FULL The Lighthouse (Maxwell Davies) Lancaster 2009 Oxley Damian Best
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: The Lighthouse
- Composer: Maxwell Davies
- Libretto: Maxwell Davies Libretto Text, Libretto Index
- Venue & Opera Company: Great Hall, Lancaster University, Lancaster UK
- Recorded: March 12, 2009
- Type: Staged Opera Live
- Singers: James Oxley, Sandy Damian, Jonathan Best
- Conductor: Etienne Siebens
- Orchestra: PSAPPHA ENSEMBLE
- Stage Director: Elaine Tyler-Hall
- Stage Designer: Aaron Marsden
- Costume Designer: Aaron Marsden
- Lighting Designer: lighting designer
Information about the Recording
- Published by: PsapphaEnsemble
- Date Published: 2015
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 3 Audio:3
- Subtitles: nosubs
- Video Recording from: YouTube FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
About ‘The Lighthouse’ by Peter Maxwell Davies
The original inspiration of this work came from reading Craig Mair’s book on the Stevenson family of Edinburgh. This family, apart from producing the famous author Robert Louis, produced several generations of lighthouse and harbour engineers. In December 1900 the lighthouse and harbour supply ship Hesperus based in Stromness, Orkney, went on its routine tour of duty to the Flannan Isles light in the Outer Hebrides. The lighthouse was empty – all three beds and the table looked as if they had been left in a hurry, and the lamp, though out, was in perfect working order, but the men had disappeared into thin air.
There have been many speculations as to how and why the three keepers disappeared. This opera does not offer a solution to the mystery, but indicates what might be possible under the tense circumstances of three men being marooned in a storm-bound lighthouse long after the time they expected to be relieved.
The work consists of a prologue and one act. The Prologue presents the Court of Inquiry in Edinburgh into the disappearance of the keepers. The three protagonists play the part of the three officers of the lighthouse ship, the action moving between the courtroom, the ship, and the lighthouse itself, and the inquiry is conducted by the horn of the orchestra, to whose wordless questions the protagonists answer, making the questions retrospectively clear. The Court reaches an open verdict. At the end of the Prologue the three officers together tell us that the lighthouse is now automatic and the building is abandoned and sealed up, while the lighthouse itself flashes its automatic signal to a rhythm which is reflected in the orchestra.