BACKSTAGE at Edinburgh's Festival Theatre, Scottish Opera is getting ready to raise the curtain on another performance of its celebrated Madama Butterfly. Chorus members rush around, half costumed and made-up, their geisha hairdos juxtaposed with jeans and T-shirts. Stage crew chatter into walkie-talkies, and musicians arrive carrying heavy cases. There's a buzz in the air as cast members catch up with each other's gossip.
Puccini's much-loved opera - a tale of doomed love, colonial brutality and betrayal - isn't exactly comedic, but you'd never guess that from what's going on backstage. In the make-up room, the lush-voiced Australian soprano Rebecca Nash, who plays Cio-cio San, sits opposite the dressing-room mirror, chatting with the make-up artist. Blonde and tanned, she will soon be resplendent in silk kimono, face pale and lips red, her hair hidden under a long, dark Japanese-style wig.
The recent resurgence of the national company could rival even Puccini's plots for high drama. From cutting some 100 jobs (including 34 chorus members) to seeing picket lines outside Glasgow's Theatre Royal, it's been a turbulent time for Scottish Opera since 2005, when the company finances hit dire straits. Staff who survived it still lower their voices when recalling how close to the brink things came.
This backdrop only makes the progress of the company over recent months all the more astonishing. From staring into the financial abyss, Scottish Opera has raised itself up and is enjoying a major resurgence, currently offering slick productions of Madama Butterfly and Lucia di Lammermoor, revelling in financial stability and looking forward to a new season which brings names such as Sir Thomas Allen, Peter Sidhom and Sian Edwards.
"It's a time of great optimism for the arts in Scotland," says Alex Reedijk, general director of the company. "The arts are a very powerful way of expressing who you are as a nation, and we should be trying to be a confident Scotland. Scottish Opera is a jewel in the arts' crown, because we do work which is measured in an international context."
He adds: "We've got a group of people at the company who have become closer as a result of the [recent] past; there's a sense of stability, our finances are in order, so we no longer have to look backwards. My job has been to give the company permission to look forward and outward."
It's this say-so the company has taken to heart, with the new season including performances on the main stage, and smaller-scale touring which will take in 29 national venues, as well as Essential Scottish Opera, which scales things down to four singers and a piano: perfect for Scotland's snuggest of arts venues. Located opposite a grim-looking car park, an historic building on Glasgow's Elmbank Gardens has been the headquarters of Scottish Opera since 1968. High ceilings, marble floors and copious wood panelling give the place the feel of an old bank, but the grandeur is lightened by a friendly atmosphere permeating the offices, practice rooms and rehearsal halls.
A highlight of next season's programme is the much-anticipated Five: 15, a series of five new 15-minute pieces created by Scottish writers and composers. Names already attached include Ian Rankin, Craig Armstrong, Alexander McCall Smith, Patrick Doyle and Bernard MacLaverty. Innovative and challenging, it may further enhance the reputation of a company that so recently was under serious threat.
Current productions are unquestionably impressive, but two out of four 2007 offerings are revivals. Reedijk, however, doesn't consider this a negative, believing that the traditional repertoire - the "top 15" - is a prerequisite for Scottish Opera and does nothing to prevent it from also having an eye to the future.
"To a large extent, the company draws from the past," he says. "We also have a responsibility to put something back. How do you do that? You have to find a way to help new work be created in Scotland.
"By bringing composers together with writers for Five: 15, I'm trying to make opera; it's not about a cantata or a song, but opera where we bring theatre and drama, character and narrative together with music. It'll be like the perfect short story."
And there is more to this project than a handful of short pieces. "Five: 15 is part of a four-year strategy," he says, the plan being that, over three years of development, one of the original short pieces will be worked up into a full-length opera. "It's an investment by Scottish Opera into making opera in Scotland," Reedijk adds.
Back in Edinburgh, as the voices warming up echo along the corridors, and as a giggling Nash wills herself to find her "inner geisha",
the audience begins to filter into the pink-and-gold auditorium in eager anticipation, unaware of the controlled chaos behind the curtain.
"The best you can do is hope like hell, plan like hell, and rehearse like hell - and hope it comes together," says Reedijk. "When that happens, you have the most fantastic experience, but at 10:10pm it's gone."
• Madama Butterfly, Edinburgh Festival Theatre, tonight, 7:15pm, then at His Majesty's Theatre, Aberdeen, 28 and 30 June. Lucia di Lammermoor at Aberdeen 26 June (
www.scottishopera.org.uk).
STEVE WINNING
ORCHESTRA PORTER
TALES of Truckfest and lifting a piano single-handedly precede Steve Winning's entrance. Winning has worked for Scottish Opera for 20 years, starting at the age of 21 doing a week's holiday cover at the stage door. After working for years in a variety of jobs, he was made full time orchestra porter eight years ago. What does he do? Well, there's the music stands, the scores, the instruments (hence the truck), ensuring that the orchestra is in place on time, bringing the conductor out and crucially beginning the applause if the audience is too shy or slow.
"People look like they're just sitting about during a performance, reading the paper or having a coffee," he says. "But as soon as a call comes in, everyone jumps to it. That's what I love about working in the theatre. It's such a great atmosphere.
"Theatre is like a bug. About 15 years ago I decided to take a break. I left and got a job the following day as a salesman. I was working 9 to 5 and I lasted a fortnight.
"At the end of your shift you can look round and really see what you've done. When the applause rings out, it's for the performers, obviously, but it's also for me and my partner, Brian, because we've set it up. It doesn't matter how little you do, you're a part of it."
KATHRYN HANNAH
SOPRANO, CHORUS MEMBER IN MADAMA BUTTERFLY AND LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR
CROWDED into one of the rehearsal rooms, the small chorus sing through scales. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder, some in costume, others having just arrived, they run through their vocal warm-up.
"Obviously we're all professional singers, so we've warmed up our voices before we arrive at the theatre," says soprano Kathryn Hannah. "But the warm-up allows us to check things over and get to see each other again after a few days. I really enjoy it."
Voices ready, it's off to dressing rooms to get into costumes and make-up. Members of the chorus do their own make-up with supervision from the professionals. Equipped with a picture as a guide and a bag of make-up specially selected for them, they apply the colour to lips, eyes and cheeks. Judging by Hannah's work, powdering her skin and adding eye-liner, they're pretty good at it too.
"It's the men you've got to watch more than the women," says Laurie, a make-up artist, as Hannah dabs and smoothes. "We had a few of them that looked like corpses for Lucia the other night and that was not the plan."
"We all enjoy this bit," says Hannah. "It's part of the process of getting into character."
The soprano made her debut in the chorus of David McVicar's well-loved Der Rosenkavalier last August. "When they asked me if I'd like to work on Butterfly and Lucia I was happy to accept," she says. "I've made good friends and colleagues, it's a lovely company to work with."
NAOMI IVES
COMPANY MANAGER
'COMPANY office' may sound grand, but it's basically a cloakroom stuffed with bags, programmes and boxes of leaflets. Company manager Naomi Ives
has worked for Scottish Opera for nearly two years in a job encompassing everything from overseeing the catering to auditioning actors and dancers and - breaking all showbusiness rules - taking responsibility for children and animals. Her main job, though, is to be "first port of call for the singers".
"We pay artists to come here and be creative - that's their job and they work hard at it," Ives says. "They don't need to be bothered by all the little things, so that's what my assistant and I are here for. It can be anything from a singer phoning up at 10pm to say 'I can't get into my flat' to someone ringing up to say 'my daughter's broken her leg, I've got to go home', or 'my washing machine won't work'."
Being at the mercy of a group of artists' whims may sound fairly trying, but Ives insists she doesn't see much in the way of diva-ish behaviour.
DAFYDD BURNE JONES
STAFF PRODUCER (RESIDENT ASSISTANT DIRECTOR)
"I WAS in the back of the circle watching the first act," says Dafydd Burne Jones. "I'd slipped a disc, it was my first day back at work, I saw Sally Silver [playing Lucia] move across the stage and I just knew something was wrong.
"She just stopped and held her hand up to the conductor and said, 'I need stage management'. So I limped down and by the time I got there she was on the floor."
Having your soprano rip a calf muscle halfway through the first act sounds like a nightmare, but Jones tells it with such good humour that it's impossible not to laugh. As it was, Silver finished the opera, albeit it in an audience-member's wheelchair pushed by her character's lady-in-waiting.
Mishaps aside, Jones couldn't be happier with this season. "I sit out there every night and I'm not only aware that there are more people, but the character of the audience has changed as well," he says. "There are so many young people. Someone asked me last night why there were a lot of children in. Well, at £10 a ticket, it's cheaper than childcare." As well as everything else, Jones presents Scottish Opera Unwrapped, hour-long free events which give a behind-the-scenes view of what goes into an opera as well as a taster of the featured production. "We make the Unwrapped light-hearted and people really seem to enjoy that," Jones says. "In the Lucia Unwrapped we stage the first scene with volunteers, which can be a bit nerve-wracking, partly because they've got really big sticks. Five minutes before the first one, one of them knocked me out. The next thing I knew I was sitting on the floor with someone saying to me 'don't get up'."
HARRY NICOLL
TENOR, GORO IN MADAMA BUTTERFLY
THE sound of laughter follows Harry Nicoll. As he arrives backstage, there's no-one who doesn't stop to say hello. The Inverness-born tenor has been in or around Scottish Opera since the early 1970s, with breaks to perform at Covent Garden and Welsh National Opera, among other houses. Sitting in the warm glow of the make-up room, watched over by a row of polystyrene heads, Nicoll is having his blonde hair pinned down to allow his wig to be fitted, part of his costume as Goro, the oleaginous marriage broker in Butterfly. He quizzes the make-up artist about whether she's used the right foundation, and tells her funny stories. "I began my career here 30 years ago, just after I finished college," he says. "I am really glad to have been asked back, having not been here for so long, and very glad to be asked to do something so fabulous. It really feels like Scottish Opera is getting going again."
So what's made the difference to the company? "I think it's the combination of talent involved," he says. "With these people you feel an ease and a joy in working together. I guess if you thought you were on a sinking ship you'd find it hard to feel as joyful as that. The stage and company management are all feeling quite buoyant and it gets passed on."
