Opera review: The Lady From The Sea, King’s Theatre, Edinburgh

Craig Armstrong’s new opera, The Lady From The Sea, was premiered last night as the first of a set of new chamber operas that Scottish Opera is unveiling over the final few days of the Edinburgh Festival.

The Lady from the Sea

King’s Theatre, Edinburgh

Star rating: * * *

Armstrong has a strong libretto to work with – Zoë Strachan’s taut compression of Henrik Ibsen’s psychologically stifling play of the same name – which, by the very nature of the exercise, is punchy, high-energy narrative.

From that, the composer has devised a score that is intoxicating in the images it amplifies – a dense minimalist soundscape that hangs like a dark cloud, obstinately stagnant in tonality (like the heroine Ellida’s mental entrapment), and magically transformed to match the unclouded resolution. Ever the film composer.

And filmic solutions are fundamental to the joint visual input of director Harry Fehr and designer Yannis Thavoris, whose uncluttered treatment of the quick-fire episodical structure is strikingly deepened by evocative watery projections.

Slightly disappointing is Armstrong’s reluctance to allow the singers scope to expand their lyrical presence.

He is well-served by a cast whose slick acting covers over the cracks, Claire Booth’s troubled Ellida, Mark Milhofer’s lean Wangel and Alexander Sprague’s personable Lyngstrand especially.

Conductor Derek Clark realises many magical moments from Armstrong’s orchestral score.