Five:15 (2009) Scottish Opera, Oran Mor.

Scottish Opera has built on last year’s Five:15  by commissioning five more new 15 minute operas from composers and writers.

A 15 minute opera is a very strange task to pull off:   in writers’ terms, it might be seen as a short story, but in fact the text has to be minimal and pared down to fit in with this art form.    Too wordy simply does not work.    And composing a 15 minute opera must be no less odd – most chamber operas will last for at least 40 minutes, which is enough for composers to get their teeth into the piece.     So, given these demanding artistic constraints, we were in fact well entertained in Glasgow at the weekend.

Richard Rowe, Philip Gault. Photo, Richard Campbell

We started with The Lightning-Rod Man, composed by Martin Dixon and written by Amy Parker from a Herman Melville Story.      A strange tale asking us, through the stars and stripes suited Commentator Richard Rowe, to choose to believe in God or science.     Amazing what you can do with one chair and a big stick.   

Happy Story composed by David Fennessy and co-written with Nicholas Bone (who also directed) was about a man obsessed with flight.     This was perhaps the weakest offering, as the story, though amusing, was a bit  thin.    

However, White, composed by Gareth Williams and written by Margaret McCarthy took us into the serious world of hospitals and loss.    A foreign cleaner, superbly sung by Emma Carrington, emptied the bins and changed the flowers in a very ill patient’s room.     As time passed, she learnt more of the local language, and was able to have a conversation about the hopefulness and promise of the Spring with the ill lady.    However, the ailing patient sparked off the cleaner’s own memories of loss.    The intense minimal and moving score and harsh strip lighting set this opera apart from the others – just as Gareth Williams’ King’s Conjecture did last year.    It all came together perfectly.

I was especially looking forward to Zinnie Harris’ opera, as I have seen her plays Further than the Furthest Thing and Fall.    She has been quoted as only being able to write about dark things, so it was no surprise that she chose Death of a Scientist – about the last moments of David Kelly, the government scientist who committed suicide over the WMD in Iraq report.   I think that this was easily the best libretto of the evening, and there was so much detail in so few words – Kelly was so softly spoken that they had to turn off the air conditioning to hear him speak, and later on we meet  the two women ‘harpies of war’ who are set to plunder his dead body for bits to take to the battlefields of Basra:   “…. his teeth to bite children..”      Serious stuff, and effective music from John Harris.    Great performances all round, but especially from Richard Rowe as Kelly, who was clearly overwhelmed by the end.

Mary O'Sullivan. NOT a photo album. Photo, Richard Campbell

And finally, Remembrance Day from composer Stuart MacRae and writer Louise Welsh was a horror story where 17 year old Lyn cleaned her elderly neighbour’s house.    She put on a record, and opened what she thought was a photo album.     What she found in the pages was shocking.    Good story.

Like all new writing, some worked well, and  some worked less well.    The singers were all excellent, dealing with incredibly difficult and unfamiliar music, and they had to act well too.    There is something intensely exciting about hearing opera singers with big voices in a small intimate space.    The chamber orchestra conducted throughout by Derek Clark was also on good form.

Well worth catching.    It is repeated at the Hub in Edinburgh on the 7th and 8th March.     I do wonder if this is bringing in new audience to opera – I did recognise quite a few faces from the audience down the road at Theatre Royal.