What is in Kelvin's Head?

The Sloans Project – Opera Review

21/08/2013

Rating:

This review also appears on Opera Britannia’s website.

The Sloans Project is an exciting new opera that has been around for a couple of years but is revived for this year’s Edinburgh Fringe. This performance was one of two being given in its original setting – the Glasgow public house from which its stories derive. It now moves over to Edinburgh in a brave attempt to relocate a piece which has hitherto been regarded as absolutely site specific and tied to its origins. The Sloans Project is an innovative and gripping piece and deserves to succeed in any setting. All parts were played by a quartet of singers accompanied by half a dozen musicians.

We begin, of course, in the bar. Arriving in Sloans on a Wednesday afternoon, it was not immediately obvious that there was any performance scheduled at all. It was simply an old bar room filled with locals drinking. A young chap (in fact the composer, Gareth Williams) sat at the bar with a glass of water and a musical score in front of him, but that was the only clue that a performance was in the offing at all. Suddenly though, he dipped his finger in the water and started circling the glass, making it sing. As he did so, other previously unnoticed members of the company dotted around the bar began to do the same. In moments the whole bar seemed to be singing its own ringing, gathering chord. A woman then appeared through the door and began to sing. It was an electric beginning to a piece which was full of drama.

The Project is not a continuous narrative. Rather, it is a series of five scenes drawn from stories connected with the bar. Three characters re-occur from the first scene in the last, bringing some kind of conclusion to proceedings and the audience is guided from room to room, up and downstairs to a different location for each scene by a Landlady who turns out to be something of a narrator figure. The scenes are drawn from different periods in the history of Sloans. (more…)

Gareth Williams, Glasgow bar, opera, sloans

8 responses to “A Christian Country?”

Tim

29/04/2014

Reality is pluralist; a secular basis is good to level the playing-field.

I think Cameron is not so much failing to live in `now’ but hell-bent on dragging the country back to the 50s (mostly the 1850s).

One of Blair’s very few positives was “we don’t do God”, or at least postponing doing God until mostly after he was out of Number 10.

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Fr Steve

30/04/2014

Very good analysis. In Australia I still find I get prickly when people tell me I belong to the C of E! (It has not been formally such since the the 70s)
It is good not to see ourselves in the light of another nation…England…but it is good to recognise to recognise our heritage …Anglican.
I spent part of last year in Hawaii as a locum…..when asked last week by the Mothers’ Union..”What was the difference?” I was a bit glib…but could confidential say “Nothing at all!” Given the fact that 1/3 of the congregation were Filipinos it is an interesting reflection.
Don’t think we should overstate it, but being Anglican is a great thing. But there is much about it that needs a good kick up the backside too!

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Mark

30/04/2014

Though we ought to, maybe proudly, remember that the SEC is not a daughter Church of the Church of England. I’m afraid Cameron isn’t doing himself any favours with the way he’s made these statements, and as far as Scotland goes there’s a large part that has been disenfranchised by any statements that Cameron or any English person says, because they view them as ‘english propaganda’. Sadly, I don’t view the Scottish Government with much love either, having used their position to unfairly tout their party’s stance. Between two opposite poles, both backed by Government, how is one to hear a balanced view, instead of that great love of Blair’s Government, spin.

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Eamonn

30/04/2014

‘I do however have a big problem with starting up a new country and writing Christianity into the constitutional definition of what that country is.’ I agree totally. I lived for 26 years in a country where the constitution, in respect of family matters, reflected the views both of the majority RC church and the Church of Ireland. For example, in order to make divorce possible, an amendment to the constitution had to be passed by a majority voting in a nation-wide referendum. This was only achieved in 1995, and only by a margin of 50.28% to 49.72%. Constitutional definition of religious matters always leads to discrimination.

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Robin

01/05/2014

> ‘I do however have a big problem with starting up a new country’

I have a big problem with seeing Scottish independence (if it were to be re-established following a YES vote in the referendum) as ‘starting up a new country’ . . .

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Alan McManus

02/05/2014

I loathe the smug fortress mentality of many of my co-religionists in RC schools while noting that these schools perform at least as well as non-denominational. I loathe the cowardice of the Reformed churches in failing to speak out against the violence and prejudice associated with a certain group of charitable organisations every July and the complicity of local authorities who DO NOT assure the safety of citizens and of international visitors unused to the historical hatreds of the Scottish central belt. While the latter is true, I continue to support the former and look to Canada as a model of multicultural accommodation than to the aggressive laïcité of France.

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  03/05/2014
  
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Allan Ronald

03/05/2014

Given the choice between the venomous and literally murderous hatreds of Central Belt sectarianism and ‘aggressive laicité’ I’ll take the latter any day.

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