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This evening, although short, was a very demanding one – not so much dramatically as aurally as Maxwell Davies and his style are not, for me, easy to assimilate and understand on only one hearing – and without some degree of knowledge about that sort of cutting-edge contemporary music. But it was gripping and great credit is due to Kammeroper in staging this piece and giving young singers (all three of whom were excellent although diction was poor) a chance to strut their stuff.
The production was effective but the start, with the opening of the enquiry as to what happened was less than riveting and it only began to (slowly) improve dramatically once we moved smoothly from this enquiry to the lighthouse and a possible re-enactment of what happened (still unknown to this day, incidentally).but it only truly gripped me once each of the characters started their individual ‘song’ all to a greater or lesser extent containing a significant degree of parody and then moving slowly and inevitably to the climax. The large circle in the middle of the stage – a sort of eye – was the visual focus and its use as the climax approached with its interior illuminated in blood red and with cords criss-crossing it was a very striking visual metaphor for…well many things –the sense of the three keepers being trapped not just on the lighthouse but in and by their minds and a sense of something approaching the lighthouse.
But an exciting evening – and it was very good/remarkable to see a virtually full house for a work such as this – although the fact that there were only two performances may have had something to do with this.