Welcome
We’re delighted you’ve visited this private information page, which would suggest you’ve also purchased a copy of our album, Opsnizing Dad! Thank you for your interest in the recording and we hope you enjoy the music and messages it shares with the listener.
We wanted to make your purchase a little more special, and so we have created this dedicated information page which can only be reached by those in possession of the special QR code included with each purchase of the album. This area provides you with a bit of behind-the-scenes action, important links to the original short story and the lyrics of the opera, as well as more detailed information on the work’s history.
Introduction
Opsnizing Dad is the first of WEE THREE – a ‘Tartan Trittico’ of one act comic operas which are a satire on the surreal state of current society.
Opsnizing Dad is based on a short story by Elisabeth Ingram Wallace which won the 2017 Kaleidoscope Health and Care Writing the Future Award. The opera was nominated for an Ivors award in 2022.
The subject matter is dementia and how we will cope with ageing populations in 2100. The sole role, the Son, is supported by a small chorus articulating the son’s psyche. A band of seven 19th century period brass instruments and percussion conjures up a steam punk musical sound world. The anachronistic use of obsolete 19th century brass instruments including saxotromba and ophicleide in a twenty-second century setting highlight the fact that, despite the twenty-second century technology of Opsnizing, the Father’s brain is firmly rooted well in the past.
The story follows the Son’s love for his father. The plot’s twists and turns scrape the red-raw bottom of the Son’s barrel of resilience. His deranged, ever-resourceful parent tests his sanity through the chaos of dementia-induced escapades.
You’ll also noticed that the album lists a couple of tracks from the second in the collection – They Twa’ Fush – which we’ve included to provide a sneak preview to future plans.
Opsnizing Dad – The 2023 Recording Session Gallery
The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
(Photo credit: Nindoo Photography)
The Story Behind The Opera
Writing The Future was an inspirational project run by Kaleidoscope Health & Care to engage with the arts and bring healthcare topics to the forefront of discussion through the written word. Find out more about this Writing The Future.
Read Opsnizing Dad, The Original Short Story
There were six shortlisted finalists and Opsnizing Dad by Elisabeth Ingram Wallace was the overall winner. You can now download and read her short story. Immerse yourself into a world where Opsnizing is an option and explore what that could mean for loved ones.
Read Direct – Opsnizing Dad (written) (PDF)
Listen To Opsnizing Dad, The Original Short Story
As part of Kaleidoscope’s Writing The Future award ceremony, Opsnizing Dad was read out to the audience by Anna Andreson.
Listen Direct – Opsnzing Dad (audio-story) (YouTube)
Libretto
Elisabeth Ingram-Wallace: Opsnizing Dad
I decided OPSNIZE was for me when Dad lost his trousers on the bus. He threw them out the window. Then he rolled around on the floor, screaming his own name, over and over, until some kid pushed a panic button.
David
David
David
That was his name. He wanted to hold on to it, for as long as he could.
Whole weeks went by where he lost it, though. Just sat in a chair and occasionally allowed his skull to rotate around three-hundred and sixty degrees on his neck.
Sometimes an arm fell off.
Dad was getting erratic like that, slipping up. His memory had been going for a while, hard disc scrapes, years of them. Then his drives got wiped, not once, but every time we had lightning. His flash memory was damaged by the heatwaves last year. Then he fell asleep in the sun and blacked out for most of June.
I can’t remember if it was always this way.
There have always been flares. I know that.
Solar bursts. Sometimes, they kill things.
But not my Dad.
He was deteriorating, that was true, after several thousand rewrite cycles. But he was still there, somewhere, inside. Underneath.
On bad nights, I blame myself. I should have coughed up more money when his troubles first started, a decade ago. But Dad had never been a fan of splashing the cash. The KAZ was cheap, and a decent bit of Tech.
Maybe not enough to deal with Dad’s memory problems, though.
Dad had been losing his memory for years, even when he was a young man. Keys. Pens. Money. Umbrellas, his wallet. Even me, once. He left me in a pub, I’m still not sure they found me. The right me, I mean.
When Dad was middle aged, he started putting the oven on, and going out for long night walks. He’d pace circuits through industrial estates tracing out lost flight paths, past migrations, from childhood homes through decades, to better, bulldozed, clearly lit times. I’d walk with him, and try to fill in the gaps.
Dad insisted on driving, until the end. Even though he kept losing his car, he would stride for hours, circling streets until he found it. He would not give driving up. Refused. Like all the old-fashioned things. Like map reading, and maps. He prided himself on knowing where he was, being Chief Navigator. Up-front. The man with the compass. In charge.
He thought he owned the past. It was safe there.
But, everything oxidises. Leave an apple out, it’s going to turn brown, just like information. Leave memory out, it will go rusty after a few decades too, if it doesn’t get scratched first.
Dad got scratched.
Dad was the old order. He drank wine, beer, vodka. He ate, a lot. All junk. He had three concussions as a kid, too, one playing rugby, and two falling off things. He couldn’t remember what he fell off. And that was part of the problem.
He kept falling, and falling and falling, and every time he crashed, his memory got chipped away, and he couldn’t remember where or what to climb back on to.
But Dad was still Dad.
Even when he was uploaded, into a KAZ.
He still lost things. A robot arm. His trousers, on the bus. His name.
But some of the fault was the KAZ failing, too. In recent years.
The problem with technology is, it dates. It’s not like an apple. It doesn’t have seeds in it, so that, even when the fruit shrivels and goes black, you can bury the apple, and it will grow a new tree, full of fresh juicy life.
No. Technology just dies.
OPSNIZE are giving me the hard sell. ‘Safe long-term data storage is a concern for all of us. We must protect our future, now.’
They call OPSNIZE ‘a crystal fortress’, like it’s a cartoon, like I am a dumb kid and will fall for a superhero sales pitch. Secure data storage, a memory hold, a bank!
Truth is, I’m already sold. I’m wiped out.
I’ve been running after Dad for sixty-three years. My knees went to shit thirty years ago and my liver is mush. Maybe my memory is going to run out soon.
The OPSNIZE Human Memory Glass Project will cost my house, my savings, Dads’ savings too.
Despite this, I’m in.
I’m looking forward to OPSNIZING Dad. I’ve spent a decade staring into his disposable KAZ green LED eye-bulbs and telling him not to rotate off the kerb and cause accidents; not to spin all night in the front garden when his fans get clogged with cat hair. I’m fucking sick of the way his charging port bleeps at me and blinks orange then red then goes opaque grey and then blank. I stare at him sometimes and think, I’m the one that plugs you in Dad. Me. No one else pays to keep your memory alive. No one else gives a shit if your memories of thirty years’ cheating on Mum are all lost for future intelligent alien life-forms.
It’s just me.
The doctors here, sales-people to the core, say OPSNIZE Memory Glass can survive a nuclear holocaust and will persist for upwards of ten billion years. Who wouldn’t want that for their Dad?
Who wouldn’t want the day their Dad got drunk on peach schnapps and had sex with their fifteen-year-old babysitter, when they were a child of seven, and in the same room, fused into quartz in five dimensions?
That kind of epic shittyness deserves to be memorialised forever.
Each time he screwed around with another broken woman, or punched me – crammed into another terabyte.
All the times he got naked and touched himself in the street, when shit got bad, really bad, and the doctors said his memory is gone. Euthanasia? And I said no – no – no – no. Put to rest.
He will be the size of a thumbnail.
He will be written into glass, etched, as a series of defects. That sounds about right.
He will be bulletproof. In case they still have bullets in ten billion years’ time. After the nuclear holocaust.
He will be gone.
But he will never ever be lost.
Elisabeth Ingram Wallace lives in Glasgow. She writes flash fiction and short stories, and is writing a novel. She is a 2017 Scottish Book Trust “New Writers Award” winner, and has a Bath Flash Fiction Prize. Her writing is published in the Bath Flash Fiction Anthologies, New Writing Scotland, and b(OINK). This story was the winner of Writing the Future, the world’s largest health short story prize, which aims to bring together those working in health and healthcare with creative writers to think differently about the future and its implications for today. It’s run by Kaleidoscope, a social enterprise set up to bring people together to improve health and care.
The First Performance
The first public concert performance of Opsnizing Dad took place on 9 March 2022 in the Laidlaw Music Centre, University of St Andrews. It was made possible through the power of collaboration and the generosity of the public – a crowd-funding appeal helped us make it all a reality.
As ensemble in residence at University of St Andrews, we wanted to engage and share with the young musicians and singers, and enable them to participate in the origination and performance of new material. So we generated Operalab as a creative hub formed in partnership with The Laidlaw Music Centre and University of St Andrews.
Our first project became Opsnizing Dad, and it was presented as a form of direct music drama dealing with a big issue in an intimate and immersive context.
John Wallace commented:
‘I have tried to heighten the tragedy of dementia through the unbearable optimism of the son in trying to keep life going through it all – his eruptions into banal obscenities through his frustrations with his father leading to anger and complete loss of personal control. During the action, past, present and future blur together in one rapid continuum, but through it all, the love of a son for his father shines through.’
The first concert performance of Opsnizing Dad featured:
- Jamie McDougall, renowned tenor and Associate Teacher of Singing in the main role
- 10 students in the mirroring chorus
- The band consisting of two students, two instrumental tutors and four members of resident brass ensemble The Wallace Collection
- Bede Williams, Head of Instrumental Studies (conductor)
- Claire Innes-Hopkins, Director of Chapel Choirs will be repetiteur and chorus master.
The opera was developed for a streamed concert performance, with a small audience present. It was preceded by a short pre-concert talk with the author and composer and lasted approximately 35 minutes.
Why Did We Do It?
- To provide a channel for pent up musical energy and creativity caused by the pandemic
- To familiarise students first-hand with the processes of creating new work ab initio
- To support our live-streamed concerts
- To nurture musical talent of our students at St Andrews
- To provide our students amazing opportunities to perform with, and be mentored by, renowned professionals
View Our Promotional Video-Bites Playlist
Created To Promote The First Performance And Its Crowd-Funding Appeal
(Please note: DO NOT attempt to make further pledges to the crowd-funding appeal. This project event has now closed. If you wish to support future projects being run by The Wallace Collection, please contact us to discuss your wishes)
Watch The First Performance Online Via YouTube
(Once you’ve confirmed you’re aged 18+ jump to 4’55” to view from the start of concert)
Bonus Tracks – From They Twa’ Fush
They Twa’ Fush, is the second opera in the collection and is presented in Scots. The plot is a fictional account of the private encounter between Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon in her own home, which was a central issue in the court case brought of alleged sexual abuse against Salmond at the High Court in Edinburgh. The ‘Independence Tango’ (danced by Alex and Nicola) and final scene of They Twa’ Fush (In which Nicola’s husband Peter makes an appearance) make up the final two tracks of this CD.
Libretto
John Wallace: The Salmond Smooch aka the Independence Tango (from They Twa’ Fush)
Alex and Nicola expertly dance the tango separately and together consummately.
Alex: solo dance
Nicola: solo dance
Alex:
Theresa’s got nothing on Nicola Sturgeon,
Ah’m thinkin’ we should dae Strictly.
Ah yuist tae fancy masell as a ballet dancer
Moira Shearer Ken Macmillan were ma heroes
a didnae dae too well in ma pliés
an’ ma pas de bas
so ah took up bettin’ oan the horses instead!
Misspent youth, misspent youth,
pissed it up against the wa’
I sang boy soprano in Amahl and the Night Visitors
A could a made something out of my life
if I had stuck to song and dance
instead of politics.
Nicola plays a football rattle with a saltire stuck on it which encourages Alex in another solo dance.
Peter enters and looks bemused at first.
Then Peter, Nicola, and Alex trade meaningful glances as the tango fades.
PETER:
Time for a cup of tea.
And a rich tea or a digestive.
Ah hope you’ve had a fine chat.
Nicola so admires you Alex,
She never stops talking about you.
Ah’ve been listening’ tae Alex Gibson
conducting Götterdämmerung wi’ Scottish Opera –
a broadcast frae the Golden Years.
A’ hiv’ thaim a’ saved up oan ma hard drive
Taks ma mind off things.
NICOLA (tenderly as if her conversation with Alex had never happened):
Peter, Alex has tae go.
He has an urgent appointment with Yuri up in Glasgow to discuss his next Russian TV show.
ALEX:
Nicola, you are an absolute joy.
It’s been so lovely to see you.
I so admire what you’re achieving.
I couldn’t imagine anyone better.
But think aboot what I had tae say!
I’m always at the end of the phone!
Alex walks out of the door, pleasantries all round. Nicola and Peter engage with each other’s’ eyes quizzically, bemused, and stretch out their arms in incomprehension, shrugging in tandem.
CURTAIN
