Perth Festival: Pop-Up Opera
St Matthew’s Church, Perth, 25/05/24
Scottish Opera, Pop-Up Opera
This year’s tour of Scottish Opera’s ‘Pop-up Opera’, consisting of two half-hour selections, ‘A Little Bit of The Merry Widow’ and ‘A Little Bit of Don Giovanni’, kicked off as a Perth Festival matinee at St Matthew’s Church on the afternoon of Saturday 25th May. The ingenious adaptations, with scoring reduced to cello (Andrew Drummond Huggan) and guitar (Ian Watt) by former SO Head of Music Derek Clark, and vocals ‘limited’ (yet so unrestrained) to the soprano (Jessica Leary) and baritone (Andrew McTaggart) tessiture, featured libretto and narration scripted (and the latter also performed) in English by Allan Dunn, who also manipulated the characterful billboard graphics which followed the narrative in place of sets, produced by illustrator Essi Kimpimäki. Costumes selected from the vast Scottish Opera resource were lavish yet versatile enough to accommodate changes of character.
For ‘The Merry Widow’, the spoken character Njegus, the under-Secretary at the Paris Embassy of the impoverished fictitious Balkan state Pontevedro, offers the perfect narrator for the adaptation, keeping us up to date with the farcical storyline and, in this ‘role’, Allan Dunn kept us ‘in the picture’. Through a combination of narration, arias and duets, the story was told in half an hour. Jessica played the eponymous heiress Hanna and her flirtatious friend Valencienne, wife of the Pontevedran ambassador Baron Zeta. Baritone Andrew McTaggart played Hanna’s former lover Count Danilo, First Secretary at the embassy as well as Zeta himself. Most of the goodies in the operetta made the cut, including Danilo’s “I’ll head off to Maxim’s”, Hanna’s ‘Mazurka’ explaining what men see in her (loads of cash), Hanna’s ‘Vilja’ of course (with audience participation), a bit of Camille and Valencienne’s duet (though he’s usually a tenor) and Hanna and Danilo’s “Love unspoken, love unbroken” duet of reconciliation. The combination of Allan Dunn’s witty narration and the singers’ stylish artistry delivered an enchanting performance of pure entertainment. Cellist Andrew Drummond Huggan’s instrument had to emulate every instrument of the orchestra through some quite challenging figures, a task he discharged with aplomb.
Lovely though the slightly caricatured and frivolous illustrations for the Lehár were, those for Don Giovanni combined a naïve realism with darker and more melodramatic elements and packed a punch. I was delighted to hear most of the singing in Italian, while the narration was still in English with more than a hint of baleful whimsy. Baritone Andrew McTaggart (whose Figaro for Opera Bohemia’s August 2022 production had won my praise) took the roles of Leporello, the Don himself, the Commendatore and Masetto. Jessica Leary sang Donnas Anna and Elvira, and the innocent Zerlina. Again, astonishing how much in the way of goodies can be crammed into slightly over half an hour. We got part of the overture, Leporello’s ‘Notte e giorno faticar’, part of Donna Anna’s raging ‘Non sperar’, Leporello’s Catalogue Aria (of the Don’s conquests), Zerlina and Masetto’s duet, the evergreen seduction duet with the Don and Zerlina ‘La ci darem la mano’, the Don’s enjoinder to Leporello to get the party guests tipsy so he can seduce Zerlina ‘Fin ch'han dal vino calda la testa’, Zerlina’s aria to her fiancé Masetto claiming her innocence ‘Batti, batti o bel Masetto’, the Don’s recitative blaming Leporello for assaulting Zerlina, the exquisite proxy seduction ‘Deh, vieni alla finestra’ (Ian Watt’s guitar taking time off from rhythm and harmony to ‘be’ a mandolin) and the Commendatore’s statue’s ominous ‘Don Giovanni! A cenar teco m'invitasti’, the solo cello finally painting a picture of the fires of Hell. The moralising finale was delivered in English: “Ponder well: are you going to heaven or hell?”, concluding a super afternoon’s entertainment.