Why exactly is it




Are there really that many people around who think that way, or is that just a stock lazy opening a journalistic article about experimental modern opera?  Is it that different from what other pioneering companies like BAC and the Almeida do?

As far as I'm concerned the new stuff can do what it likes - it's the existing repertoire which people need to take care not to dumb down/gratuitously assimilate with "yoof" culture, etc.

Sorry, hope that's not off topic, Reiner!

That piece in the Indy is mainly journo-fluff: I've been talking to the head of Scottish Opera quite a lot about possibly taking part in this project next year, and it's not really about deliberately ruffling feathers or finding a specifically younger audience.

The idea is to take new opera away from the main house, and large-scale budgets and long schedules, and foster the ideas of several new composer/librettist teams (although not exclusively new: Ron Butlin and Lyell Cresswell have worked together on a couple of previous occasions). If, on the other hand, Scottish Opera had chosen to commission one established composer to write a full-length opera - a costly and risky business - there would be no new piece for several years while it was written, and they would effectively have "bet the family farm on one piece" as Alex Reedijk put it to me. Scottish Opera are open to developing further any particularly promising collaborations or specific projects that arise from Five:15, so the view is therefore one of the long-term artist (and audience) development.

At the same time, the new venues - with a very different audience profile to the usual opera venues - will probably introduce people to the new pieces who would rarely, if ever, go to a traditional opera production. But of course the pieces are also promoted as part of Scottish Opera's main season, and hopefully a lot of the usual audience will also want to see these events.

I hope, for my own sake (!) as well as that of opera in Scotland, that the venture is a success, as I very much feel it's an unusually positive step in 'the right direction'.

I don't think Scottish Opera are making that claim, really - maybe the journalists will want to present it in that way - but it will be the only thing of its kind in Scotland, where there are lots of composers but almost no 'tradition' at all of opportunities to write operas. And as the funding and audience base of Scottish Opera is entirely from Scotland, I think it's fair to claim that it's the first venture of its kind in Scotland, and much needed.

Yes, Stuart, the more opportunities of this kind the better. No opera company is going to be able (or really ever has been able, in modern times) to commit to an endless stream of main stage commissions. They'll be very few and far between, and even then for an increasingly 'safe' selection of composers I predict. So it makes sense to spread what goodies there are around a bit and try to develop a range of work. Although it would be good to 'join up' this policy with the possibility of 'development' of some of this work into larger-scale productions at least. This was the idea at the ENO Studio when I worked there, for example; and it sort of worked for a few years before the 'team' changed and the sights were lowered.  

The person I would call the leading Scottish composer of today had to go to Portugal to have their opera premiered - it was also done in Paris and Strasbourg, but has yet to have a performance in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, more's the pity.

Just been reviewed in the Times.

I accept that with the proviso that I'm not a fan of the Festival, the only Edinburgh theatre I've not played, Eddie (=luvselgar, I presume ) though obviously I've seen productions there and I find it a very antiseptic house - and those that I know who have played it seem to have little love for it as a playing space either, possiblybearing in mind (as I do) that its restoration was a quick-fix after the purpose-built opera house was shelved, and it's not a production house as such, just a receiving venue. It's not that long ago (certainly since I started my career) that there was only the King's and Lyceum in Edinburgh, with the Playhouse and Festival dark, and no Royal in Glasgow either. I still regret the decision to abandon the dedicated opera house in Edinburgh, but there we go.

I agree that Eden Court is fine for medium sized and smaller productions, too, as are Perth and the MacRobert in Stirling (I don't know the Ayr Gaiety, though I believe it's smaller), but that still doesn't solve the problem that every large scale production that plays more than the two central-belt cities and, at a pinch, Aberdeen has to be compromised: ON and WNO both have a rather more amenable spread of theatres that they can play, most of which are really well provisioned: Cardiff, the Bristol and Birmingham Hippos, the Manchester pair, Liverpool, Newcastle, Leeds and Sunderland and even Southampton are all theatres which can take full sized productions comfortably. Even if we allow for my strange prejudice, that's still only three houses that can take full sized productions, all in the Central Belt, plus a more-or-less in the North East. This all makes programming and funding far more difficult in Scotland: a far greater proportion of the population has to travel much further to catch any real large-scale opera than do opera fans in the North of England or Wales. All these factors put a considerable extra financial burden on Scottish Opera before a single production hits the boards. As I said before, it doesn't help matters, does it?