Opera review: Amadeus & The Bard, Auchinleck Academy

WHERE better to catch up with Scottish Opera’s youth touring project, Amadeus & The Bard, than in the heart of Ayrshire? The Bard, of course, is Robert Burns; and the imagined setting for this performance, Poosie Nansie’s pub in Mauchline, immortalised in his poems. Auchinleck is but a stone’s throw along the A76.

Burns, Mozart, their women and friends, their words and music, are all introduced

Amadeus & The Bard, Auchinleck Academy ****

But what of Amadeus? We often forget that Mozart (1756-91) and Burns (1759-96) lived near-identical life spans. Both died young; both were freemasons; both creative geniuses whose zest for life ran counter to its practicalities. They were “18th Century Cosmic Brothers”, proclaims creator/director Mary McCluskey in her programme note. Her review-style entertainment is a relentless series of vignettes, pulling the similarities of vice and virtue together with terrifying energy. Blink and the hour is gone.

Story-wise, it is surface-deep, but the players make it buzz. They mingle pre-performance, chatting to a backdrop of Shannon Stevenson’s itinerant fiddling. Then the action proper: the hearty landlord (actor Andy Clark) introducing us to Burns, Mozart, their cronies, their women; to poems, songs, operatic scenes and arias, and the bloodcurdling underpinning of Tam O’Shanter with music from Mozart’s Requiem. And who ever considered combining “A Man’s a Man For a’ That” with Mozart’s Queen of the Night aria? Onstage musical director Karen MacIver did, and what a cracking finale it makes.

Besides Clark’s centrifugal delivery, the charismatic, versatile leadership of Scottish Opera emerging artist Arthur Bruce and soprano Stephanie Stanway galvanised the surrounding multipurpose troupe fr om Scottish Opera’s Youth Company. Simple, but engaging.

KEN WALTON

On tour around Scotland until 11 October