Music
Opera Highlights
Howden Park Centre, Livingston
Keith Bruce
four stars
LIKE a TV Time-Lord, each successive incarnation Scottish Opera's annual tour of four singers and a piano to the village halls of the nation's rural hinterland becomes more sexy and sophisticated. The youthful founder of Shadwell Opera, Jack Furness, has upped the ante again with this sequence of 22 songs and arias, some well-known and some very obscure, linked – and to some extent chosen to fit – a loose narrative of love and jealousy in mid 20th century gangland New York.
Taken too literally, the director's structure is only a partial success. If you emerge from the evening knowing where, when and why the romance of Alfredo and Olga gives way to that of Phillipa and Antonio you were paying stricter attention than I managed. But that, and indeed the awkward props of a jigsaw of paintings of the Brooklyn Bridge, an icon of the Virgin Mary and a sign the cast flip between "Funeral" and "Flashback", ultimately matter little, because it is the music that matters most.
And Furness does have a splendid company of four young singers, all bar tenor Anthony Flaum making their company debut. He and soprano Filipa van Eck have the most commanding physical presence and the more dramatic voices, but mezzo Samantha Price and baritone Johnny Herford were the more consistently musically accurate and all four have real acting talent. After a ropey (opening night) Brindisi from Traviata, the quartet combined well and solo-ed with increasing confidence, the mix leading to a clever and easy-on-the-ear climax of Walton, Sullivan, Lehar and Copland.
Slotted in the middle of this, in parenthesis, was the premiere of composer-in-residence Lliam Paterson's very funny Anatomy of a Diva. It doesn't fit at all, but is well worth hearing in its own right.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here