Opera Scotland

Rape of Lucretia 1946Glyndebourne Opera

Read more about the opera Rape of Lucretia

Within a month of its first performances at Glyndebourne, The Rape of Lucretia was brought to Scotland as part of a national tour. The cities visited were Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London (Sadler's Wells) and Oxford. In Scotland there were fourteen performances, including the only operatic appearances by Kathleen Ferrier north of the border.

This first production was double cast throughout due to the frequency of performances. This included fourteen at Glyndebourne itself (over sixteen days), and a further sixty-one on tour. At Glyndebourne, ten were conducted by Ernest Ansermet and four by Reginald Goodall, who then led thirty-two on the tour, the remainder being conducted by Hans Oppenheim. Nancy Evans sang the opening night in Edinburgh (Aug 12), and Kathleen Ferrier led in Glasgow (Aug 19).

Sadly, this ambitious tour failed to attract large audiences and made a significant financial loss. The experiment was not repeated by Glyndebourne, though Albert Herring was launched at the following Festival. Determined to proceed with his idea of touring specially composed chamber operas, Britten therefore established the English Opera Group, which served that purpose for the rest of his life.

Casts for the Glasgow week, from a programme in the Mitchell Library, show that allocation of performances was not a simple matter of two alternating teams - they did swap groups occasionally.