Opera Scotland

Tosca 1985Scottish Opera-Go-Round

Read more about the opera Tosca

The eighties were a period of great enterprise on the part of Opera-Go-Round, the small- to medium-scale touring division of Scottish Opera. The level of ambition was amazing - not just the usual Barber and Così fan tutte (a better cast version of Richard Jones's main-house staging),  but a first, highly successful attempt, in this context, at  staging  Jenůfa.  Larger-scale works were also produced, not just Tosca and Macbeth, but even Don Carlos!

The novice directors cutting their teeth in these circumstances included Keith Warner, Matthew Richardson and Mike Ashman, as well as Richard Jones.  This Tosca was worth noting because it was an early example of work by the production team of Keith Warner and Marie-Jeanne Lecca.

It was also the only staged performances with Scottish Opera by that highly promising baritone Anthony Michaels-Moore.  He did, at least, return twenty years later for some concert performances.  Maria Moll went on as a cover when the full-scale Anthony Besch production was revived a few years later.

Scottish Opera's Season 1985/86

Scottish Opera's 1985/86 season consisted of ten operas. The company's new productions ranged through Mozart (The Marriage of Figaro), Weber (Oberon), Verdi (Il trovatore), Offenbach (La Vie parisienne) and Weill (The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny). The previous season's Orlando had further performances outside Glasgow, while the revivals were The Magic Flute, Werther, Tosca and The Turn of the Screw.  For Christmas there was a revival of Fiddler on the Roof.  In the spring there was a medium-scale tour of Tales of Hoffmann. The small-scall Opera-Go-Round tour in the autumn took the form of a new (and very different) staging of Tosca.