The Lighthouse by Davies, Od (2001/2001), Režie Ronny Lauwers, Dirigent Etienne Siebens, De Munt, Brussels, Belgium

The inspiration for this music theater work comes from a book by Craig Mair about the Stevenson family from Edinburgh. This family, in addition to the well-known writer Robert Louis Stevenson, produced several generations of lighthouse and harbor engineers. In December 1900, the supply ship Hesperus, home port at Stromness, Orkney, set out on its routine voyage to the Flannan Isles Lighthouse on the far edge of the Hebrides. On arrival, the lighthouse was empty. The three beds and the table seemed to have been left in a hurry and although the lamp was out, it still worked perfectly. The men had vanished from the face of the earth. “Why and how the three men disappeared is still a mystery. My opera does not solve the mystery, but gives a possible sequence of what happened when the three men were locked in their lighthouse, which was continuously ravaged by storms long after they expected to be relieved.” Peter Maxwell Davies