David Blake's Scoring The Century gets world premiere in Birmingham
Mar 5 2010 By Christopher Morley
An opera written more than a decade ago will finally gets its world premiere in Birmingham, writes Christopher Morley.
An opera which has lain unperformed since its composition in 1999 will at last receive its world premiere from Birmingham Conservatoire at the Crescent Theatre this evening.
David Blake’s Scoring the Century was originally scheduled to be premiered by Portland Opera in Oregon (US), then later by Dublin Opera Society, but neither production took place, due to the wide-ranging effects of the 9/11 Twin Towers atrocity across the globe.
But now, thanks to the facilitation of Lionel Friend, conductor-in-residence at the Conservatoire, David Blake will at last see his opera come to performance.
Friend has worked closely in the past with the production’s director Keith Warner (Malcolm Williamson’s English Eccentrics and Wagner’s Ring cycle, for example), and suggested to him that the Conservatoire students would excel at presenting the varied musical styles of Blake’s opera.
And as Warner is also the librettist of this fascinating work, he jumped at the opportunity.
The opera charts the progress of Mr and Mrs Jedermann (“Everyman”) through the decades of the 20th century, and mixes opera, cabaret, dialogue and musical theatre.
“The Jedermanns are a song and dance act,” explains David in his exposition.
“Beginning in Trouville in 1901, they perform their way through the 20th century with cabaret and music-hall numbers, encountering Nazis, commissars, hippies and yuppies.
‘‘They do not age, and only grudgingly get wiser... they end up in Hollywood, bewildered and overwhelmed by media technology, but remain true to each other, as global warming threatens.”
The Jedermann/Everyman figure crops up in all kinds of European literature, including English, German and Swiss, as I observe to David.
“Clearly Keith was tapping into this, implying that our hero, the little man, is everywhere,” he replies.
“The Jedermanns get around in this piece, most of Europe, the Soviet Union, GB and the US, and are permanently bewildered – ‘the whole jumble jumbles so fast!’
One big difference here is that they manage to avoid confronting God, although they have to cope with some devils – human ones.”
David goes on to explain the frustration of sitting on an unperformed but completed opera for over a decade.
“Our initial failures to get a production were disappointing – history has plenty of precedents – and I began to wonder whether I would ever see the piece.
“So it was very exciting when Lionel Friend told me, three years ago, about the chance of this production. Inevitably Keith began to think it anew, and it was clear we should bring the action through to the present day.
