Go to St Kilda Website for podcasts, video clips and info about the project
St Kilda: A European Opera was a spectacular live theatre and multi media event, which was performed simultaneously in five countries in June 2007.
The project was inspired by the lives of the people of St Kilda, a hardy and close-knit community of cliff-climbing Gaelic speakers who inhabited the UK's most north-westerly landfall for 3,000 years. Their Gaelic language originated in central Europe more than 4,000 years ago and their isolated islands were known to navigators in ancient times as 'the islands at the edge of the world'. St Kilda was evacuated in 1930 and is the UK’S only UNESCO World Heritage Site due to its natural and cultural landscape. The purpose of the event was to celebrate and raise awareness of this remarkable place and it’s people.
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.
Audiences
The live shows were sold out in each European venue, with a total of 5800 attendees in the 5 countries over the 2 nights. In addition to those who made it to a venue to watch the live performance over 1000 people watched the filmed Scottish performance live on the Internet, and a further 2412 watched later that week using the Watch Again facility on the BBC website. Complementary and associated events reached another 2525 people throughout Scotland. In total over 11,700 around the world experienced the project in some form over the 7 days.
If you'd like to find out more about getting a copy of the DVD please email kirstie@gaelic-arts.com
