Bantock: The Seal Woman album review – Celtic folk opera that never quite gets its head above water

Howard/Carby/Scottish Opera/Andrews(Retrospect Opera, two CDs)Granville Bantock’s story of a Selkie emerging from the sea is a century-old curio whose beauty has faded over the yearsExcept perhaps in Birmingham, where his memory is still cherished for what he did for the city’s music, including co-founding the CBSO, Granville Bantock (1868-1946) has slipped quietly into the margins of 20th-century British music. But as well as being an academic and conductor, Bantock was a prolific composer, with a work list including four symphonies, five concertos and nine operas, of which the last, the “Celtic folk opera” The Seal Woman, is easily the best remembered now.The premiere of The Seal Woman in 1924 was the Birmingham Repertory theatre’s first production; librettist Marjory Kennedy-Fraser took the main role of the Cailleach, whose dreams and visions tell the story of the Selkie, seal-people who emerge from the sea every seven years to live on land, shedding their skins to take human form. Continue reading...

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If you love Glasgow so much, Lana, maybe you could do more than 14 songs?