Scottish Opera, 24/01/2019
Stuart MacRae : Anthropocene
Orchestra of Scottish Opera
Stuart Stratford
You must know you're doing something right when an opera company commissions four operas, of ever-increasing length and complexity, over the space of decade, from you. Such is the case for composer Stuart MacRae and librettist Louise Welsh, whose Anthropocene saw its world première tonight.
The title refers to a scientific exploratory ship, funded by a wealthy entrepreneur, Harry King, whose purpose is to explore northern Greenland and the Arctic ice. Apart from King himself, Captain Ross and the ship's engineer Vasco, the other passengers are King's daughter Daisy, an amateur photographer, the scientific leader of the expedition, Professor Prentice and her husband Charles, also a scientist, and a journalist, Miles. As the opera begins, the season is about to turn, and the Captain fears the ship, King's Anthropocene, will become trapped in the ice if they do not leave immediately, but Daisy, Charles and Miles are still out on the ice, and Prentice will not abandon them. When they do return, it is too late, the ship is ice-locked, but they return with an extraordinary discovery, a great mass of ice containing what appears to be a perfectly preserved human body - and then they discover that the body is still alive, and free a young woman from her icy prison. Miles (very effective Benedict Nelson), clearly working for one of our less reputable press organs, deliberately sabotages communications in order to delay rescue, because his editor thinks that Harry King being trapped in the ice is an even bigger story than a miraculous cryogenic resuscitation. As the weeks pass, the harsh conditions, the pressure of survival, and the still-unexplained mystery of Ice, the young woman, gradually reveal the fractures within the little group.
MacRae writes the kind of music I find difficult to describe. Actually, the best place to start might be his previous opera, The Devil Inside, which I did not see live, but did find on YouTube courtesy of Scottish Opera (here). That was a slightly shorter piece, with only four singers, and a smaller orchestra, but the musical idiom has not changed much, mostly non-tonal, with craggy vocal lines, and some interesting orchestral effects. There's little that really sinks hooks into your memory, unless you have a particular affinity for this style of music which, I admit, I don't. Of the whole opera tonight, the moment that stood out the most was the dialogue between Prentice and Ice, as the latter regains full consciousness and starts to communicate. Yet the characters are well delineated musically. Ice has a high-lying, ethereal vocal line, beautifully delivered by Jennifer France. Prentice (Jeni Bern) is a more lyric soprano type. The Captain, gruff and superstitious, delivers his thoughts in a clipped, rough bass (Paul Whelan), while Harry King (Mark Le Brocq) has an exuberant, florid tenor line.
However, it's the libretto that tends to stay with me, clear ideas, some of them a bit hard to swallow, but this is opera, so that's nothing new, and a surprising degree of humour. "I feel my share prices shrinking", Harry laments, but he has not made himself sympathetic to us, further underlined by the fact that he's sitting there swathed in the skin of a polar bear, for warmth. The flashes of humour are welcome, for the piece is otherwise rather detached, as cool as its setting, a little pitiless, and even Ice's final declaration doesn't quite carry the kind of prophetic weight that it could do. Still, the piece as a whole is well constructed dramatically, you want to know what happens next, right from the beginning.
The setting was fairly basic. I can't say I was especially reminded of a ship, but that was maybe just as well given that this ship appeared to have a crew of only two - and one of them gets bumped off before the interval! White drapes line the stage area at the back and sides, and the floor is also mostly white. At the start, the world "anthropocene" is spelled out in large block letters at the front of the scene, before the letters are moved first to the back, and then disjointed around the stage, to be carted off later after the ship has been severely damaged by a winter storm. The light is constant, which is maybe a little irrational since they're experiencing an Arctic winter, which means daylight is minimal, but the unrelenting nature of the light (save for a sequence when an aurora is being observed) is, in its way, as effective as a similarly relentless state of darkness, and it was nice to get a production where you could see everything perfectly. Opera productions, like cinema films, are showing a tendency to be on the gloomy side visually speaking.
I've been in the slightly unusual position of having now seen three contemporary operas in the space of twelve months, Greek and Flight last season, and Anthropocene now. Despite a warm reception tonight, I don't think Anthropocene will stay the course the way the two others have, but it was well sung and well produced, and a worthy venture, on the whole.
[Next : 25th January]
Orchestra of Scottish Opera
Stuart Stratford
You must know you're doing something right when an opera company commissions four operas, of ever-increasing length and complexity, over the space of decade, from you. Such is the case for composer Stuart MacRae and librettist Louise Welsh, whose Anthropocene saw its world première tonight.
The title refers to a scientific exploratory ship, funded by a wealthy entrepreneur, Harry King, whose purpose is to explore northern Greenland and the Arctic ice. Apart from King himself, Captain Ross and the ship's engineer Vasco, the other passengers are King's daughter Daisy, an amateur photographer, the scientific leader of the expedition, Professor Prentice and her husband Charles, also a scientist, and a journalist, Miles. As the opera begins, the season is about to turn, and the Captain fears the ship, King's Anthropocene, will become trapped in the ice if they do not leave immediately, but Daisy, Charles and Miles are still out on the ice, and Prentice will not abandon them. When they do return, it is too late, the ship is ice-locked, but they return with an extraordinary discovery, a great mass of ice containing what appears to be a perfectly preserved human body - and then they discover that the body is still alive, and free a young woman from her icy prison. Miles (very effective Benedict Nelson), clearly working for one of our less reputable press organs, deliberately sabotages communications in order to delay rescue, because his editor thinks that Harry King being trapped in the ice is an even bigger story than a miraculous cryogenic resuscitation. As the weeks pass, the harsh conditions, the pressure of survival, and the still-unexplained mystery of Ice, the young woman, gradually reveal the fractures within the little group.
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| The cast of Anthropocene (© 2019 James Glossop/Scottish Opera) |
MacRae writes the kind of music I find difficult to describe. Actually, the best place to start might be his previous opera, The Devil Inside, which I did not see live, but did find on YouTube courtesy of Scottish Opera (here). That was a slightly shorter piece, with only four singers, and a smaller orchestra, but the musical idiom has not changed much, mostly non-tonal, with craggy vocal lines, and some interesting orchestral effects. There's little that really sinks hooks into your memory, unless you have a particular affinity for this style of music which, I admit, I don't. Of the whole opera tonight, the moment that stood out the most was the dialogue between Prentice and Ice, as the latter regains full consciousness and starts to communicate. Yet the characters are well delineated musically. Ice has a high-lying, ethereal vocal line, beautifully delivered by Jennifer France. Prentice (Jeni Bern) is a more lyric soprano type. The Captain, gruff and superstitious, delivers his thoughts in a clipped, rough bass (Paul Whelan), while Harry King (Mark Le Brocq) has an exuberant, florid tenor line.
However, it's the libretto that tends to stay with me, clear ideas, some of them a bit hard to swallow, but this is opera, so that's nothing new, and a surprising degree of humour. "I feel my share prices shrinking", Harry laments, but he has not made himself sympathetic to us, further underlined by the fact that he's sitting there swathed in the skin of a polar bear, for warmth. The flashes of humour are welcome, for the piece is otherwise rather detached, as cool as its setting, a little pitiless, and even Ice's final declaration doesn't quite carry the kind of prophetic weight that it could do. Still, the piece as a whole is well constructed dramatically, you want to know what happens next, right from the beginning.
The setting was fairly basic. I can't say I was especially reminded of a ship, but that was maybe just as well given that this ship appeared to have a crew of only two - and one of them gets bumped off before the interval! White drapes line the stage area at the back and sides, and the floor is also mostly white. At the start, the world "anthropocene" is spelled out in large block letters at the front of the scene, before the letters are moved first to the back, and then disjointed around the stage, to be carted off later after the ship has been severely damaged by a winter storm. The light is constant, which is maybe a little irrational since they're experiencing an Arctic winter, which means daylight is minimal, but the unrelenting nature of the light (save for a sequence when an aurora is being observed) is, in its way, as effective as a similarly relentless state of darkness, and it was nice to get a production where you could see everything perfectly. Opera productions, like cinema films, are showing a tendency to be on the gloomy side visually speaking.
I've been in the slightly unusual position of having now seen three contemporary operas in the space of twelve months, Greek and Flight last season, and Anthropocene now. Despite a warm reception tonight, I don't think Anthropocene will stay the course the way the two others have, but it was well sung and well produced, and a worthy venture, on the whole.
[Next : 25th January]