Arts & Events

On Sunday, May 1, I attended the Opera Parallèle production of The Lighthouse, a 1979 opera by Peter Maxwell Davies. Based on a true story about lighthouse keepers who mysteriously disappeared in 1900, leaving no trace, from a lighthouse on Flannan Island in the Outer Hebrides, The Lighthouse by Peter Maxwell Davies is heavy on atmosphere but somewhat spare and chilling in musical terms. The orchestra offers an unusual mix of jangly out of tune piano, guitar, banjo, flexatone keyboard, blaring brass, strings, and exotic percussion. The music is jagged, often piercing, and the singing is largely declamatory. Three singers play the three lighthouse keepers. They seem to switch back and forth between the keepers who mysteriously disappeared, on one hand, and those who discovered that the original keepers had disappeared into thin air, or, possibly, into the sea.  

Nicole Paiement conducted, and her husband Brian Staufenbiel directed this austere production, which was offered both Friday, April 29, and Sunday, May 1, at San Francisco’s Z Space on Florida Street in SOMA. Featured in the cast were tenor Thomas Glenn as Sandy, baritone Robert Orth as Blazes, and bass David Cushing as Arthur. In a lengthy Prologue, A Court of Inquiry in Edinburgh examines the three men who discovered the mysteriously empty lighthouse. They recount what they saw, contradicting one another on this or that detail. The Court reaches an open verdict, unable to determine what happened to the keepers who disappeared. 

After this Prologue, the scene shifts to the lighthouse. The same three men who testified at the Inquiry are now the lighthouse keepers, though whether they are the original keepers who disappeared or their replacements is not entirely clear. Presumably, they are now portraying the original keepers, because it has already been established that the lighthouse has now been automated and no longer needs human keepers. Nonetheless, ambiguity remains. What is important is that these three men, cooped up for months on end, often beyond their appointed duty-time, begin to get on one another’s nerves. Arthur is an evangelical Christian who’s always exhorting his comrades to atone for their sins. This holier-than-thou attitude enrages Blazes, who accuses Arthur of blatant hypocrisy, for he too is a sinner. Sandy tries to keep the other two men separated.  

Sandy suggests they each sing a song to lighten the mood and relieve tension. Blazes, robustly sung here by baritone Robert Orth, sings of a troubled childhood, gang violence, a robbery and murder of an old woman, and the death of his parents. Sandy, ably sung here by tenor Thomas Glenn, sings of an erotic dream; but there are undercurrents of incest and homosexuality in his song, as we later see more clearly when each man has to deal with his own ghosts. Arthur, the evangelical, sung here by the stentorian bass David Cushing, sings of (what else?) salvation in the Lord, his deep voice suddenly rising to a piercing falsetto on the name of Jesus Christ. Meanwhile, a storm brews, and the lighthouse is engulfed in a dense, murky fog. Arthur activates the foghorn, which blares forth from the French horn. Suddenly, four dancers who wrap themselves in fabric appear, representing ghosts that confront each man with his past sins. Here we learn that Sandy’s erotic dream may have been about his sister; and we learn as well that he was caught by a prying priest and officious schoolteacher in some sort of homosexual act with a young boy. As for Arthur, he believes that the ghosts have been sent by the Beast, and he exhorts his comrades to take up arms against this Satanic Beast. At its frenzied climax, the fog is lifted, the ghosts disappear, and suddenly the three men seem to become the relief crew who discovered that the original keepers were missing. The orchestra has the last word in this macabre mystery, screeching out one final burst of jagged, angular sound that is reminiscent of fingernails scraping on a blackboard. As I said at the outset of this review, The Lighthouse is heavy on atmosphere but spare and chilling as music.