Greta Thunberg must have been on the mind of Jonathan Dove when terminally ill opera philanthropist Jim Potter approached him in 2020 with the idea of commissioning a community opera about sustainability involving youngsters. The resulting Uprising sees 15-year old Lola Green throwing her family into turmoil as an ancient forest is threatened. Dove uses a vibrant community of singers in an energetic and moving protest drama as floods arrive, the earth warming alarmingly.
Uprising had its recent fully staged premiere at Glyndebourne, the professional principals mostly remaining for this concert performance directed by Sinéad O’Neill. The Royal Scottish National Orchestra and conductor Ellie Slorach had performed it at Saffron Hall, but the Scottish choruses were new to the work. Dove and his librettist April de Angelis have tackled the apocalyptic before in The Day After and the climate change issue is a difficult balance without lecturing, but Dove and De Angelis use Lola’s turbulent family story to draw us in to discover if love can overcome deeply broken relationships as forests tumble.
Lola stands alone in protest outside her school as her mother Angela, father Clive and sister Zoe try to keep the family on an even keel. Lola slowly recruits her schoolmates to the cause, eventually winning over her father and sister, but her mother has a dark secret. Act 2 is a battle between the forest and developers who need it felled so that commuters can get to work slightly faster, leaving Angela to balance ‘progress’ with reconciling her daughter. It could be grim stuff – and the work has a few longueurs – but De Angelis’ words have a witty turn and Dove’s music swirls and surges, peppered with stunningly beautiful passages. The large choruses become living entities through immersive, fluid movement, their memorable forests of raised hands strikingly lit by Matthew Smith.
With the orchestra on stage, the principals had to work hard. Madeleine Shaw’s robustly sung Angela cut through as shockingly unfeeling, suggesting that Lola be given ECT therapy to “cure” her, Marcus Farnsworth’s more sympathetic Clive stepping in to stop it. Julieth Lozano Rolong (Zoe) came off her phone to finally offer support to her sister and, in a wonderful double casting, Edwin Kaye’s resonant bass was the pompous mayor (accompanied by gruff tuba) and Quercus, the ancient oak spirit. Ffion Edwards was the superbly fearless lead as Lola, her high lyric soprano tackling Dove’s challenging score, as devastating as the felled trees in her extended unaccompanied solo towards the end.
In so many ways, this work belonged to the large chorus. The organ gallery was packed with adults from the RSNO Chorus, RSNO Chorus Academy and an army of young singers from the RSNO Youth Chorus and RSNO Changed Voices. Tiny solo parts from chorus members in the forest where, like the animals in L’Enfant et les sortilèges, a weevil, fungus, birch and root all had their say. The energy of the big choral set protest pieces was raw and authentic, the battle to save the trees as the youngsters blockaded the hard hat brigade, viscerally thrilling.
The RSNO clearly loved this turbulent work, three busy percussionists augmented with a local percussion ensemble adding punch to a filmic rhythmic score reminiscent of Adams with Stravinskian touches, Wagnerian brass and strings for the forest. Slorach held her forces together perfectly, balancing the orchestra and chorus to let the soloists through the dense mix. Jim Potter lived long enough to hear Jonathan Dove play the score through, and sing the parts, but his community opera is a wonderful legacy.
