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Boston Lyric Opera brings ‘The Lighthouse’ to JFK

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February 05, 2012|By Harlow Robinson

Thomas Hase, lighting designer for The Lighthouse, at the JFK Library. (JONATHAN WIGGS/GLOBE STAFF )

In New England we love our lighthouses. Beacons of safety in the stormy dark, they adorn the jagged coastline like timeless monuments to our maritime history. But lighthouses, especially in the pre-automation era, also gave rise to more unsettling feelings and questions. Who lives there, anyhow? What weird phenomena might lighthouse keepers witness, or imagine, during those long days and nights of lonely vigil, fog, and spray?

These questions also fascinated distinguished British composer Peter Maxwell Davies. For many years, Davies, 77, has lived on Sanday, one of the remote Orkney Islands north of Scotland, where lighthouses are crucial fixtures of the ruggedly romantic landscape. In 1979, Davies transformed his interest in local maritime lore into music when he completed “The Lighthouse,’’ a chamber opera in a prologue and one act. Since its 1980 premiere at the Edinburgh Festival, “The Lighthouse’’ has become one of the most popular of all 20th-century operas, having been performed by more than 100 different companies.

This week, Boston Lyric Opera will present four performances in Smith Hall at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. British stage director Tim Albery will make his BLO debut, as will set and costume designer Camellia Koo. BLO’s British-born music director David Angus will conduct.

“The Lighthouse’’ is the latest offering in BLO’s Opera Annex program, created to stage productions in alternative, non-theatrical venues around the city. With a panoramic view of Boston Harbor, Smith Hall provides an evocative setting for an opera about the sea. “We are creating a world that will embrace the audience,’’ said Albery in a recent phone interview.

Davies wrote the libretto based on a book by Craig Mair, “The Lighthouse Boy,’’ which tells the true story of the disappearance of three keepers from a lighthouse on the desolate Flannan Isles. When the supply ship Hesperus arrived as scheduled on Boxing Day in 1900, no trace of the men was found. The crew entered the lighthouse to find the living quarters deserted, beds still unmade, as if the inhabitants had just stepped out.

Theories were advanced to explain the keepers’ disappearance: that one keeper was an alcoholic who pushed the others over a cliff; that a love affair among the men went bad; even that they were abducted by extraterrestrials. More likely, per the conclusion of the official investigation: They were carried off from a landing site by a rogue wave.