If you built a scenario where I could only conduct one opera per season, and asked me which one I would choose from the 2025–26 season’s offering, I’d say you might get a similar answer as to the question, “Which is your favourite child?”. But despite the joys of Puccini’s La bohème – its extraordinary, melodic lyricism and the depth of its emotion and despair – or the beauty and mystery of Britten’s Peter Grimes, if push came to shove, it might just be that I’d say Pass the Spoon.
That’s quite a statement, and it needs some explaining. I’ve always believed that classical music and opera cannot merely act as a museum. We can’t curate and present solely the works of the past masters, however much we love and revere them. It must continue to evolve and remain relevant. The speed of this evolution in the modern, digital world is faster than ever – just as the risk of extinction is. I think Pass the Spoon is a truly fresh approach to the contemporary opera format.
It’s written by two outstanding, original thinkers of the British cultural scene. It’s a piece that’s great fun for both performer and audience alike, and very, very funny! Writing funny material and combining it with music is a real skill. It’s not easy to marry music and comic text, otherwise, everyone would be doing it.
I’m not certain there’s such a thing as an “average” audience in 2025. With the threat of global warming, transatlantic tensions, the war in Ukraine, and the desperate psychodrama of whether Leeds United are coming up to the Premiership or not – who wants to go out for an evening where all these worries appear in a new contemporary opera by Sir Walter Plinge? So Pass the Spoon isn’t about any of those issues. It’s pure, surreal escapism.
Pass the Spoon (Magnetic North, 2011) © Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
I’ve often thought that sung text – especially in one’s native tongue – is intrinsically somewhat absurd. So when you come across a piece that embraces that absurdity, you know you’re onto a winner.
David Shrigley, the librettist and designer for Pass the Spoon, is a very difficult person to define, so vast are his creative outputs. He is a Turner Prize-nominated sculptor, visual artist, poet, wordsmith, musician. He’s presented work as diverse as a huge thumbs-up on the fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square (entitled Really Good), and has also appeared on the pitch at Firhill Park, the football ground of Partick Thistle FC. He designed a mascot that one commentator described as being based on “every childhood nightmare I had as a child.”
David Fennessy, an Irishman living in Glasgow, has a very original compositional voice. He’s the composer of Pass the Spoon and is extremely skilled at finding the right material for Shrigley’s brilliantly surreal and darkly humorous writing.
So what is Pass the Spoon about? It couldn’t be simpler… It’s a parody of a daytime TV cookery programme featuring two leading characters – essentially Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield with a little bit of Gordon Ramsay thrown in. They’re assisted by a manic-depressive egg, a highly strung banana with a suspicious Latino accent, and various other items of food. There’s also a psychotic butcher and a character who represents the by-product of the digestive system. Intrigued? Tickets are available from as little as £10.
The use of the 11-piece orchestra is incredibly imaginative, and the percussion gives us a constant stream of kitchen noises – without any need for a gas cooker, so this production remains carbon-neutral. And finally, the conductor is dressed like a chef and armed with a knife. So what’s not to like? It’s also a relatively short evening – about 70 minutes.
If you’re looking for a work in the style of the Parisian belle époque, with a fair matching of femicides, regicides, suicides – and possibly even Merseysides – then I can assure you that some vegetables are hurt in the making of this opera. Not all survive.
I don’t wish to disappoint you, but in our production, vegetables do not throw themselves from battlements nor hurl themselves from cliffs into icy Norwegian fjords. That would simply be absurd. But I assure you, they come to harm. So do approach the piece with a sense of humour and I think you’ll love it.
I very much hope that Pass the Spoon will mark the beginning of a new stream of creativity, exploring what might be called opera for the future. It’ll be great fun, and I hope it’ll amuse old and new audiences alike!
