My Opinion piece for The Guardian was published today.
I
am really pleased to be able to document nationally the exciting energy in the
industry at the moment around women composers. The article is already
generating a storm of comments. Got to love a controversial topic!
Australia's
female composers are having a moment. We need to harness that energy.
“Everything
I’ve ever wanted to do would’ve been easier had I been a boy. But never mind, I
never paid much attention to it, I just marched in and there I was.”
These
fighting words come from Peggy
Glanville-Hicks (1912-1990), arguably the most famous female composer
in her time and one of the first Australian women to march into the
male-dominated world of composition.
Back
then, the costs were high: Glanville-Hicks’s colleague Margaret Sutherland was
married to a psychiatrist who thought a woman wanting to compose music was a
sign of mental illness, while many women had to lie about their gender in order
to be published. The positions on the boards and in the institutions were held
by men who also received the majority of the commissions.
Today
women make up 26% of Australian composers, sound artists and improvising
performers. It’s not close to gender parity but the figures do stack up well
internationally – the only country to fare better is Estonia with 30%. Women
make up about 20% of American and Polish composers but, for most countries, the
average is a woeful 15%.
Women
have also made a significant contribution to Australia’s music history, often
punching above their male contemporaries. Sutherland almost single-handedly
pioneered modernism in Australia music and, in 1938, Glanville-Hicks was the
first person to represent Australia at the International Society of
Contemporary Music. Anne Boyd smashed through the glass ceiling to become the
first woman and first Australian to be appointed professor of music at the
University of Sydney in 1991. Today Liza Lim, Mary Finsterer and Elena
Kats-Chernin are likely to rank higher internationally than their male
contemporaries.
Sadly,
however, the majority of women still struggle with visibility. According to
musicologist Sally Macarthur, women’s music represented only 11% of the works
performed at new music concerts in 2013. In the concert halls where the more
conservative orchestras reside, it is far rarer to hear a work by a female
composer – dead or alive.
But
a new surge of energy is bringing female composers into the spotlight. In
August, hundreds of women, including myself, will gather at the Women in the
Creative Arts conference in Canberra as part of a wave of industry activism –
hopefully, they say, for the last time.
I managed to snap a selfie with composer Kate Neal last night at the world premiere of her work Never Tilt a Chair. The work sat most satisfyingly alongside Mauricio Kagel's iconic Dressur which was receiving it's long-overdue Australian premiere.
with composer Kate Neal
Hooray for Tura New Music and PICA for bringing it about. I am impressed again by Louise Devenish - yet another awesome contribution to the Perth new music scene, with the support of her fellow leading theatre-music percussionists Leah Scholes and Vanessa Tomlinson. I love concerts like these: so much to see, so much to hear.
The set for Never Tilt Your Chair
Leah Schole, Vanessa Tomlinson and Louise Devenish
I’m always interested to follow the progress of composers from Women of Note. Elena Kats-Chernin’s output continues at an incredible speed. Her many fans will be pleased to know her latest album is another collaboration with pianist Tamara-Anna Cislowska, this time with Eric Satie as the muse. Unsent love letters contains 26 miniatures by Kats-Chernin inspired by Satie’s extraordinary life and music.
“Satie’s life was a fascinating, fervoursome affair,” says pianist Tamara-Anna Cislowska, who recorded the album, “from the first strike of love and then lifelong estrangement with artist and muse Suzanne Valadon, to the unexpected celebrity and conflict of his last ten years. After he died friends, gaining access to his apartment for the first time in almost three decades, found conditions both perplexing and romantically fastidious in their own way: two grand pianos one atop the other, one chair, one table, seven velvet suits and the love letters – many, many unsent love letters.”
The album reflects on idiosyncrasies and anecdotes from Satie’s life, with music that ranges from seductive orientalism to hypnotic melodies reminiscent of the ground-breaking, transcendent beauty of Satie’s own piano pieces. Kats-Chernin's miniature ‘imaginary building’ reflects on Satie's sketches of imaginary buildings (which he even advertised in the newspaper for rent and purchase); ‘very shiny’is a reflection on one of his characteristically opaque performance directions and ‘postcard to a critic’ is named after Satie’s explosive response to a negative review (leading to a spell in gaol).
Kats-Chernin and Cislowska
The buoyant rhythms and rhapsodic harmonic style that have brought Kats-Chernin a reputation as one of the best-loved composers of her generation provide the perfect lens to reflect on a musical great of the previous century. Together Kats-Chernin and Cislowska The album is released today by Universal Music and available from ABC Shops and iTunes.
Last night's concert ticked so many musical boxes I'm not sure where to start!
Eighth Blackbird
The premiere of a work by a young woman composer was always going to grab the attention of the author of a book on Australian women composers. Holly Harrison's Lobster Tails and Turtle Soup was premiered by Eighth Blackbird, America's rockstars of classical music. Clarinetist Michael Maccaferri from the sextet described the work as extremely difficult, (even for them!) but it exploded off the page with a quirky energy that had the audience in raptures. Harrison drew inspiration from the nonsensical writing of Lewis Carol and her music captured the whimsy and madness incredibly well in a mash of extended techniques, experimental rock and blues.
with Holly Harrison shortly before her world premiere
Harrison's work sat alongside works written in the past four years by American composers Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner, Timo Andres and Ted Hearnes. These are composers born in the 70's and 80's and young enough to be freer than previous generations of the style-police of modernist ideology - free in other words to be the composers they want to be. Yes there were plenty of modernist extended techniques and nods to minimalist composers but there were also hip hop vibes and musical conversations about contemporary art and politics.
Eighth Blackbird played with professionalism and high octane energy. As an ensemble they were tightly coordinated but also able to relax into a groove.
There was a sense of an international family, drawn together under the umbrella of the organisation Musica Viva, (with support from the Perth Festival). American performers rocking out to music by an Australian composer, with program notes by UK critic Jessica Duchen and an audience of very enthusiastic new music appreciators.
Setting up for Pre-concert talk
I admit to being pleasantly surprised at the full chairs for my pre-concert talk and the large concert hall crowd. There was an atmosphere of enthusiasm and curiosity. The questions in the post show Meet the Artist interview came from mostly elderly audience members (exploding my sterotypes!) who were keen to clarify and learn more. Musica Viva has educated and grown an audience who do not fear the unknown.
This concert was a gift: music written today, for us, for our time. Thank you Musica Viva for being one of the few Australian organisations brave enough to champion this repertoire.
On Monday night I had the privilege of presenting the pre-concert talk at the launch of Musica Viva's national Beilman & Tyson tour. I've often thought it would be a lot of fun to give a pre-concert talk, and I was right!
Selling books at Perth Concert Hall
I enjoyed preparing by reading scores and listening to violin sonatas by Mozart, Janacek, Saint Saens and Jane Stanley, and I enjoyed sharing my discoveries with the audience. The sonatas essentially chartered the development of the violin sonata genre from the 18th century to present day. They were well-crafted in their different ways. Each was built around a motif or pool of notes that generated the structure of the entire work. My goal was to highlight those themes so the audience could recognise them in performance. It makes such a huge difference to the listening experience if the audience feels they are following the musical conversation.
One of the pieces on the program was by Australian composer Jane Stanley, so I was also invited to sell copies of Women of Note at interval. What a fabulous opportunity! It's nights like these where I really love my job!
It is always hard to know whether these public speaking gigs have been a success or not, but I received overwhelmingly enthusiastic responses from the audience, including from a self-described 'concert virgin' who said I was his life-saver and had been very interesting. I was also told I was difficult to hear, a serious issue given most in the audience were elderly and probably struggling with hearing complications. I will have to project my voice more in the future!
My greatest challenge was to present the music of Jane Stanley in a way that was going to help open the ears of the audience to a musical language they were less familiar with. Stanley's music is unique and incredibly beautiful. Here is an excerpt of what I shared:
JANE STANLEY b Sydney 1976 Cerulean Orbits
Stanley follows a tradition of female Australian composers who have made significant
contributions to Australian music. 25% of Australian composers are women, more
than almost any other western country. Women began being recognised as
composers at the beginning of the 20th century. Margaret Sutherland was the mother of
women composers in Australia and her impact was huge – she almost
single-handedly pioneered Australian new music in the first half of the
century. She was one of the first
composers to develop a uniquely
Australian musical voice. She had a hard life, married to a psychiatrist
who thought a woman wanting to compose music was a sign of mental illness! She
once said
“My musical life has been a frustration of half promises, then bad
performances, followed by no more performances. The world at large thinks a
woman can’t be creative. A woman can contribute in a special way. I don’t think
that women want to write the same thing as men, but their contribution is no
less important.”
I
share that with you as an example of the difficulties women have had and in some
cases are still having trying to find equal footing in the male dominated world
of composition. Research done in the last few years shows there are still
visibility issues for women composers who are under represented in
commissioning, concert programs, radio programs and as staff in music education
faculties. Which is why the Hildegard project and its commissioning of women
composers is so important. Because there
are SO MANY fabulous women composers out there, particularly in Australia,
where as I mentioned 25% of our composers are women, far more than for example
the UK and Finland who clock in at 13% and the US which has 20%. It really is our best kept secret and I am
delighted to see Musica Viva celebrating this with the Hildegard commissioning project.
Jane
fits into what I would call the emerging 4th generation of Australian
women composers. She was born in the 70’s when the definition of classical
music had broadened considerably since the days of Sutherland. Jane is a fairly traditional composer
in that she writes for traditional instruments as distinct from electronics or
noise or performance installations. Jane has studied her craft very deeply - studied
with the greats of Australian composers: Peter Sculthorpe, Ross Edwards and Bernard Rands in the US.She has participated at the Wellesley
Composers Conference, Tanglewood and Aspen Music Festival. She also completed
a PhD in composition at University of Sydney under Ann Boyd, from whom she
learned an appreciation for space and silence.
Stanley is now
Lecturer in music at University of Glasgow where the Scots have embraced her
and aren’t letting go – she has been there 10 years. Jane tells me she is very
sad she is unable to return to Australia for the premiere of this work. The
reason is because has a two month old baby who is still a little small for flying.
As
a composer she has established very distinctive voice. In
most of her works there is an absence of recognisable time signature or pulse.
Which gives a floating, drifting, stasis. It has a hazy weightlessness. It is beautiful and otherworldly but also sometimes
wild.
The composer
indicates in the program notes of Cerulean Orbits that the two
instruments are orbiting around each other. Their music is drawn from the same
pool of notes and the composer allows them sometimes to blend, sometimes to
antagonise each other.
You
will notice the piano is emancipated from being a purely accompaniment
instrument; both instruments are complete equals. In fact the piano often treated like
violin – as a single line shared between the two hands rather than block
chords.
Analysis:
The music is very
carefully crafted – it is not just random notes! Piano
begins with a sextuplet of semiquavers which is the thematic core of the work. (Play sample on piano). This
is the pool of notes getting introduced that will be the core of the piece. Then the violin
enters and hovers on B for 6 bars. In the score the piano part is marked ‘smeared’ and the violin par ‘featherlike’. Jane’s textural style is coming through - it is very tactile; the composer wants us to experience this like it is
coming into contact with our skin! There are huge variation of dynamics and articulation
the composer has written into the score giving it an instant intensity even
though it is flowing and gentle.
The piano
part is typical Stanley - scattered notes over a sustained pedal, sounding like droplets.
Notes are grouped in 3's, 5's, 6's, spread across the beat so the effect is
unpredictable, ungrounded, pulseless, a bit of a nod to Luciano Berio’s piano
writing.
The middle
section is where it gets wild, the score is marked "pulsating... hammered... propulsive... fff " It is excited and busy, the sort of music that
causes audiences to say “It’s not music,
its too noisy.” Did you know Mozart’s
music was criticised for the same thing? Archduke Ferdinand criticised one of
Mozart’s pieces for having "too many notes”! Mozart’s ideas exploded beyond the
perimeters of what was usual or predictable and people found it hard to digest.
It sounds so elegant and simple to us now. So don’t be put off by the ‘noise’,
instead recognise it as fresh thinking that our ears aren’t yet accustomed to.
The
sense of calm returns at the end of Cerulean Orbits, and the sextuplet from the opening
is heard again. This time the piano gets the repeated B’s. it is a floating, spacious ending.
The challenge
with contemporary music like this is how to make the ideas and phrases clear
even when the usual signposts that our ears are used to from traditional music
aren’t there?
Two
Tips:
Listen
to the texture. Some of Jane’s music
is sparse so you get to listen to the beauty and colour of each note as it
passes. There are also great washes of sound and the contrast between the
textures is like listening to a trickling stream compared to the crashing waves
of the ocean.
Watch
the performers - they help with
this: it is their job to bring out the different colours in each phrase, to make
each note extremely beautiful. Their body language will hopefully cue the mood
changes, to draw us in so we are enthralled.
The enterprising Australian composer Betty Beath has created a YouTube channel where you can access free recordings of her music. There are now almost twenty recordings of her work available with original graphic illustrations by her partner, the illustrator David Cox.
Betty Beath
The latest addition is a solo piano piece called A Little Love Music, taken from the album The Music of Betty Beath on the Wirrapang label. There are three songs, the first "A Loving Embrace" opens with a jazz-inflected spread chord. The harmony continues to wander unsettled with glimpses of Betty's familiar gamelan sounds imbedded in what is a wistful, unhurried song. "Let's Dance" is more chromatic and didactic while "Dance... very slowly" returns to the meandering feel of the opening. Despite the sentimental title there is nothing saccharine about these carefully crafted little snapshots, with harmonic twists and turns that are equally surprising and delightful.
David Cox's idiomatic sketches (he has done some fabulous children's books) are emboldened by strong colours and the video includes photographs of the two artists.
I wanted to share this gift as it is another lovely opportunity to access the music of this much-recorded and highly regarded composer, who is well into her eighties and continues to compose and work with community ensembles in Brisbane where she lives.
It's time to take a fresh look at Australian history!
On Tuesday August 9th a the University of Western Australia I will be sharing some startling discoveries about the contribution of women to Australian classical music. My presentation will draw on research from my book Women of Note to piece together the missing pieces of history, sharing stories and music from women composers spanning the twentieth century to today.
The presentation is part of UWA's Research Seminar series and will be held 5pm at the Tunley Lecture Theatre in the School of Music. Entry is free. I am looking forward to sharing my work with music lovers and colleagues in the music industry. Hope to see you there!
Ollivier-PhillippeCuneo is well known around Perth for his conducting and violin playing. Less
well known is the blossoming of his composing career. Cuneo has been based in
Paris since 2012 and is back in Perth this month for the premiere on Saturday of
a work commissioned by the Fremantle Chamber Orchestra.
Le
Verre Siffleur is named after the cafe at the end of Cuneo’s street and pays
musical tribute to French cafe life including an elegy to the victims of the 13th
November terrorist attacks. It was commissioned by the FCO after the
enthusiastic reception to Cuneo’s opus one Between Two Moons which the
orchestra premiered in February.
The
premiere of Le Verre Siffleur has taken on extra potency given the Nice truck
attack on Bastille Day last week. When we spoke Cuneo was still in shock from
the news of the tragedy. He explained how Le Verre Siffleur expresses musically
the way life for French citizens has permanently changed.
Le verre siffleur cafe
“We try to go about life as usual but it doesn’t feel the same. This is
reflected in the music at the end of the work where there is a forced joyfulness,
an out of kilter waltz with five beats in a bar. There is not the same naivety
or innocence anymore.”
The
piece is a mix of old and new much like the environment Cuneo experiences every
day in Paris. It is scored for a Mozartian orchestra with two oboes, two horns
and strings and draws on Cuneo’s research into the art nouveau architecture on his
street and the correlating music from the early 20th century. Cuneo fused ideas
from Strauss, Mahler, Stravinsky and Puccini to evoke the changing moods and
scenes of cafe life. A chord from Ravel’s L’Enfant et les sortileges inspired
the elegy at the heart of the work.
Cuneo’s
composing career is a new addition to an already flourishing conducting career
that began with a young artist residency with Opera Australia and has included
work with
various
Australian opera houses and orchestras. Cuneo conducted the Pearl Fishers with WA
Opera in 2009.
Ollie Cuneo in conducting mode
Cuneo
currently teaches at the Conservatoire Gustave Charpentier where his work involves arranging and creating
operas with school children. From there it was a small step to writing his own
music.
“As
a conductor you study so much music in order to understand a composer’s thought
processes,” he explained. “You have the vocabulary, you just need to play
around with it and search for something to say, for an original voice.”
A
big part of his inspiration came from observing the innate imagination and
creativity of his two daughters. Watching them play inspired Cuneo to channel
his own creativity and begin to compose.
“We
need to prioritise that creativity in children and adults. It is a crucial way
to keep culture as a valued part of what gives a community meaning and
cohesion. It is so important to keep creativity an active part of life.”
Le
Verre Siffleur will be performed by the Fremantle Chamber Orchestra at 2pm on July 23rd(Perth Town Hall) and July 24th (Fremantle Town Hall). The program includes symphonies by Mozart and Haydn plus Hoffmeister’s Viola
Concerto performed by Sally Boud. Tickets can be purchased here or at the door.
The article copyright The West Australian newspaper 2016.
In
the seventies English composer Roger Smalley performed in the pioneering electro-acoustic
ensemble Intermodulation. But he discarded his electronic explorations when he
moved to Perth in 1976 and thought the style would mean little to the Australian
public. Times have changed and Cat Hope and ensemble Decibel have brought the
little-known repertoire back to life. Their concert which opened Tura's Scale Variable series on Tuesday paid fascinating
homage to Smalley who died in August last year.
The
program was a surprisingly neat fit for Decibel which is similar in make-up to
Intermodulation. Impulses (1986) could have been written with Decibel in mind
as it was scored for flute, alto trombone, percussion, piano, cello and
synthesiser. The ensemble revelled in the precision of Smalley’s fugal layers and
moments of soloistic virtuosity.
Then there were the moments where Didgeridu (1974) brought to mind Cat Hope’s
bass-heavy compositions with the sliding pitch and rhythmic patterns of the
didgeridu manipulated through an archaic four channel tape machine.
The
virtuosic early piano works Transformation (1968) and Monody (1971) performed
by Adam Pinto and Stuart James respectively displayed Smalley’s first attempts
at electronically manipulating live sound.
Decibel performing Zeitebenen at the Underground Studio c Bohdan Warchomij
Hope’s
curatorial sleuthing unearthed the score for Zeitebenen (1973-75) – a pivotal
work composed while Smalley was touring in Stockhausen’s ensemble – from behind
a cupboard at the UWA School of Music. The 45 minute work for four
instrumentalists, live electronics and tape was Smalley’s first attempt at
expressing politics in music. The work's three sections and 21 ‘moments’ (similar to Stockhausen’s Momente) and the rhythmic patterns derived from the Fibonacci series reflect Smalley’s career-long fascination with structure. His richly imaginative sound world included slowly
evolving vowel sounds (referencing Stimmung), waves of electronic noise derived
from the four natural elements and a section of street noise. The work started
with the same melodic pattern as Monody and moved via a gradual downwards
glissando to an electronic and acoustic battle against the industrial destructive
aspects of humanity, ultimately resolved by a victorious thump on the bass drum
by percussionist Louise Devenish.
It is as though I have just heard from Miriam Hyde!
Miriam Hyde circa 1930's
The Australian composer (who featured in my book Women of Note) died in 2005 but today her daughter Christine Edwards contacted me to let me know Miriam's letters from 1932-1935 have been digitized by the National Library. Every envelope and page of the letters have been photographed and are now available to view.
The letters were written to her Adelaide family while Miriam was studying at the Royal College of Music in London. It was a momentous time for the young pianist and composer. She performed her own Piano Concertos with the London Philharmonic and London Symphony and studied composition with R.O. Morris. In fact she worked so hard she suffered a nervous breakdown and had to take a break form her studies.
In her email today Christine described the letters as "not only about her studies and the London music scene (concerts, new music etc) but much social history - the cost of clothes/food, transport from A to B, a pea soup fog, brief holidays with friends outside London, etc."
The 3399 pages of hand-written letters look something like this:
'Letter 3/9/35, Papers of Miriam Hyde, National Library of Australia, MS 5260.
Reading them gives an intimate insight into the mind and heart of this remarkable woman. It makes me want to listen to her music and read her autobiography and her chapter in Women of Note and just drench myself in her all over again!
The NLA collection also includes a detailed journal of the boat trip to London, letters to colleagues and scores of the works Miriam wrote during this time. It also includes correspondence with Currency Press about the publication of Miriam's autobiography Complete Accord.
The first time she toured West was with her indie-rock band
George, next she was fronting the WA Symphony Orchestra then the Australian
Chamber Orchestra and venturing into jazz. Now Katie Noonan has taken on (re-invented?)
the string quartet genre and, as usual, the Brisbane singer had audiences
begging for more.
Noonan and the UK-based Brodsky Quartet created a remarkable tribute
to the poet Judith Wright by commissioning ten Australian composers to set her
words to music. With so many layers of input – each poem reinterpreted through
composition then shaped by the intelligent artistry of the musicians - the
result was acutely intense but also very beautiful.
The vignette of Australian composers included Elena
Kats-Chernin at her more melancholic in a setting of Late Spring, while the irony
of the clipped phrases in After the Visitors was quintessential Andrew Ford. The
scurrying string writing in Company of Lovers was Paul Grabowsky’s abstract
response to Wright’s ominous Company of Lovers while the regular rhyming
couplets of To A Child drew a sweet hymn-like melody from David Hirschfelder.
Noonan’s fabulous coloratura range was exploited in John
Rodger’s Failure of Communication and her free-wheeling improvisatory style on
display in her own joyful composition The Surfer. Her immaculate control was evident
in her incisive delivery of Paul Dean’s atonal Sonnet for Christmas.
Noonan and the versatile Brodsky Quartet (Daniel Rowland,
Ian Belton, Paul Cassidy and Jacqueline Thomas) formed a compelling quintet.
Noonan’s voice was like an extra instrument sometimes tucked within the
ensemble as in Iain Grandage’s Night After Bushfire, or intoning over sparse
accompaniment in Richard Tognetti’s Metho Drinker.
After interval the mood mellowed with covers from Bjork,
Elvis Costello and Sting played (and arranged) with rock-n-roll swagger by the
Brodsky Quartet. Three short gems from Peter Sculthorpe, Andrew Ford and Robert
Davidson rounded out the second half.
I don’t remember the last time a program of predominantly contemporary
classical Australian music attracted such a young and enthusiastic crowd. Nor
can I think of a better tribute to one of Australia’s great poets.
A down-to-earth Aussie guy is renovating a cottage in
Ireland and missing home. He sings of ‘The blow of sunlight striking up from a
Perth beach’. It sounds familiar and yet so unusual to hear Western Australia
mentioned in an opera. But WA Opera’s The Riders, based on a novel by Tim
Winton with music by Iain Grandage and sung by predominantly WA singers, is
very much a WA affair.
Images from the Victorian Opera 2014 production of The Riders.
The plot follows Scully as he builds his wife Jennifer’s
dream house then discovers at the airport that only his daughter has arrived.
The blow sends him reeling across Europe searching for his missing wife. The
light in the darkness is the relationship between Scully and his daughter
Billie.
Under Marion Potts' direction the opera, like Winton’s novel,
left most questions unanswered. Alison Croggon’s libretto cleverly diffused
Winton’s novel into a poetic 90 minute work. The opera diverges from the book by creating a
speaking role for Scully’s absent wife Jennifer. Emma Pearson’s golden, wonderfully flexible soprano brought vulnerability and complexity to Jennifer who described her family
alternately as ‘millstones dragging me down’ and ‘Torn off me like a scab, when
do I stop bleeding?’.
The role of Billie was shared by Rosanna Radici and Mia
Beattie. On opening night 15 year old Radici navigated complex harmonies and
rhythms with spot on accuracy, her pure soprano the calm epicentre of a
whirlwind opera.
James Clayton’s clean diction and grief-laden delivery made Scully instantly likeable and also threatening as he tussled with
his own jealousy and love.
Wade Kernot as Arthur, Matthew Lester as the painter Alex
and Fiona Campbell as Marianne were outstanding in supporting roles. The three
also represented a kind of Greek chorus, singing with beautifully balanced
harmonies.
Dale Ferguson’s set used trestles to create architectural scaffolding,
furniture and the impression of silhouetted horses. A huge projected arrivals
screen (Matt Scott lighting) established the airport scene while the stage
revolve gave a sense of constant movement.
Iain Grandage’s music conveyed both the emotional and geographical
trajectory of the opera. Under conductor Brad Cohen the 14–piece WA Symphony
Orchestra moved seamlessly from minimalism to serialism via cabaret and
folksong. The relentless pace of Scully’s chase was heard in the constant
triplet rhythms which also represented the mythological Riders Scully
encountered in Ireland who threaten to drag him into the past. The tension of
unanswered questions was heard in the atonal harmonies while the bird-like solo
recorder interludes played by Genevieve Lacey evoked isolation and freedom.
The opera concluded with Scully facing the Riders for the
last time and choosing to move on from his memories. Billie blew out one of the
three candles and the stage lights dimmed as the duo reclaimed their little
family. Opera’s capacity to captivate never ceases to amaze me, and the impact of
The Riders was all the greater given the home-grown nature of the story. A
stunning piece of theatre we can be unashamedly proud of.
