Though some of us who saw the first instalment of Five: 15 a year ago might disagree, Scottish Opera pronounced it an "overwhelming success" and promptly programmed another home-grown batch of mini-operas as drab and unfocused as the first.
The purpose of the Five: 15 project is entirely laudable. Within a 15-minute piece, so the theory goes, it should be possible to identify composers and librettists who have the potential of writing good, full-length works. Yet two of the composers had already produced full-length operas - Nigel Osborne last year, Stuart MacRae this. And neither exactly covered themselves in glory within this format.
MacRae's Remembrance Day, with a text by Louise Walsh, was a risible snatch of Grand Guignol, veering towards League-of-Gentleman black humour and without his usual pungency. It followed Death of a Scientist, by John Harris and Zinnie Harris, which dramatised the last moments of the life of David Kelly in a trite, unforgivably cavalier way.
At least two of the first three works had integrity and dramatic shape. Martin Dixon's The Lightning-Rod Man, to Amy Parker's adaptation of a Melville story, tried to pack too much in, but had the right ingredients; Gareth Williams's White, with a text by Margaret McCartney, kept things simple - a hospital death scene, to an minimalist score. But David Fennessy's Happy Story, adapting a Peter Carey story, seemed inconsequential and bitty.
• At the Hub, Edinburgh, on Saturday and Sunday. Box office: 0131 473 2000
