“It was a unique experience - music, dance, theatre all came together to produce an unforgettable and emotional drama.”
Audience member, Stornoway
The Project
This major international co-production was performed on 22 and 23 June 2007 in five European venues simultaneously, France (Valenciennes), Belgium (Mons), Germany (Düsseldorf), Austria (Hallstatt) and Scotland (Stornoway), linked by live satellite connection to St Kilda and webcast live on the BBC.
The event featured live music-theatre with vertical dancers, actors, musicians, choirs and Gaelic singers in each venue. Both contemporary and traditional music was used, as well as the natural St Kildan soundscape of sea, wind and birds. All five productions worked from the same script, libretto and musical score but all were profoundly different in the nature of their venue and their visual and dramatic presentation Each production featured a theatrical cast, a contemporary music orchestra, choirs, traditional Gaelic singers and arial dance.
Each venue also featured large screen audio visual projection of the Parisian vertical dance company, Retouramont, performing an aerial ballet suspended from Hebridean cliffs and echoing the way in which the St Kildans worked for centuries. The large screens also showed archive, arial and time-lapse film of St Kilda and elements of the drama shot on location the previous year.
The St Kilda Opera was a unique international arts event and a remarkable success.
In addition to achieving all of its original objectives the St Kilda project has also achieved significant added value as unanticipated opportunities became incorporated into the project. Examples would be the BBC’s live worldwide Webcast; winning the Innovation Award from the Kendal Mountain Film Festival; two academic studies of the project; the wide range of associated community events and youth workshops; the moves now being made to create a permanent St Kilda Visitor Centre and the substantial additional fundraising that eventually increased the St Kilda project budget by 30% to almost €2.4m.
In total 5800 people attended the live shows across the venues, with an additional 3,500 watching online that week and a further 2,500 experiencing the project through a series of complementary activities.