Opera Scotland

New Year, fresh programme at Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Posted 7 Jan 2018

The new season gets off to an interesting start. The RCS is offering two rarities in a double bill of Holst's Savitri and Viktor Ullmann's The Emperor of Atlantis. There are only four performances - click through our listings for details of Savitri here and The Emperor of Atlantis here  In fact this will be the Scottish premiere for Ullmann's work. The conductor is to be Lionel Friend.

There are also four performances of Jonathan Dove's The Day After, based on the Greek myth of Phaeton. The production is that which had its first performance with English National Opera in May 2017, and again, this will be its Scottish premiere.

These performances are strongly recommended and should be well worth catching. The standard of the RCS performances in recent years has been most impressive. The performers are postgraduate students who plan to make their careers in opera. The RCS is currently in the world top three Conservatoires, and it is ranked the highest of all Scottish Universities as far as graduate employment is concerned.

OperaScotland has as yet no record of Lionel Friend having conducted opera in Scotland before, but he has a most distinguished record - to pick out just one post, he was staff conductor for English National Opera for thirteen years.