“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” It’s one of Sherlock Holmes’s most famous lines but you’ve never heard it like this before: sung in a rich, deep bass courtesy of Edward Hawkins, a knowing smile playing around his lips. As the now singing detective, he takes the lead in the first Sherlock Holmes opera to hit the stage.
Composed by Lliam Paterson, The Sign of Four is based on one of Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels. I slipped in to watch a rehearsal in Leeds, where it has its world premiere this month as part of the annual Leeds Opera Festival.
In many ways it’s surprising that Doyle’s much-loved creation hasn’t been given the operatic treatment before — he’s been adapted into just about every other medium since first appearing in print in 1887. There have been more than 250 film and TV versions of Sherlock Holmes — from a silent film as early as 1900 to the television series starring Benedict Cumberbatch — not to mention plays, comics and video games.
“I could really see it — there’s definitely something magical there that you can transfer into the operatic world,” Paterson says on first being approached to adapt Sherlock. The idea came from the artistic director of Northern Opera Group, David Ward, who spent lockdown reading Doyle’s stories.
“I thought these could make a really great opera — Sherlock is very theatrical, he loves the reveal, he loves disguises, there are some great set pieces,” Ward says. He’d been on the hunt for source material for a first full-scale commission for Northern Opera Group, which runs Leeds Opera Festival; previously it has focused on staging rarely performed works such as Robert Rodriguez’s Frida or Handel’s Silla.
Ward wanted a story that “would enable us to do something interesting and different with opera as an art form and that would attract a different sort of audience — we always try to reach new people.” Sherlock seemed to fit the bill: he certainly has brand recognition.
The Sign of Four was chosen because as well as being a cracking mystery featuring missing Indian treasure, murders in locked rooms and a boat chase down the Thames, it has a love story between Holmes’s friend Dr Watson and Mary Morstan. And Ward felt sure Paterson was the man to bring it all to life, having seen the Scottish composer’s adaptation of a Don DeLillo story, The Angel Esmeralda, in 2020. “I was impressed at his ability to write characters and tell a complicated story,” Ward says.
Both are skills Paterson has needed in spades on this project. There are considerable challenges to adapting Conan Doyle’s Victorian prose, not least just how much plot there is to get through.
As a fan of murder mysteries and detective shows — “stuff like Wallander and Midsomer Murders” — Paterson was up for the challenge. “One of the things that excited me was the clue-chasing nature of it, the sheer volume of detail and text and information.” He took inspiration from Janacek and The Cunning Little Vixen in particular. “In his operas there’s often a huge amount of text, the singers are almost speech-singing in a very rapid way. How could I have my own version of that, where you can very clearly understand the narrative?
Sitting in on a Friday afternoon run-through, it seems Paterson has pulled it off. Even the densest sections, as when Holmes stalks a murder scene piecing clues together, come over with crisp, comprehensible clarity. They’ve got lucky with casting too — with slicked-back thick dark hair, an imperious manner and a deep voice oozing self-assurance, Hawkins seems made for the part of Sherlock.
But casting The Sign of Four for opera voices was easy — every character seemed to correspond to a type, Paterson says. It felt obvious that Watson should be a tenor, Holmes a bass-baritone, Mary a soprano. And while the story may be complex, Paterson hopes that the music will actually help people to keep up.
“One complaint you often get is that opera is hard to follow but I really wanted to make it absolutely as clear as I could by connecting the musical ideas and the text,” he says. He tried to write “catchy themes” for his characters: Mary is always associated with the harp, while Sherlock has his own rhythmic language.
“Whenever he’s trying to work something out, a very distinctive theme comes back,” Paterson says. He wanted to get right inside Holmes’s brilliant mind and use music to show those cogs turning — a sense of interiority being another thing that opera can bring to the story.
Beyond that they’ve been having fun with working out how to whisk the audience around Victorian London. A chorus of four are responsible for swift scene changes — out goes a writing desk, in comes a chaise longue — but much of the action will be created by the cast and buoyed by the score.
There are some juicy set pieces, from following Holmes’s sniffer dog Toby (realised via a charmingly shaggy puppet) through the streets of London to a steamboat chase down the Thames. I watch the cast rehearse the latter, swaying and juddering in unison, Holmes’s long coat flying out behind him thanks to a nifty bit of stagecraft. The churning, driving score and their rapid-fire singing (“Manhunt down the Thames! Nearer, nearer!”) add urgency.
“The most exciting sound world to bring to life was the steamboat chase,” Paterson admits. “It has to be quite raucous — and I do have an actual steamboat whistle.”
Some Sherlock Holmes adaptations can become oddly serious, too caught up in the mythology of it. It was essential for Ward that The Sign of the Four be accessible and fun. “I was very clear I wanted this to be a good old-fashioned entertainment,” he recalls. “It has a dog named Toby, someone sings him and woofs … you can’t do that too seriously!”
And fun appears to be something of a guiding principle for this year’s Leeds Opera Festival: other events include an interactive musical mystery for kids, an “opera rave” fusing opera with electronic beats and even a Sherlock-themed escape room. It’s all part of the plan to bring opera to a wider audience.
“Opera has an image problem, it just does,” Ward says frankly. “All opera companies have to try to do something about that. The way we try is with stories that might draw people in.”
Being a mid-scale company can work in their favour. “The opera sector needs to broaden out beyond those top ten, twenty favourite operas,” Ward says. “But the reality is, opera is expensive, so taking a punt is risky, particularly for a big house.” Northern Opera Group’s size means it is more able to give something “weird and wonderful” a whirl.
Paterson also suggests that, by not being bogged down by tradition or expectation, lesser-known or new works can actually feel more accessible to new audiences. “Most of my family and friends don’t know anything about opera. I always take them to the most wacky operas — Saariaho, Judith Weir, Philip Glass — and sometimes it is hard-going, with a very contemporary musical language … but there’s often a more innovative approach to staging new work, so there’s more for audiences to grab hold of.
“A lot of the most magical moments of my life have been at the opera,” Paterson continues when asked why it’s so important to reach new audiences. “I just want to share that with other people.” And if it takes Sherlock Holmes to make opera more appealing, he’s more than happy to put the detective on the case.
The Sign of Four is at Leeds School of Arts, August 28-31, northernoperagroup.co.uk