What is in Kelvin's Head?

Scottish Opera – Il Trovatore review – ****

11/05/2015

This review was published at Opera Britannia.

Rating:

It was a particular joy to see Il trovatore at the Theatre Royal, not only because it is a well directed, well sung sure-fire summer hit for Scottish Opera but also because I was seeing it in the company of someone who had never been to the opera before. This was a perfect production for an opera virgin. It looked good, sounded marvellous and was full to the brim with all the drama and passion that Verdi demands.

Someone, one suspects, somewhere along the way thought a bit about the rather busy plot and realised that essentially the shadows of the past come back to haunt the present. A mix up over an infanticide 15 years before is the driving force behind all vengeance and passion that is presented on the stage. Thus came the idea to use the shadows of the performers so prominently. Low side lights on either side of the stage allow the silhouettes of the performers to act out the plot behind the singers themselves. It is slightly creepy. It also works brilliantly.

The set is sparse but flawless. No crenelated battlements here – but plain grey walls which have something of the manner of a granite worktop in an ultra-minimalist kitchen about them. There’s not that much colour but of course that means that when there is a flash of something bright, it hits one between the eyes and Robert B Dickson’s lighting design was striking.

Scottish Opera have made much in their marketing of the production of the quote attributed to Caruso that all it takes for a successful performance of Il trovatore is the four greatest singers in the world. This is perhaps a dangerous game for a marketing department to play and it is fortunate that there’s a lot to rejoice in with regard to the singing.

First up was Jonathan May’s Ferrando, the Captain of the Guard. His narration of the prior events that give rise to our story was wonderfully measured and brilliantly clear. The gentlemen of the chorus meanwhile lolled all over the stage in their soldier’s outfits. Brilliantly lit, they presented as some kind of pewter relief sculpture. They came to life in more ways than one when they began to sing. Throughout the evening, the chorus, particularly the men, were wonderfully strong.

Roland Wood has plenty of experience on the Scottish Opera stage and was using it all in his portrayal of the Count di Luna. His “Il balen del suo sorriso” in the second act was wonderfully gentle and compassionate. Director Martin Lloyd-Evans tends to allow the principals to take centre stage and just sing their great arias in this production without a great deal going on. Rather than feeling static, it instead focuses the ability of the music itself to provide all that is needed to move the plot along. The effect when Wood was singing was mesmerising.

The object of the Count’s affections was a magnificent Claire Rutter as Leonora. She had the sense to keep something in reserve for the fireworks demanded of her in the final act but this was a consummate performance from beginning to end. “Oh,” murmured my opera-virgin companion during the applause which greeted Ms Rutter’s “D’amor sull’ali rosee”, “oh, how beautiful – I never realised it would be so beautiful”. Quite so. This was a Leonora around whom the rest of the world seemed to spin. Ms Rutter also brought a gentleness into her singing though without losing any of the crispness and vitality of her coloratura.

As for the troubadour himself, Gwyn Hughes Jones as Manrico also had a great deal to praise. His vocal work had a great deal of animation and was a joy to listen to. I have a suspicion that the coda of the great cabaletta “Di quella pira” did not go quite as well as he expected it to. The rest of his singing was captivating though – his voice managing both to dance and also express wonderful colours too.

Last amongst the principals was Anne Mason who made a wonderfully possessed Azucena, the gypsy around whom the plot continually thickens. She seemed to have been driven to the point of madness by the events of 15 years before and there was a burning, urgent passion in her voice.

Down in the pit, Tobias Ringborg was managing to get the most sensitive playing out of the orchestra that has been heard in the Theatre Royal all year. Consistently quite reserved tempi allowed the singers the chance to shine and there was a wonderful (and in Glasgow, rarely achieved) balance between the pit and the stage. At just one moment in the third act did it seem that there was the danger of everything going out of kilter but this was soon rectified. Musically this production was something of a triumph.

There are plenty of opportunities to let the orchestra off the leash, of course. Not least was during an exuberant Anvil Chorus where dozens of gypsies sang their hearts out whilst the shadows of just a few of them made a great tableau above their heads. Smoke and flames were projected onto the scenery behind them – so much more effective than dry ice.

There were lots of great though subtle touches of direction from Martin Lloyd-Evans. The elderly nun stopping a swordsman with a walking stick and a wry shake of the head was one delicious moment but there were plenty of others. Scottish Opera end their season on a high with this production. The verdict of my companion was “I’ll be back”. If next year’s season has the drive and passion of this production she won’t be disappointed.

7 responses to “Whither the Kirk?”

Pausing Place

25/08/2010

I missed last night’s programme, but I thought your comments were interesting.

In a sense, perhaps it’s unsurprising if the SEC is inwardly more positive about itself than the CofS. My take is that in the recent past, at least, the SEC started from a lower common denominator, not being the “local” church in the same way as the Kirk, and so it doesn’t have to contend with others saying of it “look how the mighty have fallen” in quite the same way.

As to the health of the Kirk (and the SEC for that matter), I think we need to reflect on our self-perception and to consider carefully the points and places in which a dying church (congregation or denomination) should be allowed to die gracefully, and the ways in which we might see new life emerge from the rubble.

As a young(ish!), relatively new Christian I have seen examples of (both urban and rural) SEC and Kirk congregations where there are few signs of new growth, little to draw in younger (under 50 year olds, to pick a random-ish number) new folk, and much to sustain negative preconceptions of church as boring, irrelevant and so forth.

We as a faith community need to get much better at stepping up to the mark in our creativity and engagement with our society. The sad truth is that most young adults do not know and have not heard about Jesus Christ, and unless we engage with them in ways culturally relevant to them, and which do not presuppose previous knowledge (too often taken for granted) they never will.

It troubles me, but I do think it’s true to say that in the SEC and in the Kirk we have a church sustained by the traditions and cultural reference points taught to a previous generation. Culture has shifted radically, with the result that the same will not be able to be said in 20 years time.

Our challenge is clear. Whether the Kirk and the SEC can step up to the mark to address what it means to live out the Great Commission in the 21st century is less so.

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Cal

25/08/2010

I didn’t really understand who this programme was aimed at, or even what its aim was.

Yes, numbers have fallen, but perhaps the small number of people who remain are there because they actually want to be, not because it’s the done thing on a Sunday morning.

And personally, I rather like the idea of a church “sustained by traditions”. Clearly the church has to be relevant to modern society, but in abandoning the traditions of worship then you lose the centre of why the church exists in the first place.

There was something very Presbyterian about the programme with its “we’re doomed” mentality. I find the SEC generally more positive in outlook.

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John

25/08/2010

The only book the presenter seemed to have used in his research was ‘The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800-2000’ By Callum G Brown – indeed Callum Brown was one of the speakers. The thesis of this well argued sociological study is that “quite suddenly in 1963 something very profound ruptured the character of the nation and its people sending organised Christianity on a downward spiral to the margins of social significanceâ€. That something he identifies as new media, new gender roles and a moral revolution which has dramatically ended peopleâ€™s conception that they lived Christian lives.â€ It could be said to have happened as â€œsex beganâ€ between the end of the Chatterly ban and the Beatles first LP as the poet Philip Larkin so famously put it.”
To balance this statistical decline the programme flagged up some of the “church without walls ” iniatives in a lame sort of way. All in all a most unsatisfactory programme that only told half the story.

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Kenny

25/08/2010

Good crit Kelvin. My reflection at the end of the programme was, “Lord, we visited this stuff over 30 years ago, and have come out of it stronger and better Church in the SEC.” Hopefully, we stopped longing for ‘the good old days’ a long time ago!

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MartinRitchie

26/08/2010

I thinking “Pausing Place” makes a good point about needing to creatively engage with society. From my own experience of working with a CofS congregation, this creative engagement is a weak spot for many.

As a counterpoint to the programme, interesting to note in the latest “Life and Work” a very positive article about a growing CofS congregation in Stornoway – and I mean really growing! So not all doom and gloom, and I’m sure there are many more examples of bright spots, just as there are in the SEC!

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Graham Vahey

28/08/2010

If the C of S disappeared completely we would be at a loss. During the dark and bleak years of Thatcher’s reign she refused to visit Scotland for 5 years. When she did she expressed shock that we had Royal Regalia and ordered it to be removed immediately for safe-keeping to England. Her ‘Sermon on the Mound’ is now historical for its condescension to the Scots. She was none too pleased to be handed two reports on poverty in Scotland by the powerful Church and Nation Committee. Indeed, it was to this Committee that the population turned to for a moral lead during Thatcherism. When James VI (‘Jamie the Saxt’) became James I in England, the population turned to senior Scottish earls for a moral lead. Unfortunately, the Piskie Church does not give a moral lead in Scotland, apart from the work of the Scottish Constitutional Convention in the recent past. The RC Church does pronounce on moral issues. Could it not be conceivable that all the major Churches could unite in a Committee to pronounce for Scotland on moral issues as the Church & Nation Committee once did?

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Aldous N. Gaiters

01/09/2010

Speaking as a Nonjuror myself I am sure the SEC has a right to a moral voice in Scotland. Taking the US daughter church of the SEC as a model you could see where the fissures would appear. There is room for a modern liberal Christian voice, but even I an old Liberal myself, would have to fear that such a voice might appeal to only a select few.

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