Scottish Opera: L’heure espagnole & The Bear

 Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 18/9/25

Orchestra of Scottish Opera; Alexandra Cravero (conductor); Lea Shaw, Chloe Harris (mezzo-sopranos); Daniel Barrett, Edward Jowle (baritones); Jamie MacDougall, Luvo Maranti (tenors).

Scottish Opera’s double-bill of comic one-acters this year comprises two farces of marital infidelity, Maurice Ravel’s ‘L’heure espagnole’ (Spanish Time) and William Walton’s ‘The Bear’.  The pair was unveiled at this year’s Lammermuir Festival in early September.  The first of two performances in Glasgow’s Theatre Royal was on the night of 18th October.  French opera expert Alexandra Cravero conducted, while Italian director Jacopo Spirei and Scottish designer Kenneth MacLeod brought their combined creative ingenuity to bear on the delivery of stimulating (and indeed intriguing) visuals.  I was particularly interested in seeing how the scenery and props that had worked so well on the altar of St Mary’s, Haddington would translate to the more spacious stage of the Theatre Royal, and how the movement direction would be adjusted to the absence of a nave to act as a third wing for entrances and exits in ‘L’heure espagnole’.  In the event, the same sets and props were used.  The unlit urban backdrop, being that of ‘La bohème’ (its Glasgow run continuing until the end of the month), could as easily be Toledo as Paris; less perhaps a country estate in Russia.  Ingenious colour programmable strip lighting in the set (lit by Andrew Burnside) fully drew attention away from any such incongruities and also mirrored the mood of the action

It has been my pleasure and privilege to follow the careers of many of the members of the pool of vocal talent in Scottish Opera’s Emerging Artist programme and these were well represented in the cast.  Former Emerging and Associate Artist, now Education Artist-in-Residence Lea Shaw is an American mezzo soprano.  To date I have reported on her excellent Mercédès in ‘Carmen’, her mischievous Hansel in ‘Hansel & Gretel’, her flamboyant Flora in ‘Traviata’, and Emilia’s chambermaid in ‘The Makropulos Affair’, but her skills as an educator and communicator are also winning praise.  Australian mezzo, Chloe Harris is on her second year as an Emerging Artist.  So far, I have seen her charismatic Nancy the baker’s daughter in ‘Albert Herring’, her ‘learned’ Counsel for the Plaintiff in ‘Trial by Jury’, and an unforgettable Charlotte in an excerpt from ‘Werther’ in this year’s Opera Highlights Tour.  But how many ‘emerging artists’ get to create a role?  Chloe perfectly premiered the scandal-prone MP’s wife Cherry Penistone in Toby Hession’s hilarious ‘A Matter of Misconduct’ back in May of this year.  English bass-baritone Edward Jowle is also on his second year of the programme.  His PC Budd in ‘Albert Herring’, Usher in ‘Trial by Jury’ and creation of the role of inept Press Secretary Hugo Cheeseman in ‘A Matter of Misconduct’ were all comedic gold.   He is also an excellent foppish Schaunard in this year’s ‘La bohème’.  Two new Emerging Artists, Scottish baritone Daniel Barrett and South African tenor Luvo Maranti. ‘emerge’ to SO audiences in this production.  Luvo is also starring in the Opera Highlights tour.  SO regular (and popular broadcaster), Scottish character tenor Jamie MacDougall (the Defendant in ‘Trial by Jury’, premiering caustic SpAd Sandy Hogg in ‘A Matter of Misconduct’, the Spy in ‘Marx in London!’, the pompous Mayor, Mr Upfold, in ‘Albert Herring’, as well as a retrospective Harry Lauder in this year’s Perth Festival) returned for a pair of character cameos. 

‘L’heure espagnole’ is sung in French with English surtitles.  Conceptión (Lea Shaw with fabulous French diction) is the cuckolding wife of a clockmaker, Torquemada (Jamie MacDougall).  Genial, muscular, masculine muleteer Ramiro (Daniel Barrett) arrives to get his watch repaired, just as Torquemada is reminded by Conceptión that Thursday is when he must go out to check on the municipal clocks (coincidentally, of course, the time window for her extramarital trysts).  While he waits, she sends Ramiro on unnecessary errands moving heavy grandfather clocks to allow her to entertain her paramours,  Gonzalve (Luvo Maranti) is a self-obsessed poet, protesting love in flowery language, but has nothing carnal to offer when transported by the unwitting Ramiro to her bedroom in a clock.  Banker Don Iñigo Gomez (Edward Jowle) is self-aggrandising and appears to want to possess and dominate her but again, in the words of Mick Jagger, she “can’t get no satisfaction” as, again ferried in a clock, he gets stuck inside.  As the precious time ticks by, and the two unsuccessful contenders hide in the clocks from each other, Conceptión’s frustration mounts.  As the muleteer delivery man admires the clockmaker’s wife (“a charming woman”) and she admires his strength and obliging nature, the inevitable happens.  And he delivers satisfaction.  As one of the many witty double entendres, she remarks “the best lover is the one who delivers”.  When Torquemada returns, he sells the two grandfather clocks to the two sheepish ‘customers’ and gives a small one to Ramiro to take on his rounds, encouraging him to give his wife “the time of day” when he passes (he really doesn’t have a clue, does he?).  A final quintet muses over the not-very-moral moral of the story.  ‘L’heure espagnole’ is a hilarious gem. Scenery and costumes are fabulously colourful.  Ravel’s music is sumptuous, with Spanish influences (including a few cheeky quotations from his own ‘Rapsodie espagnole’) but also delicious foretastes of the orchestration to come in ‘Daphnis et Chloé’, including the best musical dawn scene ever written, in my opinion.  The Orchestra of Scottish Opera under Alexandra Cravero delivered it to perfection.  Having attended the dress rehearsal, that makes three times I have seen this production.  Each time there was more to discover and marvel at.  Dramatic, comedic and vocal performances were again topnotch and, if anything, have been further honed since Lammermuir.

In the interval the same set is magically transformed from gay clockmakers shop to the sombre monochrome of a house in mourning for ‘The Bear’, Walton’s satire after Chekhov.  The strip-lighting is the purple of mourning.  The shop counter loses its cogwheel decoration and becomes a bier with a black coffin.  Grieving widow Yelena Ivanovna Popova (Chloe Harris) vows to stay in mourning for the rest of her days, faithful to her husband’s memory (though he was a faithless philanderer and a spendthrift who has left her in debt).  Family retainer Luka (Edward Jowle), not a trifle scornfully, tries to shake her out of her over-the-top expression of grief, to no avail.  We see that she is determined to shame his imagined ghost by her ‘piety’.  Grigory Stepanovich Smirnov (Daniel Barrett again) is a creditor of the deceased, himself in dire financial straits, arrives and demands 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.  And, of course, 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.  We are kept guessing up to the very end but breathe a sigh of relief as two very angry people find fulfilment in each other’s arms.  An additional pair of cameo character visual roles were ably delivered: Luva Maranti as the stable groom and Jamie MacDougall as the cook.

These two very different one-acters have something special in common: the message that an honest, straightforward, unpretentious guy is a better bet, for a woman with agency who knows what she wants, than a fake (be he an all-talk-and-no-action poet, a control-freak financier, or an unfaithful husband). If catching “two fabulous mezzos in two fabulous comic mezzo roles, with an excellent baritone with great stage presence as the flawed but compatible hero” is your bag, I can recommend this double bill.  One more Glasgow performance on the 22nd and one in Edinburgh on 15th November.