Šárka 1993Edinburgh International Festival
Read more about the opera Šárka
The 1993 Festival saw an interesting concentration on Verdi operas, getting under way with Scottish Opera's first attempt at an early, pre-Macbeth, work in I due Foscari. The company's new musical director, Richard Armstrong, also returned at the end of the Festival with his former company, Welsh National, and their superb production of the final masterpiece, Falstaff. Between these, the Festival gave a concert performance, very well cast, of the first surviving opera, Oberto.
A second theme at this Festival was an attempt to juxtapose the works of two masters, Schubert and Janáček. Opera was, inevitably, a difficult area in which to achieve this, but a fascinating concert evening was compiled in the Usher Hall, combining Schubert's unstageable (no surviving dialogue) Die Freunde von Salamanka with Janáček's first opera, Šárka.
This concert definitely turned out to be a highlight, featuring two completely unknown operas. The Schubert was Die Freunde von Salamanka, full of lovely things. Šárka was at the time completely unknown, though Sir Charles Mackerras did conduct a Czech recording of it not long afterwards. Musically, it seemed to have much more in common with Smetana than with the composer's much later, mature works.
