For 16 years Music Theatre Wales has devoted itself to the seemingly thankless task of taking new small-scale opera around the country. Its latest project is Nigel Osborne's The Piano Tuner, based on the first novel by American author Daniel Mason.
Set in the late 1880s, the story concerns Edgar Drake, who is commissioned by the British army to travel to a remote area of Burma to repair a Erard grand piano owned by the ruling medical officer, Anthony Carroll. A kind of benevolent Kurtz, Carroll is a charismatic figure whose unorthodox humanitarian methods are disapproved of by the army but have kept a precarious peace; Drake is enchanted by his world but finally suffers for it. There, in a nutshell, is a story so concerned with responses to the sights and sounds of specific places that it doesn't obviously lend itself to opera at all.
That doesn't seem to have discouraged Osborne, or Amanda Holden, whose libretto compresses the story stylishly, or Michael McCarthy, who has directed the compact staging. Or, indeed, the cast, led by tenor Giles Davies's chirpy Drake. Alongside a western chamber ensemble Osborne employs two Burmese musicians, who sing and play traditional instruments; the Bach fugues that Drake so loves are often hinted at. The mythologised piano itself is on stage throughout the second half, but it is perhaps Osborne's most effective stroke that we never actually hear it.
Yet even if Osborne has found an apt soundworld, he hasn't been able to retain the story's subtlety or tension, or that of all the characters: despite being the sanest character on stage, Steven Gallop's mustachioed, awkward Carroll still comes across as eccentric.
In his programme note Osborne says that he was attracted to the story because he could hear it. It comes as little surprise, then, that Mason's novel gains nothing by being made into an opera: a story you can already hear has no need of a composer.
· At Aberystwyth Arts Centre tomorrow. Box office: 01970 623232. Then touring.
