When Nadine Livingston’s younger sister, Anna, joined the family fan club at a
student production of Eugene Onegin, Tchaikovsky’s stirring lyric opera, she
was doubtful in the extreme.
By the end, she was in tears, even though the production presented an
additional challenge for both singers and audience by being sung in the
original Russian. She told her older sister: “If they were all like this, I
would come every week.”
Anna is far from being the only teenager, says Livingston, who could have
their socks knocked off by the experience of seeing a full-scale opera.
“If they saw what it really was — the passion, the excitement — they would get
it too,” says Livingston. She is clearly pleased that she managed to
convince her sceptical teenage sister to go along. “I felt that my job was
done there.”
Later this month, Livingston, who is just 23, will have her first professional
appearance with Scottish Opera, singing two Mozart pieces at a concert at St
Andrew’s in the Square in Glasgow as part of the Merchant City
Festival.
This is a peach of a gig for the soprano, who is still studying at the Royal
Northern College of Music in Manchester, where she has scooped numerous
prizes for her singing, most recently the Frederic Cox Award.
Inviting Livingston to sing also typifies the aggressive youth policy at work
within Scottish Opera.
The organisation has years of experience in education and outreach. In 1971,
it was not just the first British company to launch a programme for schools
but the first in Europe, and that work continues today.
The company recently launched Scottish Opera Connect, a scheme that has
identified a group of youngsters it believes have the potential to be the
next Nadine Livingstons. Until now, these teenagers have been singing in
choirs, school shows and musicals. The Connect programme, which runs until
March 2009, will give them the chance to develop their talent and expand
their knowledge at Scottish Opera’s base in Glasgow.
Working with the company’s general director, Alex Reedijk, its musical
director, Francesco Corti, and their teams, the youngsters will learn about
all facets of the art form and, it is hoped, go on to become the soloists —
or directors, designers, choreographers, wig-makers and administrators — of
the future.
“We do our Opera Unwrapped [free behind-the-scenes events], we have our
under-26 tickets, we have our shows for younger young people,” says Reedijk,
“but we felt that there was a gap: teenagers. We needed to find a way of
giving Scottish Opera a profile and presence in the context of these young
people.
“Many of the other institutional providers — the Royal Scottish Academy of
Music and Drama, the National Youth Choir of Scotland and the National Youth
Orchestra — do a really good job with young people and we didn’t want to
compete.
“We wanted to find 20 or so talented young people for whom the arts were this
burning desire,” Reedijk says of the Connect programme. “Some kids really do
know this is what they want to do for a living. And by performance arts, we
don’t just mean being an opera singer.
“They have all auditioned to be on the programme — they’ve got to be damn
good, and when you’re damn good, we will then devote the best resources we
can to making sure we nurture you as a potential artist in the broadest
sense of the word.”
Twenty-three teenagers were chosen for the scheme from about 90 who
auditioned. Although most are from Glasgow, a handful come from across the
Central Belt. Last week they attended their first Scottish Opera dress
rehearsal and, over the next six months, they will see Scottish Opera’s work
at all levels, from the smallest touring performances to full-scale set
pieces.
Scottish Opera’s decision to pick the most promising youngsters it can find
is, Reedijk admits, a controversial one. But the company’s work bringing
opera to the wildest shores and the smallest village halls and primary
schools cannot be faulted — the travelling company performs in front
of thousands of children every year.
It is now time, the company believes, to pay some attention to the performers
of the future. And with the introduction of the “curriculum for excellence”,
the Scottish government would seem to agree.
“We have to service the other end of the scale as well,” says Reedijk.
“For us to be able to have wide, high-quality access programmes, we have to
start investing in the type of people who will, eventually, be the next
generation who will understand the quality and value of this, and see that
it gets delivered.
“Maybe it is a bit unfashionable, but our job as a maker of the most complex
of the performing arts is to take that very seriously. We have to address
the complexity, not the simplicity.”
Unlike most other performing arts, opera has no existing infrastructure to
fire up the enthusiasm of the next generation and provide it with a constant
stream of raw but talented recruits.
“Theatre has an ecosystem that goes from little amateur companies through the
Fringe up to the National Theatre of Scotland,” says Reedijk. “It isn’t
responsible for its own ecosystem. Scottish Ballet has endless mums taking
their daughters to ballet lessons at four years old, as well as a whole
contemporary dance scene.
“We are, oddly, responsible for our own ecosystem. We then have to take that
responsibility seriously, from three-year-olds upwards.”
As well as the need to grow its own talent, Scottish Opera knows it must also
grow its own repertoire.
“It’s about renewing the art form,” says Reedijk. “People such as Benjamin
Britten are vaguely regarded as contemporary composers, yet his works are
almost out of copyright. We’re in the 21st century — we’ve got to think
about the art form here in Scotland.”
Writing an opera is an enormously expensive and daunting way to make a living.
However, by repeating its innovative Five:15 project, which pairs five
established writers with composers, giving each partnership the opportunity
to make a 15-minute opera, the company has found a way of bringing in some
fresh faces.
Although the names of the writers for the second Five:15 project have yet to
be announced, the first series, performed earlier this year, included
librettos written by such familiar names as Ian Rankin and Alexander McCall
Smith.
The Connect programme will be watching the Five:15 process closely. Who knows
what kind of cross-pollenation might come out of that?
It is all, says Reedijk, part of an ongoing strategy to root opera, considered
the most elite of the performance arts, firmly in the resistant ground of
Scotland.
“The tough times of four-odd years ago [when the company faced financial
meltdown] made the board focus on what was desperately important to the
organisation and to the health of the art form in Scotland,” says Reedijk.
“Of course, we need to grow our audience. But we also have a duty of care to
the art form and to grow the practitioners.”
Practitioners such as Nadine Livingston. Growing up in Bearsden and attending
Glasgow High School, she was encouraged by her music teachers, joined the
National Youth Choir of Scotland and had private singing lessons. But it was
not until her great uncle took her to see Scottish Opera’s Tosca, at the age
of 14, that she knew she wanted to be an opera singer.
“From then on, I knew that was what I wanted to do,” says Livingston. “The
passion, the drama, the romance . . . That’s the job I want.”
Would she have signed up for the Connect programme if she had had the chance?
Her sigh is audible, all the way down the phone line from Manchester: “I
would have absolutely loved it.”
St Andrew’s in the Square concert, September 28, 3pm
