Scottish Opera Youth Company: RED

Scottish Opera Production Studios, Glasgow, 18/7/2024

Scottish Opera Young Company, Chris Gray (conductor)

The Scottish Opera Young Company is a unique year-long skills-development programme for singers aged 17 to 21, accessed through annual audition, though successful participants may spend up to three years on the programme, typically one or two.  Working with operatic and theatrical professionals, two productions per year, in December and July, showcase the emergent talent.  I caught the opening night of four performances of this July’s production in the Scottish Opera Production Studios in Glasgow on Thursday 18th, the world premiere of ‘RED’, a one-act opera (in 4 ‘Acts’ or phases without a break) by Karen MacIver, with a libretto by Jane Davidson (Scottish Opera’s Director of Outreach & Education) after Grimm’s Fairy Tales.  This year’s cohort of 14 young vocalists were accompanied by a small acoustic/electric ensemble comprised of the composer (who also supervised the sound design) on piano, Andrew Mann on flute & clarinet, Ross Milligan on electric & acoustic guitars, May Halyburton on double bass & electric bass guitar and Darren Gallacher on percussion.  SOYC’s Artistic Director Chris Gray conducted.  The production was directed by Flora Emily Thomson, designed by Finlay McLay (as last year’s production of ‘Maud / Down in the Valley’) and lit by Laura Hawkins.

The 4 ‘Acts’ or phases are stages in the life of ‘Red’, a rebellious misfit orphan girl, a reclusive young pregnant woman, a powerful influential mature woman at loggerheads with her idealistic daughter, and a guilt-ridden wandering old crone.  Each is rooted in a Grimm stereotype, but elevated to the extraordinary by the magic wrought by her red hair.  Soprano Maria Wotherspoon took the multi-faceted lead and rose to the challenge of creating a complex role with perhaps not a huge voice but certainly a compelling stage presence and total commitment to the realisation of the piece.  She has come a long way since an ensemble role in ‘Rubble’ two years ago and a heartrendingly convincing Maud last year.

We first see Red as an outsider, repressed by the wardens (sopranos Ilona Sofia Nastase and Helena Engebretsen) and bullied by her peers at an orphanage.  She is sent on an errand (“time you earned your keep”) to take a basket of provisions to an old woman living in the woods.  She fantasises about the Old Woman (baritone Findlay Peters) being her grandmother and herself being loved as “the apple of her eye”.  We also see that Red has an affinity with fire and foxes, a hint of the magical powers that will unfold.  In this ‘Red Riding Hood’ segment, rich in the dark humour that peppers the ingenious libretto, baritone Luke Francis was a sleekit archly spiv-like wolf with a pathological hatred of nature-destroying humans matched only by a voracious appetite for them: “something sweet: what a treat”.  He devours the Old Woman and Red whole.  Their duet from inside the wolf’s stomach strategises their escape: a lock of Red’s hair rises to his throat as a tickling magic emetic.  Once they are outside again, the wolf is despatched by a red-hot poker from the fire.

Between ‘Acts’, mezzo El Rose, stepped forward out of character (‘Mysterious Woman’) but as a quasi-narrator to move the story of growth and transformation forward – a great expressive voice with flawless clarity of diction.  Red has experienced her first love (Danny, a firefighter played by guest artist, tenor Connor-James Smith) but they have separated.  She is pregnant, living alone high in a tower block: “in exchange for control, she surrenders her soul”.  In this Rapunzel segment, the tower catches fire and is evacuated.  Red alone remains and goes into labour.  The Fire Brigade arrives and Danny is entrusted with the rescue.  He is blinded by the smoke and flames but, shielded in an enveloping ball of Red’s magical hair, mother, father and baby escape the burning building.  As Danny is led away, El Rose, as ‘Mysterious Woman’, witnesses the magic and, in a super waltz-tempo aria, reveals that she has found a worthy successor: “I will teach you to use your natural gifts: you take the throne; I’ll step aside”.  This aria was, among a wealth of contenders, a musical highlight for me.   A surprise quotation from Stravinsky’s ‘Symphony of Psalms’, the music that accompanies the text “Laudate Eum in cymbalis bene jubilantionibus” (praise him with most joyful cymbals) seemed oddly appropriate.

“A global crown, an empire, motherhood goes sour”.  Red is now Madame, unaging proprietress of Maison Rouge, a phenomenally successful cosmetics company, “playing footsie with the Dow Jones”.  Her increasingly beautiful daughter (soprano Freya Atkinson Gibson, among the RCS Voices in the recent RSNO Berlioz ‘Grande Messe des Morts’) is an eco-warrior and implacably opposed to the planet-harming practices of Maison Rouge.  The segment begins with an hilarious parodic (yet entirely realistic) advert for the company’s “magical” products.  Madame’s sycophantic staff, loyal to her and her jealousy (but more loyal to their hedonistic lifestyle), will do whatever is needed to preserve both.  In an absolutely hilarious ensemble patter song (another superb highlight), they plot how the Snow White daughter may meet a sticky end.  When the daughter dies of a “previously undiagnosed heart condition”, they cannot believe it was a tragic accident.  Madame is distraught, steps down and cuts off her magic tresses.

“Four ages we are, but all play the game.  From childhood to crone, women stand alone”.  In the final segment, Red is old, tired and cold, a shadow of her former self after years of wandering in search of redemption.  She takes refuge in a cottage in the forest and falls asleep, dreaming a nightmare of forgotten children held in frozen suspended animation by an Ice Witch.  She wakes to discover the nightmare is real.  Hansel (harpist and mezzo Isla Hallewell) and Gretel (soprano Hannah Brown) beg her to use her magic to break the spell, but her powers are spent. The Ice Witch (James Kennedy) arrives and mocks the powerless Old Woman Red (“whiff of vagrant; not at all fragrant”).  Pity for the children’s plight re-ignites the fiery magic in her hair and she fights ice with fire, thawing the icy spell and releasing the children, who push the witch into the fire.  With a crash on the tam-tam, all is still.

“Child, woman, girl, hag – which one is really me?”  The brief epilogue shows us Little Red Riding Hood (Martha Brown), the truly-beloved and truly empathetic “apple of her Granny’s eye” making her way to Granny’s house.  Only in the end, when Red used her magic to help others, did she feel love. The story has come full circle.

Reviewing SOYC’s ‘Maud & Down in the Valley’ a year ago, I was “truly blown away by the aura of professionalism, to say nothing of the intensity of well-nigh explosive creativity, that emanates from this young company.  Breathtakingly good.  Yet another example of excellence emanating from Scottish Opera.  Not to mention raw talent.  Wow.”  I can echo those sentiments with ‘RED’.  Colour, both timbral and visual, played a huge part in the production. The music and libretto were perfectly matched, pacy, witty and profound. The colour-programmable lighting (and especially the small army of outsize anglepoise lamps that were wheeled about by the ensemble) mirrored the mood of the action perfectly.  This was a great production of a fine opera (not to mention a gift to red-haired sopranos).  Full marks from me.