Singing to a Faustian pack for survival
As the curtain falls on a production by Edinburgh Grand Opera of Gounod’s Faust at the Festival Theatre on Saturday, there will be a few tense faces amid the post-show elation. If they have not managed to fill the Festival Theatre every night by then, this venerable 52-year-old amateur company face not just an uncertain future, but possibly no future at all.
The choice is simple: the company must either go professional - a status to which they have been steadily marching in the past few years under the baton of music director Richard Lewis - or they must go “dark” for a year, return to a fully amateur format, and rebuild the financial reserve that has decreased as the company’s ambitions have risen. Both options risk losing the heart of the company: the 80-strong chorus. Scotland’s opera fans may be forgiven for feeling a strong sense of deja vu.
For Lewis, the arguments for professionalism are clear. Edinburgh Grand struggle uncomfortably with amateur status. Although their artistic team, soloists and orchestra are professional, the word “amateur” keeps away the opera audiences that flock to Scottish Opera or the visiting Ellen Kent productions, with the company
listed in the “local heroes” section of the EFT season programme, which belies the standard. Going professional might bring in more audiences, by dint of mere psychology, but the moot point is whether or not sponsors and grant-giving bodies would support another professional opera company in Scotland. “All we can think about at the moment is getting the production on,” says vice-chairman Geoff Akers. “Next week is the time to start making decisions.”
One of the reasons arts lovers should care about the fate of Edinburgh Grand Opera is that they are the last mainscale amateur opera company in Scotland, a tradition that stretches back to the inception of the genre. Mozart’s Don Giovanni was given its first London performance by a mixture of amateur and professional singers long before it got its official premiere. When the movement exploded in the early twentieth century, amateur operatic societies, such as EGO’s predecessor, the Edinburgh Opera Company, were at the forefront in premiering new works. Amateur grand opera gave “opportunities for all”, its best-known example being Welsh National Opera, started by amateurs from mining communities in 1943, their huge success leading to professional status 30 years later.
But while amateur societies such as the Edinburgh Festival Chorus and the Huddersfield Choral Society underpin the musical establishment, large-scale amateur opera is declining. Glasgow Grand Opera no longer perform. Ayrshire’s Opera West, once advised by Elisabeth Schwartzkopf, and Fife Opera are companies performing in small theatres.
“The only companies working on mainscale in the UK are the major national houses and some of the festivals,” says EGO’s Richard Lewis. “So Edinburgh Grand really are unique.” It seems ironic that the national professional company, Scottish Opera, have staged their latest show in what was an old church hall with a core orchestra of 17, and EGO, amateurs, are putting on their new production in the Festival Theatre with an orchestra of 60.
But perhaps an even greater reason we should care about the fate of Edinburgh Grand Opera is the relatively unrecognised role they play in Scotland’s opera world. EGO are the only place that professionals, at a crucial early stage in their careers, can sing lead roles at a major opera house. The last time EGO mounted Faust, in 1997, the lead was played by Ian Storey, just starting with Scottish Opera. Eleven years later, Storey is treading the interstellar boards after an acclaimed debut as Wagner’s Tristan at La Scala, Milan, championed by Daniel Barenboim, and an Otello at Los Angeles Opera at the invitation of Placido Domingo.
“For me, Edinburgh Grand were terribly important. I got to sing roles I wouldn’t otherwise have had the opportunity to sing,” says Storey, who also sang Don Jose in Carmen and the title role in an acclaimed Peter Grimes, a role he will repeat at La Scala. “I remember Edinburgh Grand got better reviews for their Grimes than Scottish Opera did for theirs.”
The renowned tenor is just one of a number of well-placed alumni of EGO. Faust’s director was Cathy Boyd, directing her first opera, who last year closed the Edinburgh International Festival programme and will open the Aldeburgh Festival in 2008. Music directors have included Christopher Bell, and onstage veterans Neil Jenkins, Donald Maxwell and mezzo Frances McCafferty were directed by Gerry Mulgrew, James Ross and Ben Twist. McCafferty, now a regular at Covent Garden, Glyndebourne, and English National Opera, where she has just finished an acclaimed run in the revival of Jonathan Miller’s Mikado, admits to being “sideswiped” at the idea of the company’s demise. “They were always good fun to sing with.”
“It was the vibrancy,” says former music director John Grundy, who went from Edinburgh Grand to the Sydney Opera House as director of the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra and the Sydney Philharmonia. “Peter Grimes was the highlight for me. How did an amateur company even think of doing something like that? It’s hugely difficult to learn, a staggering triumph. In comparing the Opera North chorus from their recent production, there was much more vibrancy, attack and spirit in Edinburgh Grand’s chorus. It’s do or die for them.”
This year’s Faust, directed by former Byre Theatre director Rita Henderson, is led by Christina Dunwoodie in her second role with EGO. “It’s an unrivalled opportunity to sing the roles,” she says. Dunwoodie last year stepped in to sing Lucia in Scottish Opera’s Lucia di Lammermoor. EGO’s raised standards have also attracted interest from abroad, with Parisian Loic Guguen, who sings Marcello in La Boheme with Opera de Metz in 2009, and Rafael Alvarez, a Mexican tenor based in Germany. All are singing for less money than usual to get exposure, though the cost to EGO is still considerable. This year’s production has come in over-budget at £65,000.
It is a situation no-one could have envisaged when EGO broke from Edinburgh Opera Company in 1956, determined to cast amateur singers in solo roles. “The days of great amateur singers are gone. Now it’s all about career,” says Ivor Klayman, solicitor by day, Mephistopheles by night. “Ivor could have been a professional singer and had a successful career,” says Ian Storey.
EGO know they are at the tipping point; with an amateur company run by committee, decisions are complicated by the weight of responsibility. But Edinburgh Grand have foreseen this crisis. The annual exhortation to sell more tickets is legendary, but this year members were told each would have to raise an additional £300 “to cover liability”. The transfer of risk to members who joined for the enjoyment cannot be sustainable for the company to take into another year, even if Faust does cover its costs.
The future, though, could be bright. EGO have incredible resources to call on, such as Storey and McCafferty. “I love this company,” says Rita Henderson. “Where else do you get to work with a chorus who might have been saving lives as part of the day job, before coming to rehearsals at night with great voices and huge dedication? EGO will have to change to survive and going professional could be a poisoned chalice. But it could also be the best champagne in the world.”
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