Entering a New Aria

Published on Friday 8 February 2008 15:45

FIFTEEN minutes can be a long time in opera. The morning after the first orchestral rehearsal, it's a fact that is being roundly brought home to the five 'novice' opera librettists – including Ian Rankin and Alexander McCall Smith – who have agreed to take part in Scottish Opera's innovative FIVE:15 programme. It is the first time that they have heard their librettos transformed into music. And surprisingly, perhaps, everyone is happy.

"It's overwhelming, amazing. With Scottish Opera, everything is just so big," says award-winning novelist, poet and opera enthusiast Ron Butlin – working with composer Lyell Cresswell on their opera, The Perfect Woman. Probably the most operatically experienced of the five writers, Butlin has four short chamber operas already under his belt and a past history of writing pop lyrics.

"I found it very moving, even though I'd written it. The music breathed a new life into it," agrees novelist Suhayl Saadi, whose short story, 'The Queens Of Govan', taken from his novel Psycho Rag, was the basis of the eponymous 15-minute opera he has written with composer Nigel Osborne and sarod virtuoso Wajahat Khan. It marries the virtuoso improvisation of the Indian classical tradition to the Western 'fusion' contemporary interests of Osborne in a story about a Glasgow girl of Pakistani descent coming to terms with her mixed heritage. While there will be many surprises from all the protagonists on the night, on paper, musically, The Queens of Govan suggests the most radical redesign of the operatic medium – a 'new' slant on a centuries old tradition.

Scottish Opera might be looking to the future of the art form, but participants must, at least in some manner, have an eye to the past in order to be able to revive and remodel a medium that some critics have branded 'dead'. They aren't the only company to be concerned with the future of the art form, but their approach is very different to the likes of the Manchester International Festival, which last year commissioned Damon Albarn to write Monkey: Journey to the West.

"What I was struck by was the amazing untapped literary and musical talent in Scotland," says general director Alex Reedijk. "We've got some fantastic writers, none of whom have written an opera, but writing a full-length opera straight off is daunting and a risk. I'd go up to artists at operas or concerts and say, 'So where's this opera you're writing for us? You're late.'" The interest was so great that Reedijk already had the second year of FIVE:15 lined up before the first set of writers had so much as set pen to paper.

"It's so good, the idea of getting experienced well-known writers to work with composers," says Creswell, who came to opera relatively late in his compositional career with the successful but short-run 2005 chamber opera (penned by Butlin) Good Angel, Bad Angel. "It could broaden the audience because people coming to hear these well-known writers might discover something in music, and people going for the music might find new writing they wouldn't otherwise have come across."

If names such as Rankin can bring in a younger, or less opera-savvy crowd, there is still the question of whether these five respected writers can actually write a working opera libretto. After all, the music is all-important. The words, particularly at 15 minutes, have to be shorn down to a minimum, chopped and changed to fit a composer's desire for rhythm or repeats, and – worst of all – left 50% unheard amidst an operatic wash of orchestra and staging.

"I haven't got any problem with that," says Rankin. "It just stretched me, the idea of trying to write like that. The last time I wrote any lyrics was as a teenager when I was in a rock band. This is just such a unique idea, taking people brand new to the form and giving them a chance to do this. It's incredibly risky."

Rankin, clearly fascinated by the process of writing for his musical partner, Oscar-wining composer Craig Armstrong, found that most of the collaboration was done over e-mail, in contrast to best-selling No1 Ladies' Detective Agency novelist Alexander McCall Smith, who thrashed out his opera, Dream Angus, with his partners, director Ben Twist and composer Stephen Deazley over "lots of coffee".

Rankin – no stranger to marrying the dark with the humorous – spent some time debating the matter of style in the early stages of his opera on the life of 16th-century composer and murderer Gesualdo. The opera opens with a darkly OTT stabbing scene.

"It's not tongue in cheek, there's no irony here," Rankin told me last year as he was putting the final touches to his libretto. "Mind you, at the beginning, it's a bit jokey isn't it?" he said, turning to Craig Armstrong. "Maybe we should strip that out so the audience don't think it's post-modern and poking fun at the ideas of grand opera. We might just have to play it so straight that that bit's got to go."

A scan through the other synopses suggests no one has gone for an all-out 'opera buffa', but that's not to say that there aren't elements of humour laced throughout the night. Director Ben Twist tells me that Dream Angus promises some surprises and, while "it has an important and serious core to it, there's a lot of fun in the middle of it. It's humorous and charming in that way that only Sandy can do".

It's here, though, in the juxtaposition of the 'charming' humour of a McCall Smith, the 'dark' nightmare vision of a Rankin, the intensity of a Butlin, and the cultural fusion of a Saadi, that the night will stand or fall. At 15 minutes, each opera is very much dependent on the others.

"What we very much want people to do is see these operas as a night's entertainment," says dramaturg Michael McCarthy, artistic director of Music Theatre Wales, and a familiar artistic face at Scottish Opera. "We're not creating a new art form. We're not saying opera can be done in 15 minutes. We're looking for new partnerships."

And whether or not you are an opera fan, FIVE:15 undoubtedly represents a good punt for your money. As Rankin says – paraphrasing Armstrong: "If you don't like one opera, just wait 15 minutes and another one will come along."

• Oran Mor, Glasgow (0844 847 1645), February 29, 7.30pm, March 1, 3pm and 7.30pm, and March 2, 3pm; The Hub, Edinburgh (0131-473 2000), March 8, 3pm and 7.30pm, March 9, 3pm