As Stravinsky originally conceived it, the opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex (first performed almost a century ago) fits well into this Edinburgh international festival’s “rituals” theme. Scottish Opera’s bold staging in the acoustically challenging atrium of the National Museum of Scotland still fits, although director Roxana Haines has disregarded many of the composer’s original stipulations.
Most obviously, the chorus – which integrates professionals with community volunteers, including local NHS workers – includes female voices, in a nod to modern sensibilities but surely also for practical reasons. Their contribution, choreographed by Alex McCabe to interact with the promenading audience, and directed by Susannah Wapshott, is one of the glories of the production.
Haines and designer Anna Orton have co-opted the ritual of the fashion catwalk for the action of the principals. The characters first stand on separate podiums, as if part of the museum’s collection around them. The runway encloses the orchestra, which is conducted by Scottish Opera’s music director Stuart Stratford and gives a magnificently dramatic account of Stravinsky’s often austere neo-classical score.
While the larger forces of the orchestra and choir were able to overcome the venue, the principals had more work to do and had varying amounts of success. Their audibility was often dependent on where the listener stood, and the first night audience showed little appetite for moving around.
Stravinsky gives specific instructions to the lyric tenor in the title role, and Shengzhi Ren, a former Scottish Opera Emerging Artist, has exactly the right voice type and was wonderfully precise in his dynamics if you were nearby. The fuller voice of Seumas Begg as the Shepherd in the work’s closing scenes had more heft however.
Baritone Roland Wood’s Creon was also, surprisingly, occasionally less powerful than one might have wished, while mezzo Kitty Whately, as Jocasta, appeared to have little difficulty filling the space with sound.
There was also some inconsistency in the movement of the main characters, ranging from the very stylised – Ren as the king of Thebes and Callum Thorpe as the seer, Tiresias – through to more intimate interaction between Wood and Whately, which the composer expressly forbade.
Ultimately though, this Oedipus is an unmissable event, conceived and delivered on a vast scale by Scottish Opera and the EIF – a partnership that looked unlikely two years ago, when the opera company staged a brilliant Candide (with a community chorus) in its Glasgow home at a time that clashed with the festival.
Its event status is acknowledged from the start in the role of a high-vis-jacketed Wendy Seager, the Narrator, whose vernacular English script is a very long way from Jean Cocteau’s original, but whose mobility and engagement is indicative of the production’s inclusive intentions.
• At the National Museum of Scotland, August 18 and 19
