Opera Scotland

Four Sisters 2023Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Read more about the opera Four Sisters

The announced triple bill at the Conservatoire was beset by last minute problems, with widespread illness among the students playing havoc with the final week of rehearsals. This resulted in the deferral of the first night from Saturday 18 March to the following Monday.  It also meant that the opening item, Rimsky-Korsakov's Mozart and Salieri, was cancelled, to be replaced by Prokofiev's Overture on Hebrew Themes, accompanied by a solemn scene-setting (plague-related) mime by three of the students (William Searle, Sam Marston and Pawel Piotrowski).

The unknown Cui opera, A Feast in Time of Plague, was eventually given as planned.  However, even by Monday, the cast for the final work composed by Elena Langer was not fully healthy, and Rosalind Dobson was still voiceless.  It is always fascinating for an audience to see how a company copes with such an emergency.  Here all went wonderfully smoothly, with a new soprano flying in to join the team, singing from the side of the stage while her ailing colleague mimed the part while wearing a mask to protect the others.  There were many points where the three sisters sang together, but issues of balance were kept to a minimum.  Whether the trio on stage had adjusted their movements to be closer to the solo voice was impossible to tell.  They all seemed to cope admirably.  Whether this procedure was repeated at later performances needs to be confirmed.

The libretto generally succeeded in subverting the seriousness of Chekhov into something more light-hearted.  The three sisters live with their maid in a present-day New York apartment and are mourning the death of their father. They speculate on where any legacy would allow them to move to - by contrast with Chekhov's originals, the consensus is 'Anywhere but Moscow!'

The lawyer arrives for the reading of the will, but it is not to be found, with dad's coffin being wheeled on in case it needs to be searched.  The hunt for the will is reminiscent of Gianni Schicchi, which had just ended its Glasgow run over the road at the Theatre Royal.

When the will is located, the content is surprising, the estate being left to a fourth half-sister, daughter of a Russian princess.  This inevitably turns out to be the maid.  The Moscow to which she will retreat is in Idaho.

This is an enjoyable piece, musically eclectic, with hints of many styles including Broadway, jazz and klezmer (linking back to the Prokofiev overture).  The performance was of consistently high quality, with an excellent orchestra much larger than earlier in the evening.