Uprising, 
Usher Hall, Edinburgh

ONE of the saddest things about my Friday night watching the opera Uprising at the Usher Hall with the RSNO, was that the auditorium was barely half full. It was fitting considering the theme that the planet is dying and not enough people are listening. 

Uprising is the work of composer Jonathan Dove. It is the story of a young teen, Lola (Ffion Edwards), who, like many young people today, is disturbed by the climate disaster we are facing. She stops wanting to go to school. What is the point if there is no future? 

She wants to go vegan, much to her family’s chagrin. Her father (Marcus Farnsworth) is more supportive, but her sister (Julieth Lozano Rolong) and her mother (Madeleine Shaw) need a lot more convincing to believe in this new Lola and what she wants to achieve. 

Her mother is also responsible for a new superhighway which will save people a whole 20 minutes getting from one city to another. However, a beautiful forest needs to go to make room for it. The nod to the waste that was HS2 railway was not lost on this audience member. 

At a protest this family and the townspeople become lost in the woods, unable to find their way out. The trees begin to talk, to tell their story. The children begin to rise up against the adults whose apathy disgusts them. 

The music itself is stirring and beautiful. With sweeping melodies and gorgeous, scrunchy harmonies; this opera is a lot more accessible than most modern works like it. The word painting is clever, and the instrumentation and orchestration are on the money. 

On stage we are joined by the extraordinarily talented RSNO Youth Chorus, as well as the RSNO Chorus Academy. Both being amateur groups, some of the members didn’t read music but still managed to learn this complex and interestingly staged show. 

The story itself is a little simplistic and I was a bit disappointed it doesn’t go as deep into the problems we are facing. It started out well but I felt like there was more digging to do (not literally, let’s stop digging), and bigger fish to fry (though not if you’re vegan) such as government responsibility and how to make businesses responsible for what they do. We all know we shouldn’t chop down trees. 

How do we change more than individual hearts and minds about it? Capitalism, corporations and consumerism are the biggest worries. I wanted more about this.

Even so, it made me want to weep for what we have done to the planet. But most of all it made me want to cry out and ask why more people weren’t sitting here listening and learning. This work is important and worth seeking out.

Run ended.