OperaShots, Linbury Theatre, London

Darren Abrahams in ‘The Doctor’s Tale’

The name OperaShots suggests a pot-shot at a target as much in hope as expectation. Started last year by ROH2, the contemporary arm of the Royal Opera, the programme was set up to commission new work with an express aim to encourage innovative opera from outside the mainstream – this latest double-bill being as near as it has come so far to a bull’s-eye.

Lured from different branches of the popular arts, the three creators of the double-bill come armed with an impressive array of experience: Anne Dudley, Oscar-winner for her score to The Full Monty; Terry Jones, Monty Python veteran; and Stewart Copeland, drummer and founder of The Police. It seemed a reasonable hope that their operas would at least be fun.

And so it proved. The Tell-Tale Heart, with both words and music by Copeland in best Wagnerian style, is short, grisly and humorous. Adapted from Edgar Allan Poe, it looks inside the mind of a man who has committed murder and cannot stop talking about it. The unusual tone, which hardly ever slips, is pitched at the point where horror and comedy rub shoulders. Not everything works – an experiment in multiple chanting muddles the words – but it was a clever idea of director Jonathan Moore to set the opera in a Victorian music hall and Richard Suart is brilliant as the murderous, half-crazed Edgar.

The Doctor’s Tale, words by Jones, music by Dudley, is an enjoyable comic fantasy and no less skilful at finding a tone of its own. The opera tells the tale of a dog that has become a valued doctor in the community and gets unfairly struck off by the General Medical Council. Jones has worked every possible doggy allusion into his libretto – the dog pound, the Isle of Dogs, sniffing bottoms, and so on. But the Pythonesque humour is softened by compassion for the doctor and by Dudley’s music, which has a film composer’s quick-fingered skill for emotions that change from frame to frame. Darren Abrahams wins sympathy for the canine Dr Scout and conductor Tim Murray gets playing of zest from Orchestra Chroma. Not bad for a first pot-shot with three hands on the trigger. 

Royal Opera House