Opera Scotland

Music Oft Hath Such a Charm

Tours by decade

Tours by location

Music

Various - Schubert, Gounod, Verdi, Britten, Bellini, Thomas, Berlioz, Porter, Finzi.

Libretto

Ashley Pearson

An entertainment presented by OperaUpClose during their 2016 to commemmorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death. Four singers performed in a series of thematically linked scenes and arias, to piano accompaniment.

The advance publicity promised spectacular showstoppers from Verdi's Macbeth and the quick-wwitted wordplay of Much Ado About Nothing and Falstaff, rubbing shoulders with well-loved songs like Schubert's Who Is Sylvia? and lesser known operas inspired by the bard.

The format is initially similar to that of Scottish Opera's Highlits tours, with which we are familar - a quartet of singers with a pianist performing a sequence of varied excerpts, solo and ensemble. The difference here is that the soloists are given the names of Shakespeare characters - soprano Sylvia (from Two Gents), Beatrice and Benedict (from Much Ado) and Demetrius (from The Dream). A light-hearted plot is woven around them, with disagreements and eventual reconciliations.