Opera Scotland

Turn of the Screw 1975Scottish Opera

Read more about the opera Turn of the Screw

By the mid-seventies Scottish Opera's ensemble performances of the Britten chamber operas almost seemed like a company within a company - able to come together for frequent foreign tours. Many of this team had been with the production regularly over five years. John Robertson, having initially provided the prologue had now graduated to Quint, to be succeeded by David Fieldsend. This tour featured one notable company debut, that of Linda Esther Gray, already a confident stage presence, with a lovely, velvety vocal tone - within months she would be singing Mimì, quickly adding Ariadne, Eva and Amelia Grimaldi, before moving on to the big Wagner roles for which she is remembered. The young treble, singing at this point as Jonathan Kenny, is now more familiar both as counter tenor and conductor, using his full name, Jonathan Peter Kenny.

This revival began with what was far more than a mere warm-up in Stirling, before being taken to Germany. In tandem with it was Henze's own staging of his Elegy for Young Lovers, still fresh from its revival a few months earlier.

A few days after this visit, on 6 February, the charming little Erholungshaus in Leverkusen was badly damaged by fire. Fortunately, it only took a couple of years before it re-opened - so different from the effect of fire which had been the kiss of death for so many Scottish theatres.