Opera Scotland

Lustige Witwe 2008Scottish Opera

Read more about the opera Merry Widow

Over the years, Scottish Opera has toured most kinds of opera round the highlands and islands with piano accompaniment. Viennese operetta arrived late, but the success of Die Fledermaus in 2006 clearly encouraged management to continue the experiment - the thought of a Merry Widow without the lush orchestral backup was initially alarming, but the whole production worked beautifully, even if the easily moved set did look a bit like a wide and very flexible shower curtain - but lighting was cleverly done. Costumes were effective in a 1920s style. The cast employed was necessarily much larger than usual on these tours - and the smaller venues meant that the spoken dialogue was beautifully handled.

Scottish Opera's 2008-09 season

The season was unusual, in that it did not feature any revivals. What is more, the level of presentation, musical and dramatic, was also of a consistently high standard. Perhaps the one slight disappointment was the Edinburgh Festival offering, a rare staging of Smetana's charming domestic comedy The Two Widows. This was the company's second production of the piece. It was joined by two popular classics, La traviata and Così fan tutte, both directed in memorably intelligent fashion by David McVicar. The rarities were by Cimarosa (The Secret Marriage) and Massenet (Manon). Bellini's I puritani was given in a single concert performance. These were all company premieres. The small-scale tour was, unusually, an operetta, The Merry Widow. After the great success of the previous year's opener, the company also put on a second group of new, experimental 15-minute chamber dramas in the 5:15 series. Another welcome rarity was the next collaboration with the RSAMD - a large student cast assisted by Scottish Opera's musicians and technical staff, in a hugely enjoyable version of Prokofiev's Love For Three Oranges.