Fraser Smith Star rating: ***
We all know what a typical opera contains: singers and musicians portraying a story through sung dramatic text - simple. Add hand-crafted wooden puppets from South African Handspring Puppet Company and you have something very different.
This take on Claudio Monteverdi's opera Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, directed by William Kentridge, adds a new dynamic to the art form. The audience sees the singers enfolded by the orchestra on the semi-circular stage. Puppeteers are also on stage at all times, each controlling an individual wooden character and following their corresponding singer. Doesn't this make the stage seem very crowded? Strangely enough, no. So beautifully intricate are the puppets, so precise yet lifelike is their movement, that they are engrossing, and the singers and operators fade into the background.
Therein lies the problem with the performance. There are three main points of focus; the puppets, the surtitle screens and the backdrop, showing an amazing blend of animated charcoal drawings and real-life footage. If you become engrossed by any one of these creative wonders, you soon lose the thread of the story, just as if you focus on the English translation, you miss out on what makes the opera unique and special.
With unspectacular but faultless performances by the singers and musicians, you would think this would be a must-see show. Perhaps, but despite a clever and innovative performance, so abundant is the artistic material that it is too much to take in, which ultimately ruins the show's attempt at originality and brilliance.
Sponsored by Standard Life. Fraser Smith is a pupil at Boroughmuir High School in Edinburgh and this review was submitted as part of The Herald Young Critics project, which is run in partnership with the Edinburgh International Festival.
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 hereComments are closed on this article