Cumbria Opera Group’s brand new work Kings, Witches, Lovers and Souls showcases the region’s mythic past

United Kingdom Jen Hartley, Kings, Witches, Lovers and Souls: Eleanor McIntosh (soprano), Anne Elizabeth Cooper (mezzo-soprano), Johnny Hill (baritone), Jonny Danciger (director), Cumbria Youth Chorus, Cumbria Opera Group / Joe Davies & Alastair Burton (co-musical directors), Penrith Playhouse, 31.8.2024. (SRT)

Local productions can be patchy; we all know it. You are bound to have been to something by your local amateur orchestra that you smiled through because you knew the fifth cellist but, really, you would much rather have been at home watching the football or doing the ironing.

This one was different, though. For one thing, this was no scratchy Carmen or Pagliacci. Cumbria Opera Group’s summer production was a brand new work, something which they had doubtless had to overcome a multitude of challenges (funding, artistic and organisational) to produce; so before a note was even played, you have to take you hat off to their ambition and sheer determination in getting the thing on stage.

There was something else going on, though; something best described as pride. Kings, Witches, Lovers and Souls is a piece about Cumbria, showcasing the region’s mythic past, performed mostly by Cumbrians, and watched by a local Cumbrian audience. So there was a palpable sense of celebration and of, yes, pride that their place and their people were taking centre stage in a piece about their place.

Jen Hartley’s score tells not one story but six, each a part of Cumbrian mythology, and hailing from all four points of the county’s compass. There is a framing device of a bunch of hillwalkers discovering the region’s past, but each episode lives and breathes its own air, and each is musically distinguished from the others. There is an archaic air to the story of King Dunmail, while the sad story of Emma of Aira Force, a famous local waterfall, is carried by a plangent, long-breathed cantilena. Uther Pendragon’s tyranny is described in angular, ritualistic rhythms, and there is even a comic scherzo for the witch of Tebay. Throughout the music is distinctly coloured, cleverly scored for a band of only three musicians: Alistair Burton’s piano taking the lead while the flute of Emily Hicks and cello of Dan Crompton support one another. The ten-strong chorus sang with enthusiasm, filling out each scene with punchy energy, and Jonny Danciger’s production suggested a lot with limited resources.

But the three (professional) principals, all from Cumbria, rightly drew the focus. Eleanor McIntosh has a rich, luxurious soprano that could fill the little playhouse with beauteous ease. Mezzo-soprano Anne Elizabeth Cooper had more dramatic urgency but just as much immediacy to her voice, and excellent diction to boot. Johnny Hill has a light baritone, and he was more convincing as a lover than as a king, but he brought lyrical warmth to everything he sang.

Normally there is one driving personality behind any adventure like this and here, I suspect, it is the company’s founder, Musical Director and producer, Joe Davies, who knew all the musicians and probably produced much of the energy needed to get a show like this on the road. Well done to him and the company, though, because in a world of public pessimism over the arts and almost no funding, they pulled together to produce something extremely worthwhile.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we lived in a time when there was no need to point this out as remarkable?

Simon Thompson

For more about the Cumbria Opera Group click here.