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The Albatross (1987) |
Opera -90'
Hilda Pike lives with her son Duncan in a small sea-side town. Although Hilda is physically disabled and relies on Duncan for all her needs, she is also a bitterly independent woman who will have nothing to do with other villagers. Duncan is considered backward and stupid by his mother and everyone else in the local community. Only two people have any time for him - Old Beattie, a mysterious character who wanders the beach pushing an old pram, looking for the things the tide has washed up, and Ted Flint, a fisherman and contemporary of Duncan's who is everything that Duncan would like to be, strong and brave, taking his boat out in the worst of weathers "sailing right up to Denmark and Iceland". Under Ted's influence, Duncan begins to grow in confidence. However when Ted is killed in a lifeboat accident, instead of retreating into the timid person that he once was, Duncan determines to break away. He forces himself to do, what are to him, extremely difficult things. He attends Ted's funeral in the local church and is subjected to the stares and comments of other members of the congregation. Eventually he rushes out when his mother's taunts become too much. Later that same bitterly cold night, Hilda pushes Duncan too far, so he kills her by giving an overdose of sleeping pills, afterwardstipping her and her wheelchair over the jetty. Wanting to rid himself of everything from hiis past life, he sets fire to the hoouse, and we leave him, at the end of the opera, alone, certainly free for the time being, but with the realisation of what he has done beginning to dawn on him.
© Diana Burrell