Luke Scott: Striking a chord with the past and reveling in the future

Hailing from western Europe, specifically the United Kingdom, and being born eight years after the accident, I grew up not knowing too much about the Chernobyl disaster apart from what I read in books and from memories my family passed down, or the little I learned in school. The severity of the accident was never lost on me; however, I didn’t understand the emotional impact it left in the hearts of so many. The reality of your own time and that which came before you often never meet, and thus you never realize within yourself the sorrows and challenges faced by those who came before you. It was not until the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011 that I began to understand the lasting damage of the Chernobyl disaster. 

Therefore, I am very glad and deeply interested to be a part of this project, and to perform in All the Truths by Uljas Pulkkis with libretto by Glenda Goss. Their joint ability to weave music and words together to create a flowing and impactful story has already struck new chords within me and sparked my curiosity about the Chernobyl disaster. Furthermore, the collaboration with the Thornton School of Music and its staff and students reminds us of how important international partnerships, and indeed friendships, can be. Our work together will help to raise awareness of the Chernobyl disaster once again and strike new chords in others about what we can learn and do moving forward, by reflecting upon it via the medium of opera.  

On a lighter note, in opera the baritones are often villains who have dark and grandiose intentions for the other characters, so that they may achieve their own devious plans. Borys Slykovitch – the role I will sing – from All the Truths is no exception to this common rule. He is a brooding bad guy like Iago from Otello by Verdi (1813–1901), a conniving, devilish character who seeks to elevate himself at everyone else’s expense.

However, the beauty of the villain is the depth of the character. There is often a story to be found, a reason behind whom they have become. Slykovitch, when we meet him, is an apparatchik (a person of bureaucratic or political responsibility) at the nuclear plant, however he was not born into money or a family of high social standing. Instead, he had to climb up through the ranks from the bottom up. Now, knowing this minor piece of information about the character, we can really dive more deeply into who he is. The opportunity to develop a character like Slykovitch is fascinating and one that I relish. He will be the first of many villain’s tales and plots I will unravel in the years to come. 

Luke Scott 24.9.2020
The author plays the part of Borys Slykovitch in the opera All the Truths We Cannot See – A Chernobyl Story.