Gentle Giant

Published Monday 3 March 2008 at 10:55 by Edward Bhesania

It’s easy to assume that children and opera don’t mix, but the Royal Opera’s revival of Stephen McNeff’s Gentle Giant, based on the book by former children’s laureate Michael Morpurgo, held the attention of the largely young audience on opening night.

The story is a morality tale about how the Gentle Giant - irrationally feared and avoided by the inhabitants of a simple fishing village - saves a girl, Miranda, from drowning. The girl eventually persuades the villagers to trust the giant, who ends up showing them how to clear their lake of algae, thereby restoring the stocks of fish on which their livelihoods depend. As well as encouraging us to treat outsiders with understanding rather than suspicion, the tale also conveys that, with a little insight, we can enable nature to heal itself.

McNeff’s music is mostly modern in idiom, with the band of five instrumentalists placed on stage and dressed as villagers. The relationship between music and action/emotion is less closely tethered than might be ideal for a children’s opera (or perhaps any opera), which means that the simplicity of the concluding work-song - sung as the villagers pull together to clear the lake of algae - seems a wrench. Of the cast of five, Claire McCaldin stands out in the dramatic colour offered by her scene as the dodgy, stardust-peddling salesman.

The stage and lighting designs by Alex Lowde and David Holmes present a more austere atmosphere than Michael Foreman’s book illustrations; and the book’s human giant is morphed effectively into a stranger presence: a large puppet worn above the shoulders of its operator. But this only deepens the atmosphere of struggling, insular village life.