Paul McCartney Sends Special Message to Cincinnati at Debut of ‘Liverpool Oratorio’ Opera: ‘I Love That You’re Doing It There’

While the Queen City did not get the breathlessly hoped-for drop-in from pop royalty on Thursday night (July 18) at the world premiere of the Cincinnati Opera’s take on Sir Paul McCartney ‘s Liverpool Oratorio , they did get a very special message from the night’s absent guest of honor.

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“Hello, Cincinnati! Good evening. I’m so excited to hear that the Cincinnati Opera is putting on my Liverpool Oratorio ,” McCartney said in a pre-taped message that played for the capacity crowd in Cincinnati Music Hall’s 2,300-capacity Springer Auditorium before the opening night of the fresh take on his first classical composition.

“This work is really special for me because it was the first large scale thing like this that I’d done, and it’s largely based on a lot of events from my childhood. The school I went to… the teacher, Miss Inkley, who was the only female teacher in a school of a thousand boys. So it’s really true, as it says in the opera, where she says, ‘Hello, boys. You can call me, ‘Sir,'” McCartney continued. “Well, as 11-year-olds, it’s a little difficult to make sense of that. But anyway, I love the piece, and I love that you’re doing it there in Cincinnati. So I hope you have a great evening. Thank you very much for putting it on. I wish I was there with you, but I can’t be there. So I’m here. So have a great one. Thank you.”

In a Cincinnati Opera season featuring such standards as Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata , the debut of the operatic take on the composition featuring music and lyrics by McCartney and collaborator composer Carl Davis is a refreshing anomaly. McCartney’s first classical composition had its world premiere on June 28, 1991 at the Liverpool Cathedral as a commissioned piece to celebrate the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra’s 150th anniversary.

And though the 82-year-old Beatle wasn’t on hand to see the Opera’s high-energy take on his eight-movement homage to his hometown, in the weeks leading up to the debut the city was blanketed with a blizzard of posters, social media messages and memes encouraging locals to help “Get Paul to the Hall.”

The effort was intended to spur interest in the $1.3 million original production that over the course of 90 minutes tells the story a “war baby” named Shanty, who, like McCartney, comes into a fiery world engulfed in the air raid blitz of WWII. At Tuesday night’s (July 16) final dress rehearsal, the cast was dialed in to the tale that mixes hope, tragedy, redemption and joy into a joyous spectacle that unfolds on a massive map of Liverpool.

At the outset, the sets designed by Leslie Travers and stage director Caroline Clegg brought home the horrors of war as characters in period dress streamed in through the aisles to take their place in a bomb shelter bisected on the floor by the map of the River Mersey. It was a poignant watery metaphor for life’s journey that Queen City residents could surely relate to thanks to the city’s place along the Ohio River.

The massive map that curled up at the top and then spilled off the stage into the orchestra pit set up the war-time birth of main character Shanty (Andrew Owens). Shuttling the corrugated metal walls to the side, the cast doubled as crew, setting up classroom desks and chairs as the wistful, melancholy score gave way to an amusing, kicky Spanish-language song from teacher Miss Inkley (Kayleigh Decker) about three rabbits in a tree.

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In the Playbill, Clegg explained that the first words uttered in the performance, McCartney’s school motto (Non nobis solum, Sed toti mundo, nati. Toti mundo nat — “Not for ourselves, but for the whole world, we were born”) — and repeated throughout are a reminder of the “timeless testament to the power of music to move hearts and minds and effect change.”

Following the first movement, “War,” the second, “School,” found the restless tween Shanty skipping class to take a nap on gravestones and dream about the ghosts of his future and past. The high-kicking, balletic church dance in (“Crypt”) made way for the somber “Father,” in which Shanty laments the death of his dad.

The mood quickly lightened, though, when the cast rolled out a miniature house on wheels covered with more maps of Liverpool for the wedding of Shanty and fiancée Mary Dee (Jacqueline Echols McCarley), as the elegant soprano was serenaded by an angelic children’s choir during the pair’s nuptials. Spinning the house around to unveil its spare interior, the couple settled into their work routine, with Mary sitting high above a typing pool as she dictated orders to her twirling all-female staff.

A pregnancy and nearly fatal car crash interrupts the couple’s marital strife as the piece crashed to a celebratory, joyous ending in the thundering “Peace,” in which the stage filled with busy Liverpudlians of all stripes celebrating the birth of the couple’s child as they sang “live in peace together” in unison and the couple pledged their eternal love.

After its debut more than 30 years ago, the piece written for orchestra and vocalists has not been performed very often, but the energy and spirit of the Cincinnati Opera’s refreshing version seems destined to give the Liverpool Oratorio a second life.

Check out more photos from the Liverpool Oratorio below.

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