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Edinburgh Reporter
19 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Edinburgh Reporter
Edinburgh International Festival – Book of Mountains and Seas ⭐⭐
Billed as an opera, the Book of Mountains and Seas is not traditional in either the European or Chinese traditions. Huang Ruo explores ancient Chinese myths which I expect were quite unfamiliar to most of the audience, certainly to me. This meant that at the end I had far more questions than enlightenment. Where were the mountains? There was a myth about a drowned princess seeking revenge on the ocean, quite ineffectively, I might add, but there wasn't a snow-capped peak to be found anywhere. I was perplexed by what was supposed to tie the myths together, so it seemed rather disjointed. And the narrative pace didn't match the action on stage, the most glaring example where the archer god shot down nine of the ten suns in rapid succession without those victims experiencing a corresponding downfall, though they did eventually exit the stage. Also publicised was that the production was to include puppetry; it did but had only a single giant figure running fruitlessly after the setting sun. Perhaps it was my inability to grasp the point, but I thought more words / surtitles of explanation would have greatly helped since I failed to grasp the allusion to the intended message about humanity's complex relationship with nature. The redeeming element of this was the performance of the Danish choir Ars Nova Copenhagen along with an ensemble of percussionists and puppeteers. So, two stars rather than one. PHOTO Andrew Perry PHOTO Andrew Perry PHOTO Andrew Perry PHOTO Andrew Perry Like this: Like Related
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Book of Mountains and Seas review – puppets and percussion, Mandarin and a monkish chorus
There's no doubting composer Huang Ruo and director Basil Twist's ambition in Book of Mountains and Seas. Over 75 minutes, using six puppeteers, two percussionists and a choir of 12 – the excellent Ars Nova Copenhagen – they aim to create the world before our very eyes before nearly destroying it, twice. And all by manipulating some lanterns, a few swathes of silk and a handful of fragments reminiscent of flotsam. The action is measured, the sound world haunting, and the visuals, nimbly lit by Ayumu 'Poe' Saegusa, are effective, but it does take a while to get going. Ruo, who was born in China and lives in the US, writes assured, distinctive music, fusing east and west in a way that feels natural and authentic. Here, he deploys an array of tuned and untuned percussion instruments, some of them used in traditional Chinese orchestras, but most familiar to western ears. Gongs, finger cymbals, marimba and Tibetan singing bowls put in appearances, yet all are used sparingly. Vocally, too, there's a certain austerity, whether in sober chant or rhythmic chatter. Melismatic melodies and ululating choruses lend cross-cultural spice to Ruo's musical melting pot. The work tells four tales drawn from Chinese myths transcribed in the fourth century BC. Judiciously chosen, their contemporary resonances range from the climate crisis to the boundless hubris of humankind. In the first, the death of the hairy titan Pan Gu creates sun and moon, mountains and rivers, and finally humans. The second tells of a drowned princess reborn as a vengeful bird. The third relates how 10 over-enthusiastic suns are whittled down to one to prevent them burning up the planet, and the fourth how the dim-witted giant Kua Fu tries and fails to capture the sun that remains. The choir, robed like monks and with only their faces illuminated, tackle the intricate lines with confidence and a sure sense of pitch, singing in a combination of Mandarin and an unfathomable made-up language. The former appears now and again as surtitles, the latter does not. It is left to Twist and his puppeteers to tell us what is going on, which on the whole they do with craft and clarity. The imagery for tales one and two is a trifle plain: the story of the embittered bird and the ocean is told with little more than a crimson-fringed kite and a rippling white sheet. The propulsive fourth story, however, where the deconstructed fragments come together to create the sun-hunting giant, is visually arresting. But it's the stately progression of the 10 lanterns in the third tale, where graceful movement echoes music of piercing beauty, that lingers longest. At the Lyceum, Edinburgh, until 16 August All our Edinburgh festival reviews
Scotsman
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Edinburgh International Festival opera Book of Mountains and Seas
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Book of Mountains and Seas ★★ The Lyceum, until 16 August The big question behind composer Huang Ruo's patience-testing, woefully ill-conceived Book of Mountains and Seas was: why? When there are so many composers doing pioneering, challenging, witty, provocative things with opera, what box did this particular work tick, or what thematic slot did it fill, to allow it to become the International Festival's second and final staged opera for 2025? There was, frankly, little about it that was convincing. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Book of Mountains and Seas | Andrew Perry Scoring the work for chamber choir and two percussionists is unusual but intriguing – it's less persuasive, though, when the singers of Ars Nova Copenhagen give a disappointingly approximate account, blurring over Ruo's intricate vocal decorations and sliding apart from each other in tuning. When Ruo's sparse, austere choral textures needed confident, committed delivery, what they got sounded unconvincing and unconvinced. Likewise, director Basil Twist's puppetry amounted to little more than rippling sheets for the sea and Chinese lanterns (what else?) on poles representing the ten suns of the work's ancient Chinese creation myths. Even the gigantic human figure that coalesced towards the work's conclusion felt ungainly in its limited movements. The subject matter behind the work offers fascinating insights into a little-known culture and history, though few of the contemporary environmental parallels suggested in the programme book. But what this overlong, poorly executed work is doing as part of the curated International Festival is anyone's guess. David Kettle
Scotsman
30-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
The best EIF opera - Scotsman critic Ken Walton previews the 2025 programme
Scotsman critic Ken Walton picks his opera highlights from this year's EIF programme Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Book of Mountains and Seas Complementing Circa's unconventional take on Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice is the UK premiere of Book of Mountains and Seas, a meditative reimagining by American-based Chinese composer Huang Ruo and Olivier Award-winning director and puppeteer Basil Twist of ancient Chinese myths dating from the fourth century BC. Conceived in 2021, originally as a vocal theatre piece for Paul Hillier and his ensemble Ars Nova Copenhagen, the work's Chinese texts tackle geological symbolism, elaborate monsters, philosophical and religious truths: in broader terms the relationship between humankind and the planet we occupy and our collective responsibility as caretakers of nature. Ruo's music draws inspiration from Chinese folk music and Western modernism, sung in Mandarin and fictional language by Ars Nova Copenhagen with two percussionists. Twist's puppetry has been described as 'iconic and visionary.' The Wall Street Journal hailed Book of Mountains and Seas as 'an immersive tapestry of sound and image'. The Lyceum, 14-16 August Book of Mountains and Seas Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Puccini's Suor Angelica Normally you'd find Puccini's Suor Angelica presented as the centrepiece of his operatic triptych Il trittico, with Il tabarro and Gianni Schicchi either side. Here, though, this tragic nun's tale (thus the all-female cast) is presented as an operatic entity in a concert that is also part of the London Symphony Orchestra's 2025 Festival residency. The big attraction, of course, is the man on the podium, Sir Antonio Pappano, now the LSO's chief conductor, formerly music director of the Royal Opera House. He's joined by a cast led by Armenian soprano Mané Galoyan (Suor Angelica) and Ukrainian mezzo Kseniia Nikolaieva (Principessa), supported by the Edinburgh Festival Chorus and RSNO Youth Chorus. The opera performance is prefaced by two orchestra pieces: Puccini's Preludio sinfonico and Victor de Sabata's symphonic poem Juventus (which is nothing to do with football). Usher Hall, 16 August Sir Antonio Pappano Mozart's La clemenza di Tito Now in its third year, Maxim Emelyanychev and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra's run of Mozart operas-in-concert is now one of the Festival's must-see events. This year they tackle the composer's last opera seria, La clemenza di Tito, which Mozart completed during a strategic break (money being the motive) from writing his final opera Die Zauberflöte. Going on previous form, Emelyanychev will find the kind of elemental dynamism guaranteed to give this slightly flawed work a run for its money. The cast is promising in itself, with the critically-acclaimed Italian tenor Giovanni Sala in the title role, American mezzo soprano Angela Brower in what was originally the castrato role of Sesto, multiple prize-winning Irish mezzo Tara Erraught as Vitlellia, Dutch mezzo Maria Warenberg as Annio and Italian bass-baritone Ildebrando D'Arcangelo as Publio. With the SCO and its red-hot chorus centred prominently on stage, the audience can expect a powerhouse performance. Usher Hall, 9 August
