the same function room, and something a bit special. Toby Hession has written a scene for 4 voices and piano, ‘In Flagrante’, a satirical political farce receiving its premiere on the tour. The morning after the night before, three government ministers (Jerome, Katy and Innocent) emerge, not just metaphorically, from ‘under the table’ and attempt to reassemble, in no particular order, their attire and some recollection of the revels of the night before. Without much success, and with a growing sense of rueful dread. At length, party spin-doctor and ‘fixer’ Rhona (played by Katherine) appears and brings clarity. And relief? No spoilers. The scene is a truly excellent piece of writing and in performance was a triumph of the highest standards of music theatre direction, comedic timing and high farce. Absolutely superb.
The hilarity continued with the ‘Judgment of Paris’ scene from Offenbach’s ‘La Belle Hélène’, with Innocent singing Paris and (you guessed?) Jerome as the third goddess. Katy’s rendition of ‘Vilja’ from Lehár’s ‘Merry Widow’ and a quartet from J. Strauss’ (junior’s) ‘Blindekuh’ were equally charming and flirtatious. Lovely too is Sullivan’s melody in ‘Fair moon, to thee I sing’ from ‘HMS Pinafore’, warmly sung by Jerome. The aria ‘I was a constant, faithful wife’ from Walton’s opera after Chekhov, ‘The Bear’, was new to me and delivered dramatically by Katherine. The delightful, hilarious quartet, ‘The Saga of Jenny’ from Kurt Weill’s ‘Lady in the Dark’, was delivered as a song-and-dance number to close the advertised programme. Superb and unbeatable.
Or so I thought. But then there was an encore, another song-and-dance number, the ‘Wrong Note Rag’ from ‘Wonderful Town’ by Leonard Bernstein. And it was even better.
Scottish Opera’s Opera Highlights Autumn 2023 Tour appears in venues all over Scotland until 28th October. Highly recommended.
Cover photo: Sally Jubb