Encouraging New Opera
Music in the University 2015 – 2016 in association with Scottish Opera
LAURA O’DONNELL: Soprano
CLARE BAULD: Mezzo-soprano
CONNOR SMITH: Tenor
MATHEW SMITH: Baritone
ORCHESTRA CONDUCTED BY CHRIS GRAY
Saturday, 24 October 2015
For the last two years, Scottish Opera supported by the Leverhulme Trust, have been working with student writers and composers at the University of Aberdeen to encourage a new generation of opera makers. The first fruits of this collaboration were premiered last year and now, two further short operas were staged in the Butchart Centre.
The composer of The Crier of Claife was Peter Relph who currently holds a Leverhulme Scholarship. His librettist is Caroline Campbell an accomplished cellist with a passion for creative writing.
The Angel Maker was composed by Peter Davis. His librettist Ruth Alice Potts is a violinist currently studying at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
Peter Relph hails from the Lake District and his opera The Crier of Claife is based on a legend from the district surrounding Lake Windermere. The Claife Crier is referred to as “the best known spook in the Lake District”. It is the only ghost to actually be marked on the ordinance survey map. There is a pub called the Claife Crier Bar where you can order a pint of Claife Crier Beer.
If Peter Relph and Caroline Campbell’s opera is based on legend, Peter Davis and Ruth Alice Potts’ opera The Angel Maker dealing with the subject of Victorian baby farming is based on real history. On Wednesday, 10th June, 1896, Amelia Dyer who used the name of Mrs Harding was hanged by James Billington at Newgate Prison for the murder of four month old Doris Marmon.
In The Crier of Claife performed first, a gentleman called Mr Black sung magnificently by baritone Mathew Oliver visits a hypnotist or psychiatrist sung by Clare Bauld to cure him of his insomnia. He is regressed to his past life where he was a ferryman. The Crier of Claife, a monk who died of unrequited love was sung by tenor Connor Smith, and the girl who rejected him by soprano Laura O’Donnell.
Peter Relph composed for a relatively large orchestra and wrote a magnificent lush score with rich sweeping strings. Mathew Oliver’s powerful voice coped well with the large orchestra but the girls who did manage to come through the sumptuous orchestral textures had to work a bit harder. As the conductor Chris Gray said to me later, if the orchestra had been in a proper pit everything would have been fine. I am sure he was absolutely right. The climax of the opera with orchestra and all four singers going full tilt was really quite outstanding.
Peter Davis used a much smaller orchestra and his writing was more edgy, but also more transparent so none of the singers had any problem. Mrs Harding (Amelia Dyer) was sung by Clare Bauld. Evelina Marmon the mother who entrusts her illegitimate daughter Doris to the tender mercies of Mrs Harding was sung by Laura O’Donnell. The father of the child who returns too late to save poor little Doris was tenor Connor Smith. Mathew Oliver did not have a singing part in this opera which was a pity but he played Mrs Harding’s co-conspirator who goes to throw the baby’s body in the river. The music captured the mother’s love for her baby as well as Mrs Harding’s feigned care for the child at the beginning - later however turning cruel and nasty. The writing, the acting and singing were all splendidly well done. I believed everything I saw on stage – and of course it was based on truth.
These were two rather dark stories but they certainly seized my imagination. They dissolved the Butchart Centre and took me to the shores of Lake Windermere and to the baby farmer’s lair. That is the magic of opera – it was all there and isn’t that everything any audience wants?
