Opera Scotland

Lakmé 1999Fife Opera

Read more about the opera Lakmé

It is a pity that our amateur opera groups can't afford to stage rarities like this more often.

Lakmé is a most enjoyable work, full of attractive melodies, and dramatically plotted with little exotic touches. It is a more satisfying piece than the far more famous Pearl Fishers.  Its neglect by the professional operatic sector seems quite surprising.

Fife Opera offered an excellent performance, which may even have been the Scottish premiere.  The conductor,  Richard Evans, produced plenty of lyrical sounds from the orchestra pit.

Rosemary Nairne cleared all the hurdles in the vocally fiendish title role with ease.  Even the notorious coloratura roulades of the second act set piece, the Bell Song, were handled confidently.   Her husband, George Nairne, managed to avoid too much bluster in the rather thankless role of Lakmé's father, Nilakantha.

The principal tenor part, the British officer Gérald, is very difficult, with some beautiful lyrical passages to overcome, containing many exposed high notes which need to be negotiated with an unfailingly sweet tone.  The company was lucky in finding two tenors able to tackle this part.  Both had worked in the Scottish Opera Chorus in the past and had technically well-schooled voices.  At the final performance, Roger Topping not only had the vocal requirements beautifully in hand, but also looked ideally youthful so that he made a highly sympathetic character.