Opera Scotland

Diary of One Who Disappeared 2020Scottish Opera

Read more about the opera Diary of One Who Disappeared

This was a superbly performed, highly intense event, produced in conjunction with the Lammermuir Festival.  It was an admirable way to make the best of the restrictions imposed as a result of the Covid 19 pandemic.

In this live performance transmitted direct from the stage of Glasgow Theatre Royal, the protagonist was seated at a handsomely furnished and substantial desk, complete with oil lamp.  This effectively indicated the prosperous quality of the lifestyle he was about to give up.  Tenor Ed Lyon (a replacement for Nicky Spence, who was suddenly hospitalised for the removal of his appendix) was joined by mezzo-soprano Lucy Schaufer as the gypsy Zefka.  The cast was completed by Catriona Hewitson (Scottish Opera Emerging Artist 2020/21), Heather Ireson (Scottish Opera Associate Artist) and Sioned Gwen Davies as the trio of girls. 

Scottish Opera Music Director Stuart Stratford conducted an ensemble of 12 musicians from the Orchestra of Scottish Opera, in a rarely heard orchestral version of Janáček’s drama by Miloš Štědroň Senior and Miloš Štědroň Junior.

This gripping performance (in Czech with English subtitles) showed this wonderful composer able to astonish and grip an audience with the simplest means.  If operatic life ever returns to normal it could surely be revived as a companion to one or two other brief operas.

All performers observed physical distancing guidelines while still conveying the opera’s compelling drama.

 

Background

Janáček’s feverish fable of obsessive love, desire and escape has rarely been performed in Scotland

A naive young farmer’s son falls desperately in love with a wild gypsy girl. Will he abandon his family, his community and his whole way of life to satisfy his fiery passions?

Part dramatic song cycle, part miniature opera, Janáček’s  The Diary of One Who Disappeared is an unorthodox, unclassifiable work – but one that shows the composer at his most overtly sensual, in a timeless tale of illicit love and hot-headed seduction that shatter boundaries between cultures.