Classical and opera: Spooky lighthouse tale's spirit lives on in Max's visionary masterpiece

THERE'S something horrifyingly spooky about Sir Peter Maxwell Davies' chamber opera The Lighthouse. The story alone – based on the true life events of three lighthouse keepers who mysteriously disappeared from their remote Flannan Isles lighthouse in 1900 – is enough to make the hairs rise on the back of the neck. To this day, the mystery, rivalling that of the Marie Celeste, has never been solved.

Davies – or Max as he is universally known – took the tale and turned it into a gripping ghost opera. But he changed the location to the fictional island of Fladda to avoid offending any surviving descendants of the missing men, and in his own probing and often ecstatic libretto left the mystery teasingly unsolved.

It was an outstanding success, and 30 years on its reappearance as the opening event in this year's St Magnus Festival on Friday – which threads a general theme of lighthouses through its six-day programme – looks set to reassert it as the visionary masterpiece it is.

But beware. It is also worth remembering that odd things occurred when The Lighthouse was originally premiered at the 1980 Edinburgh Festival – inexplicable coincidences that sent a chill through the original cast. On the very night of its first performance, the automatic light in the real Flannan lighthouse mysteriously failed. No reason could be found, and a helicopter crew – similar to those who discover the abandoned lighthouse in the opera – simply switched it back on the following day.

More tragically, a member of the production team, while involved in technical discussions about depicting three floating bodies in the sea, was interrupted by a message that his brother, a merchant seaman, had been washed overboard off the African coast and had drowned.

Despite such chilling associations, the cast and musicians of this week's new production have no fears for its success. Central to the performance is Manchester-based contemporary music ensemble Psappha, who will underpin the three-strong vocal cast of James Oxley, Damian Thantrey and Jonathan Best with music that is among the Orkney-based composer's most psychologically evocative and disturbing.

"We performed it earlier this year in Lancaster, and take it to Buxton after Orkney," says Psappha's artistic director and percussionist Tim Williams. But the whole idea of it coming to Orkney was a major factor in shaping the concept of this new production, which can be glimpsed on Psappha's website, www.psappha.com.

"In the initial brief to the designer and director I made it clear that we must be able to perform it in a theatre, a concert hall and a sports centre," says Williams.

He is referring, of course, to Kirkwall's multi-functional, but more obviously sports-orientated, Pickaquoy Centre, which is where most of the festival's large-scale events take place. On Saturday, for instance, festival regular Martyn Brabbins conducts the Royal Scottish National Orchestra – its first ever St Magnus visit – in Vaughan Williams' A Sea Symphony along with the Festival Chorus, the Huddersfield Choral Society and soloists Lisa Milne and Peter Sidholm.

Other festival visitors include the Endellion String Quartet, performing Haydn's Seven Last Words of the Cross with narration by the newly knighted poet Andrew Motion. Wendy Cope appears the following day with the quartet in The Audience, a setting of Cope's own words by upcoming composer Roxanna Panufnik.

But Psappha have a special place in this festival, with involvement in the now-annual Orkney Composers' and Conductors' Courses. They also give a late-night performance of Max's dark-hued Image Reflection Shadow in the magical sunset ambience of St Magnus Cathedral, and then a Monday lunchtime performance of Kettltoft Inn – showing Max's lighter side through its jigs and reels – with Northumbrian pipes player Kathryn Tickell.

And there's a ghostly fascination about the ensemble, too, in its uncanny resemblance to the legendary Fires of London, the mixed instrumental group set up in the 1960s (originally as the Pierrot Players) by Max and fellow composer Harrison Birtwistle to perform music specially written for them, including such crazy theatrical classics as Max's Eight Songs for a Mad King, but which disappeared into oblivion in 1987.

"It's no accident," Williams admits. "The Fires came to Liverpool when I was at school and played Max's music. The memory stayed with me until we set up Psappha in 1991. It seemed sensible to adopt the same instrumental line-up as lots of contemporary repertoire was already written for it." Not surprisingly the new group found Max's music perfect for their purpose. "I got to know him, he suggested we play Miss Donnithorne's Maggot, he then agreed to become our patron, and we've been strongly associated with his music ever since," Williams explains.

As a result, Psappha often suffers from being labelled The Fires reincarnate. They premiered Mr Emmet takes a Walk, which Max wrote for their last St Magnus Festival appearance in 2000. Their own CD label features excellent recordings of his music. "But we do play other stuff," says Williams, referring to chunks of Kurtag and Mozart included in their Orkney performances.

Even so, Psappha's presence this week promises to rekindle ghostly memories of the ensemble they originally modelled themselves on. On top of the troubled spirits of The Lighthouse, that's a scary thought.

• The St Magnus Festival runs from 19-24 June. For full details, visit www.stmagnusfestival.com