Scottish Opera: Tchaikovsky Heroes and Heroines, Edinburgh review: 'surprisingly powerful'

Scottish Opera: Tchaikovsky Heroes and Heroines, Usher Hall, Edinburgh ★★★★

With bleeding chunks of Tchaikovsky operas shoehorned together, and an Usher Hall at well less than half capacity, there was a big question of what and who Scottish Opera’s Tchaikovsky Heroes and Heroines concert performance was actually for. Certainly the Hall’s echoing acoustic only served to re-emphasise the sparse audience, though conductor (and Scottish Opera music director) Stuart Stratford’s warm and witty spoken introduction at least served to put the excerpts from The Maid of Orleans, Iolanta and Eugene Onegin into some kind of context.

If the programme and format were head-scratchers, far more persuasive were the performances themselves – especially from Scottish Opera’s resplendent orchestra, so often barely glimpsed in darkened pits, but here bold, bright, beautifully balanced and beguilingly characterful under Stratford’s forthright direction. Indeed, there was no shortage of conviction: Stratford lived every sound from Tchaikovsky’s heart-on-sleeve scores, and his evident joy and love for the music permeated performances from orchestra and soloists alike.

Mezzo Natalia Kutateladze made a wonderfully rich, sophisticated Joan of Arc, while soprano Lauren Fagan blossomed in vocal richness and depth as Iolanta’s love bloomed for the intruder in her magical garden. Baritone Josef Jeongmeen Ahn sometimes struggled to project past Stratford’s rich orchestra, but tenor Robert Lewis soared with an intense, narrow vibrato.

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The concert’s second half was essentially a ‘best-of’ highlights package from Eugene Onegin, one whose few, tentative steps towards acting and movement really only raised the question of why we weren’t seeing a concert or semi-staged performance of the whole thing. Certainly the performers were up to the task: Fagan captured Tatyana’s joyful desire and youthful apprehension beautifully, and Ahn’s certain distant detachment here fitted Onegin like a glove. For a potted whizz through Tchaikovsky’s best opera’s best bits, it was surprisingly powerful, but a lingering question remained behind the entire evening: why?

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