Marjory Kennedy-Fraser (1857-1930)
Sir Granville Bantock (1868-1946)
The Seal Woman: A Celtic Folk Opera
The Cailleach (An Old Crone): Yvonne Howard (mezzo-soprano)
The Seal-Woman: Catherine Carby (mezzo-soprano)
The Seal-Sister: Catriona Hewitson (soprano)
The Islesman: Seumas Begg (tenor)
First Fisher: Arthur Bruce (baritone)
Second Fisher & The Water-Kelpie: Christian Loizou (bass-baritone)
The Orchestra of Scottish Opera / John Andrews
rec. 2024, Glasgow, UK
Retrospect Opera RO012 [2 CDs: 138]
This is the first complete recording of an opera in whose creation Marjorie Kennedy-Fraser and Sir Granville Bantock played an equal role over many years of collaboration. The booklet contains very detailed essays by experts in their fields. The essays illustrate the work’s lengthy gestation: The Seal-Woman by Dr Andrew H. King (who has produced a new edition of the score),Marjory Kennedy-Fraser by Dr Per Ahlander, Marjory Kennedy-Fraser Revisited by Dr John Purser, and The Seal-Woman Legend by Kennedy-Fraser herself.
Initially, the collaboration was meant to be a spoken drama based on Hebridean folk tales. Over time, Bantock grew convinced that music was essential to the piece, so the origins of The Seal-Woman are intricate. Andrew King explains that the libretto is largely the work of Kennedy-Fraser with input from Bantock, who brought his operatic experience to the project. Through a long process of mutual suggestions and revisions, the final version took shape: in a unique fusion of Hebridean folk songs and legend in an operatic framework.
Kennedy-Fraser had undertaken the challenging task of collecting and notating the original musical material on various Hebridean islands. She was assisted by Dr Kenneth Macleod, a Celtic folklore expert. He helped translate the texts into English, and in some cases composed new words altogether. Although Kennedy-Fraser held music qualifications from the University of Edinburgh, she was denied a degree due to the prevailing gender discrimination of the time. Decades later, in 1928, she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree, as attitudes toward women’s rights began to shift.
In his essay, John Purser reveals that, despite her contributions to the preservation of Hebridean folk music, Kennedy-Fraser faced criticism for ‘anglicising’ the songs she collected. They were published in English with piano accompaniment. The original Gaelic texts were included underneath the English. Bantock later transformed these accompaniments into full orchestral arrangements, and composed the necessary recitatives to weave them into a coherent work for the stage.
In order to accommodate the orchestra in a tiny pit at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, and to reduce performance costs, Bantock restricts the orchestra to sixteen players, but still manages to produce an extremely evocative setting.
Some twenty songs constitute a major portion of the opera. Bantock orchestrated them, but his principal contribution was to compose a lot of recitative. It does more than the songs themselves to tell the story of The Seal Woman. In fact, all bar three of the songs do not directly derive from the story of the Seal Woman at all. They have been included to add local colour, or illustrate a portion of the action of the tale. One such tune is the ‘love’ motif throughout the score.
In Act One, the two songs that struck me as particularly memorable are The Slow Rowing Song – Sea Sounds and An Eriksay Love-Lilt; the latter is particularly well-known. Christian Loizou sings lyrically the Water-Kelpie’s song, also notably memorable. At the beginning of the act, the role of The Cailleach, an old crone, is prominent in the opening recitative. She tells of the legend of seals who can turn into women. Yvonne Howard sings this part very well.
While one might expect Bantock to embrace a Scots folk idiom in the recitative, he avoids this, letting the music unfold with a subtle, conversational ease. This restraint gives way, however, in a few heightened moments where the emotional undercurrents of the text rise compellingly to the surface. A particularly affecting instance arrives near the end of Act One, when Kennedy-Fraser’s libretto naturally gives rise to a love duet. Here, the Islesman attempts to manipulate the Seal Robe into staying with him ashore. He conceals her Seal Coat, cutting off her return to the sea, while promising to return the matching robe to her distraught sister. In this charged scene, in the absence of a folk song, Bantock’s own music has to provide the passion.
What elevates this section is the strength of the vocal performances. Seumas Begg uses his fine voice to bring clarity and expressive depth to the role of the Islesman. His tenor is commanding and tender by turns. Catherine Carby and Catriona Hewitson are equally compelling as the Seal-Woman and her sister. Their voices, nuanced and well contrasted, add emotional texture to each exchange.
Act Two begins with a gentle 4½-minute orchestral interlude. It draws on an Ericsay Lullaby, which is very nice. Yet Bantock clearly had some difficulty in developing it, because he just repeats it eleven times, albeit with slightly varying orchestration.
It has been seven years since the events of the first act. The serenity of the music is abruptly broken by the arrival of two fishermen, who sing a cheerful Hebridean Smugglers’ Song. Their tune is soon interrupted by the appearance of the Cailleach, whom the fishermen are to take back to her island. She concludes the scene with a rhythmic Reivers’ song intended to hasten their journey, but confesses that she does not understand the words. As she falls asleep exhausted, she quietly sings The Lure o’Lilting to herself. I must say that this short piece struck me as the most quietly songful in the entire work. Yvonne Howard’s singing is beautiful.
Despite all this, the entire sequence feels like a filler.It is primarily an excuse to insert songs that hold little relevance to the ensuing narrative. The next sequence is for the three Swan Maidens. It is a short recitative to explain that the seal folk are angry with the Islesman for holding his seal-woman bride to the land, denying her the freedom to don her seal robe and return to the sea. They speculate what would happen if the hidden seal robe were to be found, if she could not resist the temptation of donning it, and so leave her small child behind.
After they leave, the Cailleach sings the sad Fate Croon. Then the Islesman enters and sings his Mull Fisher’s Love Song. There follows an extended section of recitative. First, he and the Cailleach discuss his wife and her longing for the sea, but also how much he loves her and their child. Second, after he exits, the Seal-Woman and Cailleach discuss the same as the old woman prays that the sea longing and sea madness do not affect her.
The Fishermen return to ferry the Cailleach home. When she has gone, the Seal-Woman sits down to spin wool. She sings a spinning song, towards the end of which her husband and child enter. She says that she has had seven happy years, but the sea longing is ever with her. As her husband leaves to finish off peat-stacking, Morag the child wanders off.
Her mother then sings the last song of the opera, So Sweet is Morag. At its end, she laments the lure of the sea and her Sea-Sister. She becomes frantic, especially as her daughter reappears carrying her mother’s sea robe which she found hidden behind a peat stack. The mother is astonished and immediately gives in to the power of the call of the sea. Before leaping off a rock into the sea, she tells her daughter to tell her father what has happened, and that she will ensure a good catch of fish if he is ever in need.
The Islesman reappears. Realising what has happened, he sadly embraces his daughter. He tells her ‘thou art all of her and part of me’.
The opera ends quietly with the off-stage voice of the Seal-Woman.
Much of Act Two consists of recitative. Bantock has provided for it music that tries to be early-20th-century tonally, whilst fitting in with the folk music that constitutes the melodic core of the work. I have listened to the opera three times. I can say that he succeeds without ever producing faux-Celtic folk music, but he does not produce anything particularly memorable. Perhaps that is to the good, because the whole purpose of Marjory Kennedy-Fraser’s vision was to show off the rich heritage of song that she had collected. It would not have been particularly helpful to have a modern ‘tune’ in competition. As I said at the beginning of this review, for the most part Bantock’s music flows with a conversational ease.
Naturally, Bantock did not collect native folk song, unlike Vaughan Williams, who was steeped in its idiom, and who could compose new melodies in the English folk song style. Even so, his folk opera Hugh the Drover has never been a success, never mind its melodic richness. Perhaps the Scots and English were not all that receptive to folk operas.
Retrospect Opera has excelled in the casting of The Seal Woman. The singing is uniformly very fine indeed, and John Andrews conducts the Orchestra of Scottish Opera sympathetically. The recording is veryvery good, well balanced and full, with a pleasant acoustic giving the sound bloom.
The booklet is exemplary. It includes the essays I noted, a complete libretto, a table indicating the source material and its whereabouts in the opera, a glossary of Gaelic terms, and biographies of the featured artists. There is also an explanation of Gaelic Vocables. It explains the “words without meaning” which appear in some of the songs. Retrospect Opera’s attention to detail can be seen in the front cover, an adaptation of the original design for The Seal Woman score. Also included is a heartfelt appreciation by Granville Bantock’s grandson, Cuillin Bantock, along with two photos from the original production, multiple coloured photos of the performers, and one from the recording session.
For those interested in the lives of overlooked composers, Andrew King’s PhD thesis Sir Granville Bantock (1868-1946): Aspects of his Life and Songs (University of Birmingham, 2021) is available for free download. It includes the most up-to-date biography of the composer.
Jim Westhead
Additional cast and production team
Maidens: Eve Pearson Maxwell (soprano), Caitlin Makenzie (mezzo-soprano), Amy Karensa (mezzo-soprano)
Assistant Conductor: Benjamin Hamilton
Recording Producer: Matthew Bennett
Recording Engineer: Dave Rowell
Rehearsal Pianist: Valerie Langfield
Gaelic Coach: Màiri MacMillan
Executive Producer: Andrew H. King
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