Jonathan Dover’s opera Flight really took off after its 1998 première at Glyndebourne as audiences responded to its mixture of farce and tragedy, where banal everyday lives are acted out against more profound human dilemmas, all expressed in a colourful score full of character.
The story is based on the real case of a paperless Iranian refugee who spent 18 years in the departure lounge of Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, which inspired Steven Spielberg’s 2004 film The Terminal starring Tom Hanks.
The opera libretto by April De Angelis is a very different matter, however, less sentimental, more darkly comic, like the Luis Buñuel film in which doomed guests are unable to leave a dinner party. For electrical storms have stopped all flights, throwing together three pairs of fractious lovers, plus a starry-eyed 52-year-old, hopefully, hopelessly awaiting the arrival of her holiday romance toyboy.
All are in transit, all in flight to a new life, or in the case of The Refugee, in flight from an old one.
The production comes from Scottish Opera, directed by Australian Stephen Barlow, for whom, following a highly successful career in the UK, it marks his professional debut in his home country. With him, he has brought James Laing to reprise the leading role which he sang to acclaim in Glasgow.
Writing the part for a countertenor immediately sets The Refugee apart from those around him, as does his behaviour. "Help me," "feed me," he begs, but when things go wrong, he is the first to offer comfort, the first to celebrate another’s happy event.
Laing stirs up the pathos as he offers hope with his ‘magic’ stones—no good turn going unpunished. The cause of his tragedy goes unspoken for most of the opera until he delivers the closing threnody in a modest manner that yet achieves a stunning forcefulness.
All the cast are first class, and from the moment that the audience is asked to fasten its seatbelts, most of the action is given over to the affairs of passengers and crew, including the randy steward—the explosive baritone Samuel Dale Johnson—and stewardess Ashlyn Tymms.
Fiona McArdle is outstanding as the diplomat’s wife, fearful of motherhood and Minsk, and her lament "whose bag is this?" questioning her role in life is intensely personal and moving.
Henry Choo, a fine, bubbly tenor, is steady, unimaginative Bill to his sexually adventurous wife Tina, a vivacious Nina Korbe, the couple angrily quoting to each other passages from a love manual about how to achieve marital bliss.
Baritone Jeremy Tatchell somehow achieves a dignity of presence as the diplomat, even when leaving behind his heavily pregnant missus, and Cherie Boogaart achieves a certain poignancy as the older woman who doesn’t know, and at the same time knows, that her lover boy has stood her up.
High above the action for most of the time is Anna Voshege as The Controller, surveying the vast arc of the set as if it were the globe, with her coloratura soprano ascending splendidly into the heavens as if she were the Queen of the Night.
The score provides distinct moods for each character, with prominent brass and a large percussion section including four marimba or xylophone, and a wide orchestral range that emphasises the high and low ends of the spectrum. The young conductor Charlotte Corderoy handled it all with vigour, while ensuring the considerable impact of Dove’s music never overwhelms the singers.