Page 700 - Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Coverage Book 2023-24

In a Cincinnati Opera season featuring such standards as

Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata, the debut

of the operatic take on the composition featuring music and lyrics by

McCartney and collaborator composer Carl Davis is a refreshing

anomaly. McCartney’s first classical composition had its world

premiere on June 28, 1991 at the Liverpool Cathedral as a

commissioned piece to celebrate the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic

Orchestra’s 150th anniversary.

And though the 82-year-old Beatle wasn’t on hand to see the Opera’s

high-energy take on his eight-movement homage to his hometown,

in the weeks leading up to the debut the city was blanketed with a

blizzard of posters, social media messages and memes encouraging

locals to help “Get Paul to the Hall.”

The effort was intended to spur interest in the $1.3 million original

production that over the course of 90 minutes tells the story a “war

baby” named Shanty, who, like McCartney, comes into a fiery world

engulfed in the air raid blitz of WWII. At Tuesday night’s (July 16)

final dress rehearsal, the cast was dialed in to the tale that mixes

hope, tragedy, redemption and joy into a joyous spectacle that

unfolds on a massive map of Liverpool.

At the outset, the sets designed by Leslie Travers and stage director

Caroline Clegg brought home the horrors of war as characters in

period dress streamed in through the aisles to take their place in a

bomb shelter bisected on the floor by the map of the River Mersey. It

was a poignant watery metaphor for life’s journey that Queen City