Opera Scotland

Resurrection 1964National Theatre, Prague

Read more about the opera Resurrection

The Edinburgh Festival, at this time under the direction of Lord Harewood, was exploring the operatic possibilities behind the Iron Curtain. 1962 had seen the leading company from Yugoslavia in a repertoire largely of Russian masterpieces. In 1963 the Hungarian State Opera and Ballet appeared with a more limited choice of works. Here, the National Theatre from Prague brought an inspiring clutch of five Czech pieces. Two of them, Rusalka and Kátya Kabanová, were receiving Scottish premieres. The other three, Dalibor, From the House of the Dead and Resurrection, were being seen for the first time in the UK.

Cikker was one of two particularly successful opera composers from Slovakia in the postwar period (the other being Eugen Suchoň, whose Whirlpool came to Edinburgh in 1990). Apart from these two performances, none of his operas has been performed in Britain. The large cast list contains nearly all the principals seen at the Festival, some only making cameo appearances. This showed the enormous strength in depth of the Prague company at this time. The staging itself was particularly praised for the sense of wide open space that it created - no easy task in the King's Theatre.