The 1954 Edinburgh Festival saw a seventh visit by Glyndebourne Opera. The complete novelty was by Rossini - Le Comte Ory. The staging of Ariadne was not quite a novelty - the 1950 Glyndebourne Ariadne had offered the fascinating original 1912 version, with the abbreviated Molière play Le bourgeois gentilhomme. 1954 now saw the more conventional format, complete with Prologue. A work which was now a popular favourite, Mozart's Così fan tutte, was making its third appearance.
The classic Carl Ebert staging conducted by Vittorio Gui came back to Edinburgh for the third time, and the cast seems just as good as before, with Jurinac switching to Fiordiligi. Bruscantini made a youthful Alfonso (though he recorded it with Karajan around this time). Pritchard conducted the work all over the world, and eventually returned to Edinburgh to conduct his Cologne company many years later.
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