Celebrating Alan Watt (Baritone)
Memorial event Tuesday 22nd October 2024
Scottish Opera, Elmbank Crescent, Glasgow
It was with a certain amount of trepidation that I travelled through to Glasgow on Tuesday for an event marking the death of the Aberdonian baritone and voice teacher, Alan Watt (1947-2024). I knew and worked closely with Alan in the 1980s, at Scottish Opera and with the Scottish Early Music Consort, but I hadn’t seen him for years, and, although I knew he had been ill recently, I had made no attempt to see him again. Therefore it was with a sense of guilt that I turned up at the old offices of Scottish Opera in Elmbank Crescent in Glasgow’s Charing Cross, where we had spent many exciting and hilarious rehearsals together, working with Sir Alexander Gibson on many occasions, for an event to celebrate his life.
I need not have worried, as the sense of bonhomie and merriment that Alan had carried around with himself in life, sparkled and crackled all over the lovely old room at the top of the building where we had worked all those years ago.
I was a little late in getting there, traffic and optician’s appointments intervening, but I caught the end of the official bit, and was there in time to hear beautiful renditions of Vaughan Williams and Aaron Copland by the soon to be married couple, Jonathan Kennedy and Beth Taylor, who had known Alan in his capacity as singing teacher and mentor at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. He had been teaching at the Conservatoire (or Royal Scottish Academy of Music as it was then) since 1995, when his career progressed from performer to teacher, and it was clear how much he meant to these young singers, who never heard him in full voice.
Alan Watt was born in Aberdeen in 1947 and was part of a golden generation of Aberdonian singers who emerged in the late 60s and early 70s, including his half-brother and fellow baritone Gordon Sandison. Like many singers at that time, he worked at Glyndebourne, in the chorus and singing roles on tour, and that excellent training started off a fine career. When I arrived as a company principal bass at Scottish Opera in 1982, Alan was a frequent colleague, and being eight years older than me, he was a terrific mentor for this 27 year old novice. His smile was infectious, and he was always full of fun and jokes. This masked, to a certain extent, a very fine artist, who could do tragedy just as easily as comedy, and with a mellifluous baritone voice of smooth velvet could fill the Theatre Royal with ease. Particular memories are of a distinguished Albert in Massenet’s ‘Werther’, and, especially, a riotous ‘La Bohème’ conducted by Norman del Mar. Alan sang Marcello, Alan Oke was Schaunard and I sang Colline, and with a good humoured Spanish tenor, Jose Todaro and the superb Mimi of Marie Slorach, combined with the outrageous Musetta of Maria Moll, rehearsals were a continuous hoot. The icing on the cake was the good natured teasing of Norman White, a stalwart of the company, who sang Alcindoro and Benoit, and who was very prone to ‘corpsing’ (laughing on stage at the wrong moment). Suffice to say that most nights, Norman would make himself laugh in anticipation of whatever Alan Watt might be about to do or say, even without saying it. I emphasise that Norman was part of the joke, and took it all in good part, and it was enormous fun!
Around the same time, Warwick Edwards, his wife, Jak, and Marjorie Rycroft greatly expanded the emergent Scottish Early Music Consort, tapping into the Zeitgeist of the burgeoning demand for original performance of baroque and mediaeval music, and Alan Watt and I found ourselves a part of this extraordinary phenomenon, selling out concerts of deeply obscure ancient music to a thirsty Glasgow public. After I left Scottish Opera in 1985 for the fleshpots of London, Alan continued to appear with the SEMC, now often partnered by the young Scottish tenor, Iain Paton.
Alan’s career continued with appearances at all the major British opera companies, and in 1995, he began his very successful teaching career at the RSAMD in Glasgow, from which he retired in 2019.
Poor health marred his final years but the humour and twinkle never faded, and the turnout on Tuesday demonstrated how much he was loved. It was a veritable roll call of Scottish operatic history, attended by Jamie MacDougall, Lorna Anderson, Linda Ormiston, Harry Nicoll, Jonathan Best, Jenny Wilson-Best, Peter Alexander Wilson, Claire Livingstone (Saunders), Denis O’Neill, Neil McKinnon, Joyce Fieldsend, Richard Honner and many singers of the younger generation, who knew Alan as a teacher. The event was presided over by Alan’s wife Gill, who I first met way back in the 1980s when she and Alan had just met.
So, although a sad occasion, Alan Watt’s spirit washed over us all, and we were able to celebrate a genuinely nice man, and a very fine artist.
