★★★★☆
Opera is an art form that has a troubled relationship with reality at the best of times, but Britten’s Church Parables take that dislocation to a whole new level. When he wrote them, the composer was heavily influenced by the formal structures of Japanese noh drama, so gone is any attempt at naturalistic representation. Instead they are steeped in ritual and ceremony, drawing attention to the action’s artificiality, and the very fact that they’re meant to be performed in a church rather than a theatre reinforces that.
So it helped enormously that this performance of The Burning Fiery Furnace, given by Scottish Opera as part of the 2018 Lammermuir Festival, took place in the soaring medieval surroundings of St Mary’s Church, Haddington. The