The Lighthouse (Opera)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Opera dates
Title: The lighthouse
Original title: The lighthouse
The lighthouse where the historic incident took place on Eilean Mòr of the Flannan Isles

The lighthouse where the historic incident took place on Eilean Mòr of the Flannan Isles

Shape: Chamber opera in a prologue and an act
Original language: English
Music: Peter Maxwell Davies
Libretto : Peter Maxwell Davies
Premiere: 2nd September 1980
Place of premiere: Murray House High School, Edinburgh
Playing time: approx. 1 ¼ hour
Place and time of the action: Scotland, December 1900
people
  • Sandy / 1st Officer ( tenor )
  • Blazes / 2nd Officer ( baritone )
  • Arthur / 3rd Officer / Voice of the Cards ( bass )

The Lighthouse (dt .: The Lighthouse ) is a chamber opera in a prologue and one act by Peter Maxwell Davies on its own libretto. It premiered on September 2, 1980 at Moray House High School in Edinburgh.

action

The plot is based on a true story from 1900. On the main island of the Flannan Isles , the Eilean Mòr, three lighthouse keepers mysteriously disappeared. The crew of the supply ship "Hesperus" found a lighting system in perfect condition on December 26th, but no sign of the guards. Their fate could never be clarified and led to numerous speculations of a scientific or mystical nature in public.

Prologue: "The Court of Inquiry" - the investigative court

After the crew of the lighthouse on Fladda Island mysteriously disappeared, a court tries to find out why. A horn solo asks various questions wordlessly to the three officers of the supply ship, whose answers are presented in a scenic way through flashbacks from the ship and the lighthouse. The first officer tells of a sudden current that made it difficult for the crew to get to the island. All of a sudden there was silence. The first officer thought he saw lights of ships aft, but none of the others could see them. Foghorns seemed to come from a different side for each of them. Gradually the lighthouse became visible through the previously impenetrable fog. Each of the officers believed to see three black mythical creatures of different kinds in another place. They slowly climbed the steps and entered the room, where they only found rats. However, the table was set and clean. Only one chair was overturned and one cup was broken. The guard had probably jumped up in a hurry - maybe because someone called him. Otherwise nothing unusual was to be seen.

The cause of the disappearance could not be clarified by the court. Because no new guard was found, the lamp must now work automatically.

Main act: "The Cry of the Beast" - The cry of the beast

Now the story is told as a flashback from the point of view of the three crew members in the lighthouse. The sensitive Sandy, the uncouth Blazes and the pious Arthur sit at the table, pray and imitate Holy Communion with tea and oatcakes. They barricaded the door for protection against a sea monster they are afraid of. The mood is tense, as the three have been living together in a small space for months. Arthur goes upstairs to light the lamp. The other two start meanwhile with a game of cards ( cribbage ). A “voice of the cards” interrupts her again and again with mysterious sayings that she doesn't seem to hear. When Arthur returns, he's angry with their sinful game. To ease the situation, Sandy asks Blazes to sing a happy song. In return, Blazes demands that the others sing too afterwards.

Accompanied by a fiddle, a banjo and bones (castanets), Blazes tells of his youth in a street gang. His father was an alcoholic and abusive towards the family. At the age of eleven, Blazes murdered an old woman in order to rob her. The police believed his father was the perpetrator and sentenced him to death. Sandy likes the song very much, but Arthur would like to perform an exorcism. Now it's Sandy’s turn. His song, which is accompanied by a cello and a slightly out of tune piano, is about his lust for love with a young girl - a rape? The other two join in the chant. Arthur doesn't agree with this song either. As an alternative, he sings a religious song accompanied by clarinet, brass and tambourine about the Israelites in the desert, the golden calf and the Last Judgment .

In the meantime, thick fog has settled over the sea. Arthur goes upstairs to blow the foghorn. He imagines that one day the horn call will be answered - "the cry of the animal over the sleeping world". Downstairs, Sandy and Blazes are worried about the raging sea. When they hear a violent knock on the door, they are plagued by hallucinations in which ghosts of the past catch up with them. The old woman murdered by Blazes and his parents seek revenge, and the raped girl appears to turn into Sandy's sister. Arthur returns singing a hymn. He has visions of the apocalyptic beast, the Antichrist , who wants to bring his servants to him in the form of the golden calf - all who do not bear the mark of righteousness. As he prays for rescue, the supply ship approaches. In their obsession, the guards mistake the red and white lamps for the animal's flaming eyes. Arthur thinks their only chance is to kill it. Their voices unite in prayer. The light from the ship's lights gets brighter and brighter until it completely blinds the audience.

At that moment, the three guards transform into the officers of the supply ship. Everything becomes calm again, and the officers are wondering what might have happened - the guards may have gone mad or drowned in the sea. You decide not to change anything and withdraw. It's getting dark. The shadowy figures of the three guards appear and repeat their conversation from the beginning of the act. The closing words of the prologue sound from the tape: “The lighthouse is now automatic”. The lighthouse lamp comes on and gets brighter and brighter until the music stops.

layout

The location of the action (the Flannan Isles in the Outer Hebrides ) is like the home of the composer (the Orkney Islands) in the north of Scotland. Davies changed the name of the affected island Eilean Mòr to "Fladda" in his opera in order to spare the feelings of any relatives of the missing lighthouse keepers.

The vocal parts are stylistically extremely changeable. The court hearing in the prologue is a rhythmically emphasized syncopated chant. The three songs in the main part, on the other hand, are popular - a stanza song in the style of folk (Blazes), a Victorian ballad (Sandy) and a fairground anthem (Arthur). Often the orchestra accompanies the action with short interjections. A main motif of the orchestra is assigned to the rotation of the lighthouse lamp. Its various forms “reflect the uncertainty between real perception and visionary appearance”.

The instrumentation is also very varied. In the prologue she has a chamber music effect. The three songs are each orchestrated differently (as already stated in the libretto). There are also “magical ghost sounds” that “condense into swirling turbulence”. The musical and the dramatic structure of the work are closely related. Number symbolism plays a major role in music, which is derived from the tower of the tarot game and which appears openly in the “voice of the cards” at the beginning of the main act. The composer pointed out that this would transform the cribbage game into a "fateful game of tarot cards", "in which the full power of their malevolent influence was conjured up".

Instrumentation

The chamber cast of the opera requires twelve players:

A special meaning is assigned to the horn, whose calls are also explicitly listed in the libretto and which should be positioned within the auditorium. In the prologue it takes on the task of the questioner, to whom the officers then answer. The lighting effects with the ship's lamps and the lighthouse itself are precisely specified, as they are essential for the plot.

Work history

Peter Maxwell Davies was inspired to the opera by the 1978 book Star for Seamen: Stevenson Family of Engineers by Craig Mair. He completed it in 1979. It was commissioned by the Edinburgh Festival and was premiered on September 2, 1980 at Moray House High School in Edinburgh under the direction of Richard Duffalo by the expanded chamber ensemble Fires of London , which Davies himself co-founded . Neil Mackie (Sandy), Michael Rippon (Blazes) and David Wilson-Johnson (Arthur) sang. Critics described the performance as "breathtaking".

The German premiere took place on May 12, 1982 in the Concordia in Bremen in a translation by Günther Bauer-Schenk. The work then quickly found distribution, especially in German-speaking countries. There were more than 80 productions up to the year 2000, making it one of the most successful operas of the time. The performances of 1984 in the music theater workshop in Gelsenkirchen (1985 also as a guest performance in Rennes) and in the Stockholm Rotunda as well as in 1985 in Gothenburg, Tampere and Perth should be mentioned. It was staged at the Halle Opera House in 2002. Reasons for this success are on the one hand the small cast with only three solo singers, which predestines the work for studio and touring theater, and on the other hand the carefully worked out compositional structure and plot, the elements of the popular crime and touring theater Ghost genres united in one. The music critic Ulrich Schreiber described the work as a "combining continuation of Britten's Billy Budd and The Turn of the Screw ."

Recordings

  • February 22, 1994 (live, in concert from Manchester): Peter Maxwell Davies (conductor), members of the BBC Philharmonic . Neil Mackie (Sandy), Christopher Keyte (Blazes), Ian Comboy (Arthur). Collins Classics 14152.

literature

  • English Touring Opera, program from autumn 2012
  • Amanda Holden (Ed.): The New Penguin Opera Guide . Penguin Putnam, New York 2001, ISBN 0-14-029312-4
  • Study score and piano reduction, both edited by Chester Music

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Thomas Siedhoff: Lighthouse, The. In: Piper's Encyclopedia of Musical Theater . Volume 1: Works. Abbatini - Donizetti. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1986, ISBN 3-492-02411-4 , pp. 688-689.
  2. ↑ Craig Mair and Peter Maxwell Davies : Introductions to the Score on maxopus.com , accessed February 17, 2017.
  3. ↑ a b c d The Lighthouse. In: Harenberg opera guide. 4th edition. Meyers Lexikonverlag, 2003, ISBN 3-411-76107-5 , pp. 172-173.
  4. ↑ Andrew Clements:  Lighthouse, The. In: Grove Music Online (English; subscription required).
  5. ↑ a b Peter Maxwell Davies : Composer's Notes on maxopus.com , accessed February 17, 2017.
  6. ↑ a b work information on maxopus.com , accessed on February 17, 2017.
  7. ↑ Paul Griffiths: Ghosts at Seaby on maxopus.com , accessed February 17, 2017.
  8. ^ Kurt Pahlen : The new opera lexicon. Seehamer, Weyarn 2000, ISBN 3-934058-58-2 , p. 152.
  9. ↑ a b c Ulrich Schreiber : Opera guide for advanced learners. The 20th Century I. From Verdi and Wagner to Fascism. Bärenreiter, Kassel 2000, ISBN 3-7618-1436-4 , pp. 583-585.