Opera Scotland

Opera Highlights 2010Scottish Opera

Read more about the opera Concert including Operatic Excerpts

Scottish Opera's 2009/10 season contained four full main-stage productions plus one small-scall-tour. The two works the company had never touched before were the young Rossini's frothy Italian Girl in Algiers and Leoš Janáček'a Adventures of Mr Brouček. The two revivals were an ultra-traditional Elisir d'amore and an ultra-modern Bohème. There was also  a piano-accompanied tour of a second Janáček piece, Kátya Kabanová.

There were some additional elements, however, including a third programme of new short chamber pieces under the 5:15 umbrella. There was also a 'Scenes & Arias' tour by four  young singers and a pianist, the old Essential Scottish Opera format now revised as Opera Highlights. There was a new 'Interactive Opera for 3 to 6 Year Olds', entitled Auntie Janet Saves The Planet. Two well-contrasted co-productions also featured. Music Theatre Wales brought a new chamber piece by Eleanor Alberga, Letters of a Love Betrayed, while the RSAMD joined forces with the orchestra and technical staff of Scottish Opera to mount the Scottish premiere of Prokofiev's wonderful Tolstoy adaptation War and Peace.

Four young singers introduced a line-up of excerpts from well-known operas combined with some delightful surprises from lesser known works. As always, this programme was planned to have something for everyone, from seasoned fans to opera first-timers.

This year’s cast included two Scottish Opera emerging artists, soprano Miranda Sinani and mezzo-soprano Louise Collett, who were both performing for the company throughout the 2009/10 season; tenor Adrian Ward, winner of the 2008 Royal Over-Seas League vocal section prize; and baritone Robert Tucker, a recent Emerging Performer at the Australian Opera Studio.