Jonathan Dove’s ‘Uprising’
Usher Hall, 28/3/25
Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Ellie Slorach conductor
Jonathan Dove composer, April de Angelis librettist
Sinéad O’Neill director
RSNO Youth Chorus, Patrick Barrett director, RSNO Chorus Academy, Aimee Toshney director, RSNO Changed Voices, Frikki Walker director, members of the RSNO Chorus
Ffion Edwards soprano, Julieth Lozano Rolong soprano, Madeleine Shaw mezzo-soprano, Rhys Batt tenor, Marcus Farnsworth baritone, Edwin Kaye bass
Onstage percussion Stuart Semple tutor
Jonathan Dove’s new opera, ‘Uprising’ has its Scottish premiere in the Usher Hall tonight, a month after the work’s first performance. Jim Potter, a philanthropist who loved music, decided to fund an opera for young people when he found out, in 2020, that he had a terminal condition. Co-commissioned by Glyndebourne as a community project and by Saffron Hall in Essex, Jonathan Dove and librettist April de Angelis wrote, as Jim Potter wished, an opera about ‘sustainability’. The Royal Scottish National Orchestra who played with community and youth choirs from Essex in two performances earlier this month after the opera’s four day run in Glyndebourne a month ago, now present a concert performance of this astonishing work along with their own Chorus Academy and youth choruses.
Jim Potter’s initial concept ‘sustainablity’ is immediately apparent, as not only the choruses, which fill the Organ Gallery, but the orchestra take to the stage dressed in tee-shirts, hoodies, jeans or leggings, before Ellie Slorach, the RSNO’s Engagement Conductor, comes to the podium. The opera illustrates the personal and political responses to climate change in Act I before exploring the ecological issues in Act 2. Teenager Lola Green (soprano Ffion Edwards) refuses to go to school, protestations by her family are unsuccessful and she starts a one-woman strike outside the school gates, where she is subject to the taunts of her classmates. Gradually her persuasions work on her sister and father, her peers, and even on the more reluctant older townspeople – everyone apart from her mother. The opera is semi-staged with the six cast members interacting at the front of the stage, without scores. The choruses, with the youth choirs to the front, also sing without scores, and use effective hand and arm movements. Words are projected on the overhead screen.
Ffion Edwards, who has a wonderful pure voice, gives an impressive performance as Lola, tackling her high-lying legato lines with ease, while plausibly acting the role of a determined teenage daughter at odds with her parents. Early in the opera the family’s quartet when they decide to be “nice, nice, nice” to deflect Lola’s requests for vegan food and giving up the car, is a masterpiece of comic writing by Dove and De Angelis, sung with superb timing by Julieth Lozano Rolong, sister, Marcus Farnsworth, father, and especially Madeleine Shaw as the mother, a larger-than-life figure as the senior civil servant. Meanwhile the chorus’s taunts are gradually superseded by indications of climate activism. A key feature of the choral writing is the use of names: individual choir members stand up and identify as young political activists from round the world such as “Aliza Ayaz from Dubai”, “Mitzi JonelleTan from the Philippines” – their names and photographs are in the programme – ending when Ffion Edwards joins the front of choir and sings out “Lola Green, Scotland.” Edwin Kaye uses his reverberating bass voice to humorous effect as the Mayor, baulking at the cauliflower soup on offer at the Greens’ dinner party. Then the first act explodes into a fifteen-minute finale of rhythmically intense choral anthems, backed by the astonishing onstage percussion group of seven players, on drum kits, led by their tutor, SNO percussionist Stuart Semple.
Meanwhile the forty-seven strong RSNO, who, we are told, love this music, have a ball, sometimes playing conventionally, but often, as in this finale, throwing themselves into the jazzier elements of the score – the violinists smile at each other as the drumming starts. From my seat near the front I can’t see the whole orchestra, but worthy of mention are Principal Tuba player, John Whitener, possibly in one of the longest tuba parts around, who adds its distinctive low boom to the brass section, and Nikita Naumov, recently appointed Principal Double Bass and his fellow bassists who play both conventional lower melodies and effective deep warning notes, and are also expert on the jazz bow-fiddle. Out of sight – though I saw the astonishing array of instruments during the interval - are Guest Principal Tom Hunter on percussion, along with Stuart Semple and Simon Archer who play hand-held instruments, xylophones and marimbas, but also I’d guess a small pipe organ and a piano. Pippa Tunnell on harp and Principal Timpanist Paul Philbert on kettle-drums also add to the surround sound. Ellie Slorach, who mouths every word, conducts energetically keeping this whole musical force together. Amazing!
The second act brings us back from a climate uprising taking over the world to the harsh reality of today. Ellie’s mother is in charge of the plan to cut down a forest in order to build a motorway. Madeleine Shaw’s transformation from over-the-top aspirational executive to impervious politician is entirely convincing – she’s sung Wagner and it shows. The adult Chorus, the RSNO’s community choir take the lead here, representing the trees that are to be knocked down, naming, using the Latin terms, the species that will be lost. Bass Edwin Kaye returns as gold-besuited Quercus , spirit of the woods. While unsure how I would enjoy this personification of the forest ( I would find it impossibly twee in a cartoon) I can only say that the music and the conviction of the singers carries the idea through. Simple arm gestures to evoke swaying branches give way to bodies twisting and doubling over as the trees are felled, accompanied by the onstage percussion in a hellish explosion of machinery noise. As further disasters ensue, the younger choruses evoke a flood, with imaginative interlocked arm-movements as well as the rushing sounds of the music. De Angelis’s libretto uses the names of wildlife species which have become extinct in what seems like a eulogistic coda.
But another future is possible. The last section sees Lola and her sister Zoe living in the countryside and attempting to persuade her mother and father who have come on a visit to stay. The work ends on Lola’s question. “Will you join us?” and the sounds of the last few minutes with woodwind representing the birds which have returned, the chorus singing their names and bells replacing drumming, indicate the importance of making this choice - towards another kind of Uprising.
I had a ticket for tonight’s concert and was asked late in the afternoon to be a stand-in critic for the EMR as Brian Bannatyne-Scott was unwell. I hedged my bets but was won over after the first minute! It’s been difficult to do this engrossing and imaginative piece of music-theatre justice, and delightful to see just how much of an impact it has had on these working on it, tonight’s musicians, amateur and professional. There was a standing ovation and Johnathan Dove was there to take a bow. Sadly apart from the front stalls, there was a poor attendance at this concert – I hope that Saturday night’s performance in Glasgow had a fuller house.
Jim Potter, who had the idea for this work, died in 2024, but Jonathan Dove was able to meet him to play through and sing the score before he died.
