Aria waves

Published on Saturday 16 June 2007 00:50

ST KILDA - A EUROPEAN OPERA IS a big cultural event by anyone's standards. A dizzyingly ambitious Gaelic-language opera, backed by a 2 million (£1.4m) budget, it's being performed simultaneously in five countries. Its principal performance is not in London, or central Scotland, but Stornoway, from where images will be relayed across Europe to audiences in Austria, Belgium, France and Germany, as well as being broadcast live on the BBC website. The logistics are mind-boggling.

The whole thing is such a big deal that you couldn't steal its thunder if you wanted to. Here's the most unusual part, though - St Kilda is far from the only major cultural event competing for our attention in the Highlands and Islands this summer. The region best known for small-scale ceilidhs, craft fairs and folk festivals is suddenly home to big-budget projects attracting massive funding and international attention. They include the opening of a chic new museum, a two-day land art event, a large-scale community performance and a one-man show that takes a walk on the wild side. Anyone fed up with the tyranny of the Central Belt arts axis will be delighted that, even if it's only for a month or two, Scotland's centre of cultural gravity has shifted north.

Earlier this month, as reported in these pages, the people of Lerwick woke up to a brand new Shetland Museum and Archive, a superb 11.6m complex on the waterfront at Hay's Dock. As well as the spacious display of 3,000 artefacts over two floors, there are 30 pieces of public art, a substantial research library and a restaurant with one of the best views in Scotland. It was officially opened by Prince Charles, the Duchess of Cornwall and Queen Sonja of Norway. Openings don't come more prestigious than that.

"When there were rumblings to get a new museum in the middle of the 1980s it was thought that something half the size of this would have been approaching big enough," says Dr Ian Tait, curator and collections officer, relishing the new space. "The fact that the gallery is much larger means we can put everything in context."

For tourists and locals, it's a loving celebration of the area's history. Much the same could be said of The Elgin Macbeth, a production by the National Theatre of Scotland's Learn department performed in the ruined Elgin Cathedral on 20-23 June. Featuring a cast of no fewer than 80, including professionals, amateurs and children from the high schools of Moray, it will combine highlights of Shakespeare's play with local folklore, as well as art installations, Gaelic singing, drumming, music and dance. "The Elgin Macbeth promises to radically re-interpret the Scottish Play and will stimulate participants, the local community and audiences to look beyond Shakespeare's illustrious text to the man who inspired it," says director Simon Sharkey.

The event is consistent with the policy of the NTS to involve people all over the country, not just as audiences but also as participants, irrespective of where they live. We've come to expect national theatres to be grand and imposing temples to high culture, big-city institutions serving the classics to a metropolitan elite, so it's all the more refreshing that Vicky Featherstone's company has no such ambition.

A case in point is Venus as a Boy, actor Tam Dean Burn's adaptation of the recent novel by Luke Sutherland. Telling the story of a promiscuous young man from South Ronaldsay, the play will eventually have a high-profile run at the Traverse theatre during the Edinburgh Fringe and will go on to play in London's Soho Theatre, but the NTS has made sure the tour begins where the book and Sutherland himself started out - on Orkney. The run begins at the St Magnus Festival, calling in at Hoy, Kirkwall and Stromness.

Only then does it head south on the same route as the central character, a misfit whose escape to London allows him to exploit his one great talent: the ability to bring intense sexual satisfaction to everyone he sleeps with.

"The NTS allowed us to have a development week in Orkney and another in Soho, which was great," says Burn, who will be joined on stage by Sutherland himself in his guise as a musician. "It really has helped because the locations are so important to the novel. This is the first NTS show to make it to Orkney and it's great to get a relationship with the St Magnus Festival going."

More ambitious still is the first production to be announced by the NTS for its autumn season, a collaboration with the environmental art company NVA and an event best described as "destination theatre". Talking place in Kilmartin Glen in Argyll, Half Life is not only a site-specific play performed in a forest, but also a celebration of the area's Neolithic heritage. As well as seeing the performance - a play about an archaeologist - audiences will spend two days exploring the pre-historic henges, burial sites and rocks marked with cup-and-ring designs, some of them enhanced with sound installations.

"The NTS is a theatre without walls dedicated to working across Scotland," says director Angus Farquhar. "It's a remarkably ambitious, difficult, challenging programme and they really are delivering it in spades. The partnership between the NTS and NVA has brought me back to theatre and I've really enjoyed the creative dialogue."

All of which suggests that when St Kilda - A European Opera opens in Stornoway, Valenciennes, Hallstatt, Dsseldorf and Mons this month its scale and ambition will only be typical of the bullish confidence at large in the Highlands and Islands.

It's certainly the case that co-producer Malcolm Maclean, of Proiseact nan Ealan (PNE), the Gaelic arts agency, was ready for a meaty challenge. Having organised the international tour of the Great Book of Gaelic, an art and poetry project described as a modern-day Book of Kells, Maclean was so convinced by French producer Lew Bogdan's idea for an opera about the abandoned island of St Kilda that he agreed to PNE becoming the lead partner in a five-country consortium.

"We intended from the outset to make it as large a scale as we could," he says. "The Great Book of Gaelic became an exhibition, a book, a BBC film, three different radio series, a CD, an education pack, a website, and it's now been touring for five years to more than 50 locations.

"We were emerging from that project when this one came along and we were beginning to understand the advantages of scale, particularly for Gaelic. All too often people expect Gaelic arts to surface in small community centres, yet there is widespread international interest in Gaelic and we've grown accustomed to the challenges of working on this sort of scale."

Even so, when he first heard Bogdan's idea, Maclean had his doubts. The St Kilda archipelago is as remote as islands get, being 40 miles away even from North Uist and, since the human population was evacuated in 1930, it is deserted apart from summer volunteers and military personnel.

"Bogdan came to us looking for logistical help and my initial response was it was a crazy concept," he laughs. "I've been out there on a number of occasions and I've fished there. I knew the challenges that were involved.

"But this is the kind of lunacy that deserves to be encouraged, so we spent a week out there and during that time I realised this was a credible proposition."

Infused with traditional Gaelic song, Mac-Talla Nan Eun, to give it its Gaelic title, is composed by Jean-Paul Dessy and David Graham with a libretto by playwright Iain Finlay Macleod. It will be staged alongside incredible footage of the French vertical dance company Retouramont performing a dramatic aerial ballet suspended from the Hebridean cliffs.

The directors of each production - Communicado's Gerry Mulgrew directs the Scottish show - are free to choose when and where to use this film, shot by Keith Partridge of Touching the Void fame, and they are similarly free to mix in the live feed coming from Mulgrew's production in Stornoway, archive film and other footage shot on location in St Kilda last summer. "I think it will be quite exceptional," says Maclean. "The aural experience in each location will be very similar, but the visual experience will be startlingly different."

The result will be five productions that are both interlinked and independent, giving the Hebrides and the Gaelic language a tremendous moral boost at home and abroad. "St Kilda is part of the Hebridean islands and a lot of its story is echoed across the islands to this day," he says, aware of the irony that the money now being spent by the Ministry of Defence and other agencies would have been enough to sustain a permanent community. "Similarly, the St Kilda story has a fascination worldwide because people see echoes of other stories in it. We've already generated a huge level of media interest across Europe and there will be a very significant raising of the profile of Gaelic and St Kilda. That is also good for Scotland."

Maclean hopes the opera will achieve even more than that, however. By raising awareness that St Kilda is the UK's only double world heritage site, he aims to establish a museum located somewhere in sight of St Kilda and dedicated to the island's story. "There isn't even a finger painted on a sign saying, 'St Kilda: look this way,'" he says. "It's important for something on this scale to make a fabulous artistic experience, but also to leave a legacy. We're making significant progress on a proposal for a St Kilda Centre which would be a permanent celebration of the place."

All of which justifies such a feat of co-operation. "I sometimes think it would have been easier to tow St Kilda to Europe," he laughs. "This is as big as I'm willing to go for the time being."

• St Kilda - A European Opera, is at Studio Alba, Stornoway, 22-23 June; The Elgin Macbeth is at Elgin Cathedral, 20-23 June; Venus as a Boy is at the St Magnus Festival, Orkney, 25-27 June and touring; Half Life is at Kilmartin Glen, 4-16 September. See page 9 for more on the St Magnus Festival.

The shows taking the high road this summer

ST KILDA - A EUROPEAN OPERA

WHAT IS IT? An ambitious Gaelic opera to be staged in Stornoway, as well as four other locations around Europe, on 22- 23 June.

HOW CAN I SEE IT? The Scottish performances are at Studio Alba, Stornoway. Tickets are 20 (conc 15) from the An Lanntair box office, 01851 703307. The opera will also be broadcast live by the BBC, although only on the internet. Visit www.stkilda.eu for details.

THE ELGIN MACBETH

WHAT IS IT? An "interactive multi-media installation" at Elgin Cathedral by the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS), which audiences can visit during the day before watching a new version of Shakespeare's play in the same setting in the evening.

HOW CAN I SEE IT? Elgin Cathedral, 20-23 June. Tickets cost 12/8; book online at www.nationaltheatrescotland.com, or at the cathedral shop.

VENUS AS A BOY

WHAT IS IT? An adaptation of Luke Sutherland's novel, also by the NTS, whose tour follows the book's journey from Orkney to London. Tam Dean Burn stars.

HOW CAN I SEE IT? Gable End Theatre, Hoy, on 25 June; Orkney Arts Theatre, Kirkwall, on 26 June; Stromness Town Hall, 27 June (tel: [phone] for all three venues); Ullapool Village Hall, 30 June, 01854 612103, then at the Traverse, Edinburgh, during the Fringe, tel: [phone]. Ticket prices vary from venue to venue.

HALF LIFE

WHAT IS IT? The latest show from NVA, the company behind large-scale outdoor happenings such as The Path and The Storr. Half Life is an outdoor evening show about "the dark but inspiring mindset of Scotland's early Neolithic inhabitants", to be performed on a circular sculptural set made from hundreds of felled logs. During the day, audiences can visit a series of installations around prehistoric landmarks. This is NVA's first collaboration with the National Theatre of Scotland, so expect something closer to a theatrical experience than the company's previous work.

HOW CAN I SEE IT? The show is at Kilmartin Glen, Argyll, 4-16 September. Tickets cost 20/12 and can be bought from Hub tickets on 0131-473 2056. Further information at the show's website, www.halflife.org.uk