Opera Scotland

Edinburgh International Festival 2024

Posted 9 Apr 2024

Last year, Festival director Nicola Benedetti acknowledged that opera was slightly neglected - the inevitable consequence of the lead-in time required for making arrangements.  As promised, her second Festival is much better endowed operatically.  There are three fully-staged operas, and two more given in concert form.

Bizet's Carmen will be brought from the Opéra-Comique in Paris, where it was premiered in 1875.  The Komische Oper have almost become regular visitors from Berlin, and this year they perform The Marriage of Figaro.  Scottish Opera's contribution is a co-production with the Festival of Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex, to be given at the National Museum of Scotland.

The two works to be given in concert form are Mozart's Così fan tutte with the SCO under Maxim Emelyanychev, and, Strauss's autumnal masterwork Capriccio. This was to have been conducted by Sir Andrew Davis, whose death occurred on 20 April in Chicago.

The Edinburgh Festival Chorus contribute a performance of one of their party pieces, Verdi's Messa da Requiem. To justify a large-scale interpretation in an age where small is generally beautiful with the baroque repertoire, their performance of J S Bach's Saint Matthew Passion will be in the 1841 adaptation by Mendelssohn - a fascinating prospect.  There is a further genuine rarity in the Te Deum, op103 by Dvo?ák.