Abstract
In 2015 James Eggleston, Head of Publishing at Boosey & Hawkes, came upon an old, collapsed box numbered 518 while moving the London publisher’s archives from Holborn to Croydon. Opening the box, he discovered the lost autograph of the full orchestral score of The Seal-Woman (1917–24), primarily known as a two-act opera composed by Granville Bantock (Fig. 1). But he also lifted the lid on the significance of Bantock’s lesser-known collaborator, Marjory Kennedy-Fraser, the Edinburgh-based musician, teacher, lecturer, collector of Scottish folksong, and co-creator of the work they described as a “Celtic Folk Opera.” First produced in 1924 and revived (subsequent to a radio broadcast) in 1928 and 1936, the score had been missing for some 40 years, following its last full-scale performance in Fulham Town Hall in May 1975. Mr. Eggleston recognized immediately the musical treasure he had just unearthed, which, in addition to The Seal-Woman, included a lost score by Arthur Somervell contained in the same anonymous box.
This article draws attention to Kennedy-Fraser’s pivotal contribution to The Seal-Woman, not only as the librettist and the performer who originated the role of The Cailleach, but also as the collector who notated and arranged the Hebridean folksongs essential to the opera’s composition. The score drew substantially on these folk songs, and the opera contributed to keeping this repertory from vanishing from historical memory. The Seal-Woman was part of the wider contexts of the Celtic Revival and folksong collecting, of which Kennedy-Fraser was an important part, and of the rich lineage of artistic representations of the Selkie legend on which the opera was based. The rediscovery of the autograph score made possible the first recording of The Seal-Woman with its original orchestration, which was produced by Retrospect Opera in Glasgow on March 4–7, 2024 with The Orchestra of Scottish Opera conducted by John Andrews and a cast of predominantly Scottish artists. In addition to the premiere professional recording, the Scots Opera Project has staged multiple productions of The Seal-Woman in recent years, played to full houses.