Peter Maxwell Davies
The Lighthouse

About The Lighthouse
by Peter Maxwell Davies

The original inspiration of this work came from reading Craig Mair's book on the Stevenson family of Edinburgh. This family, apart from producing the famous author Robert Louis, produced several generations of lighthouse and harbour engineers. In December 1900 the lighthouse and harbour supply ship Hesperus based in Stromness, Orkney, went on its routine tour of duty to the Flannan Isles light in the Outer Hebrides. The lighthouse was empty - all three beds and the table looked as if they had been left in a hurry, and the lamp, though out, was in perfect working order, but the men had disappeared into thin air.

There have been many speculations as to how and why the three keepers disappeared. This opera does not offer a solution to the mystery, but indicates what might be possible under the tense circumstances of three men being marooned in a storm-bound lighthouse long after the time they expected to be relieved.

Press Comments

The Sunday Times, London by Paul Driver
A blinding take on Peter Maxwell Davies' chamber opera
Peter Maxwell Davies's 1979 chamber opera The Lighthouse has had more than 100 productions and must count among the most successful British operas since Britten's Peter Grimes, which it resembles in some ways. The sounds of foghorn, sea swell, sea birds permeate the later piece as they do the earlier, though in a new key: a post-Schoenbergian language that lends itself to searing dissonance as well as modal meditativeness and naughty parody. Like Grimes, The Lighthouse links madness and the sea. Prolonged separation from society has an effect on the three lighthouse-keepers who form the entire cast (all-male, like Britten's Billy Budd) that is as deranging as the social opprobrium Grimes brings on himself; and a gay subtext flickers over, or under, both works.

What has ensured The Lighthouse's remarkable performance history is surely the combination of an apt idiom and a tightly interlocked, though potently direct, structure. The work can hardly fail, but its latest production, mounted by the Manchester-based Psappha ensemble at Lancaster University (it goes to the St Magnus and Buxton festivals, and is available as a webcast from March 30), stands out among the many I've seen.

There are three fine singers, each doubling as one of the support-ship officers who discovered the still unexplained disappearance of the keepers of the Flannan Isle light in the Outer Hebrides in 1900. The tenor James Oxley as Sandy, the keeper with the murky sexual past, the baritone Damian Thantrey as Blazes, with his violent past, and the bass-baritone Jonathan Best as the Bible-bashing Arthur are splendidly at home in their roles, including in Best's case, that of the Voice of the Cards: for he delivers an ominous Tarot interpretation of a game of crib.

The opera is structured as a 25-minute prologue and hour-long main act called The Cry of the Beast. In the prologue, the officers give their (inconsistent) evidence to a court of inquiry, the questions being posed by a French horn behind the audience. It is a clever ploy, and such instrumental role-playing links the work to the music-theatre genre of the 1960s that Davies, with his Eight Songs for a Mad King, did much to create. The expressionist energies of that work still thrash around here. There are memorably exacerbated sounds, for instance the scraping of a gong as though with bloody fingernails. The revivalist hymn that the keepers break into as the "beast" of their fevered imaginations approaches (a lighthouse beam blinding the audience) is a brilliant, transfiguring stroke.

The 12 players, under Etienne Siebens, sounded radiant in the sympathetic acoustic of the Great Hall, and projected their tricky lines with striking precision. Elaine Tyler-Hall's direction, using Aaron Marsden's easily tourable, two-tier metal set, was skilful. The retention of an interval after the prologue, as stipulated in the libretto (Davies's own), was as wise as it is rare. Simply forging on, with that intolerance of articulated spans so common in today's performance world, makes it harder for us to appreciate that the two parts culminate in the same musical material, and the dramatic implication thereof: that we may have been watching phantoms all along, a kind of ghost sonata.

The Times, London by Geoff Brown
Opera delivered the verve expected from a group who have carved a formidable niche reviving Maxwell Davies's pieces
Meteorology's unholy trinity arrived at the Buxton Festival: it rained, it was cold, and it was windy. Just the day, then, to take shelter with Peter Maxwell Davies's The Lighthouse. Not that this chamber opera from 1980 offers much comfort to mariners: terse and haunting, it explores the documented mystery of three keepers in 1900 who disappeared from the Flannan Isles lighthouse, on the Outer Hebrides' outer rim. Psappha's production, directed by Elaine Tyler-Hall, is solid. So is the musical delivery, undertaken with the verve expected from a group who have carved a formidable niche reviving the composer's music-theatre pieces.

The Lighthouse wears its age well. By 1980 the mad clown in Maxwell Davies's music had been subdued; he'd refreshed his language with classical forms, descriptive writing, even take-home tunes. Indeed, his ear for sound pictures is so strong that Aaron Marsden's black, minimalist setting stunts nothing, for the craggy rocks, wind gusts, and squawking sea birds are all in the music, sharply conducted by Etienne Siebens. And Psappha's musicians, sharing the stage with the skeletal lighthouse, offer no visual distractions, unlike the surtitles flashing left and right at the stage's corners.

Flashing to little purpose, too, for the cast of three pitch their material with plenty of force and clarity as Maxwell Davies's writing eases. Jonathan Best's sepulchral tones didn't help his Sancho Panza in Buxton's Camacho's Wedding, but they slot right into Arthur, the keeper who sings a Salvation Army hymn and expects the arrival of an apocalyptic beast from the sea, due to dine on sinners. The youthful anguish of James Oxley's high tenor is a good match for Sandy, spinner of erotic romance, while Damian Thantrey's baritone is at least reasonably equipped for Blazes, the keeper with a violent past.

Marc Rosette's lighting, heavy on the murk, amplifies the structural mystery at the opera's heart, with singers doubling as keepers and the officers who discovered their disappearance. Are they one and the same? Are we seeing ghosts? Psappha's forceful production isn't telling.

The Guardian, London by Rowena Smith
Performance given at the St. Magnus Festival, Orkney
Light is both physical presence and metaphor in Peter Maxwell Davies's chamber opera The Lighthouse. Its manifestation is the beacon tended by the lighthouse keepers, its psychological aspect the way each of the men delves into the dark recesses of his own psyche. Such self-illumination can be overwhelming and ultimately destructive, an idea cleverly expressed in Elaine Tyler-Hall's production, which opened the St Magnus festival with the blinding light that is turned on the audience at the climax.

Tyler-Hall's production uses a single skeletal set, a revolving framework that represents the lighthouse's interior and exterior. The cramped spaces combined with Marc Rosette's murky lighting to evoke the claustrophobic experience of the three keepers confined together.

Psappha's 12-strong instrumental ensemble conducted by Etienne Siebens provided the dramatic backbone. Part ghost story, part psychological drama, The Lighthouse is also a character study of three individuals pushed to the edge of sanity. Here, there was a well-differentiated trio of performances, with Jonathan Best menacing as the aggressive, Bible-thumping Arthur, and Damian Thantrey swaggering as the cavalier, quick-tempered Blazes. Arthur's stentorian growls and Blazes's bawdy banjo ballad were two of the most notable moments in the piece, yet it was perhaps James Oxley's Sandy, a wide-eyed portrayal of innocence corrupted, who was particularly striking.