Olivia Federow-Yemm as Winter in The Selfish Giant (photograph by Charlie Kinross)

Whatever the case, Wilde did imbue this tale with particular allegorical force. The giant’s selfishness in banning children from his garden also suggests capitalist greed, which leads ultimately to a perpetual winter (Wilde was, after all, soon to pen The Soul of Man Under Socialism). We might also recognise an allusion to Alberich’s disastrous coveting of the Rheinmaidens' gold in Wagner’s Ring. Another Wagnerian theme (this time from Parsifal) later emerges in the form of a particular child who arouses firstly the giant’s pity and then his love. Spring returns and after many years so does the child, now as Christ personified, to take the soul of the dying giant to heaven.

In an imaginative and carefully wrought reworking of Wilde’s tale into a new one-act opera by Simon Bruckard (composer) and Emma Muir-Smith (librettist) for Victorian Opera’s Youth Opera, this overt Christian overlay is removed. It’s a wise decision. Wilde’s invocation of imagery such as stigmata could easily come across today as overly sentimental or maudlin. While themes of forgiveness and redemption remain central, Muir-Smith decides to focus more on the role of the children themselves, as well as fleshing out the characters of Wind, Snow, Frost, and Winter into a fine comic ensemble. 

In other respects, both librettist and composer are comfortable with convention, whether that be the judicious use of rhyming verse, or the gentle late-Romantic harmony and lyricism of the score. But there is an overarching honesty and directness in their work that gives The Selfish Giant a refreshingly unforced sincerity and expressive force.

Stephen Marsh as The Giant and the youth chorus in The Selfish Giant (photograph by Charlie Kinross)

Above all, they are aided and abetted in this by a stand-out performance by rising baritone Stephen Marsh, who sang with consummate skill and ease, delivering a dramatically assured, empathetic performance as the giant. Other impressive performers among the young cast include Chloe Maree Harris (Second Fairy), Michael Dimovski (Snow), and Darcy Carroll (Frost). The small chamber ensemble, conducted by the composer, was especially fine, as was the musical preparation of the chorus.

Cameron Menzies’ stylised direction and James Browne’s excellent costumes and set helped frame the production with an appropriate sense of otherworldliness. But in a plot that centred on the changing of seasons (or lack of them) and the overarching beauty of a garden, the lack of reinforcing lighting, plus the inclusion of two snarling silhouettes of trees at the rear of the stage, made the set ultimately feel more like something out of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari than, say, Dr Seuss. To be sure, it is not the beauty of the garden but the beauty of the giant’s soul that we are asked to celebrate in the end, but the two, Wilde is suggesting, are not merely coincidental phenomena. As Alex Ross noted in an essay on The Picture of Dorian Grey from 2011, the representation of beauty, was not only ‘the deepest and most lasting of his passions … it is now the most radical thing about him’. 

This seems to have become a common theme in Victorian Opera productions; we got little sense of the deliquescing beauty of Klingsor’s magic garden or the similarly deceptive attractiveness of the forest of Allemonde in their recent productions of Parsifal or Pelléas and Mélisande.

In our own age of children-led environmental-awareness campaigns, one in which the possibility of an eternal summer, not winter, now that holds the greatest threat, the lack of a beautiful garden therefore struck me as a missed opportunity. But this only reinforces the fact that Muir-Smith and Bruckard have delivered a new work that stakes a claim as an attractive and relevant addition to the repertoire, well deserving of revival.

The Selfish Giant was performed at Gasworks Arts Park by Victorian Opera 16–19 October 2019. Performance attended: Performance attended: October 17.