SHERLOCK HOLMES (THE REAL ONE as we Sherlockians like to believe) has been portrayed in numerous films, at least thrice on the musical stage, once in a ballet—and now, according to BBC News, August 17, 2024, operatically. Here are tidbits on this last genre together with a brief snippet of a BBC Music broadcast.
A Proper Citation. Hayley Coyle of BBC News writes, “What the Deuce? Sherlock Holmes Opera Debut,” for which I give her full marks. (The phrase “What the Deuce?” is Canonical.) A less astute reviewer might have fallen for including “Elementary, My Dear Watson,” a non-Canonical quip never uttered by the World’s First Consulting Detective.
An Operatic First. “From video games to radio plays to Hollywood blockbusters,” Hayley Coyle says, “the Victorian sleuth is one of the most portrayed literary characters in history. This is the first time though that the quick-thinking but impatient detective will feature in an opera.”
The fellow with the telescope is bass Ed Hawkins portraying the real Holmes at Northern Opera Group’s production of “Sherlock Holmes and the Sign of the Four.” This and another image by Lian Furness for BBC News.
Coyle quotes Northern Opera Group’s Artistic Director David Ward: Holmes “loves the reveal, disguising himself and going under cover so I thought we could do something theatrically and musically quite thrilling with this.”
Image from Leeds Opera Festival 2024.
A Product of Lockdown. Coyle continues, “Sherlock Holmes and The Sign of the Four, a story of murder and stolen treasure, will debut at this year’s Leeds Opera Festival and will be the first of its kind. This ambitious project began after Mr. Ward, from Hull, read all Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books during lockdown as he had ‘a lot of time on his hands.’ ”
Surely, Ms. Coyle, you recognize that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was merely Dr. John H. Watson’s literary agent. Or so we Sherlockians enjoy the conceit.
The Operatic Score. Coyle writes, “The production’s composer and librettist Lliam Paterson was approached by Northern Opera after it saw his ‘wonderfully dramatic’ previous work. Originally from Aberdeen, one of the 33-year-old’s biggest challenges was finding the right musical language to tell the story.”
Zahid Siddiqui as Athelney Jones and Dominic Mattos as Thaddeus Sholto. Composer/librettist Lliam Paterson is at the piano.
Coyle continues, “Mr. Paterson uses the text from the book and his own added dialogue, but has kept all well-known phrases such as ‘What the deuce?.’ ”
“The music,” Paterson says, “is very rhythmical with repeating sections and themes we obsessively return to—to mirror how Sherlock’s mind works.”
A chat with Paterson and Ward can be heard at BBC Radio Leeds.
Tomorrow in Part 2 we discuss the tale’s title: Sign of Four or Sign of the Four. We also learn operatic matters such as sourcing props and scenery. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2024