Opera Scotland

Madam Butterfly 2007Scottish Opera

Read more about the opera Madama Butterfly

The 2006/07 season of Scottish Opera showed the company gradually recovering from the disastrous financial collapse that had led to the shut-down in 2005. The Edinburgh Festival featured a new work by Stuart MacRae and Simon Armitage called The Assassin Tree. This was a co-production with Covent Garden. The season proper consisted of four full scale productions. The new staging in the autumn was Handel's Tamerlano, with Lucia di Lammermoor in the spring. The two revivals were of successful McVicar stagings - Der Rosenkavalier in the autumn, with Madama Butterfly to follow. A small-scale tour saw a first attempt at producing Viennese operetta in this manner. Die Fledermaus had a nineteen-stop tour with piano accompaniment in the autumn, to be followed in spring by a ten-night revival with small orchestra. The spring also saw the regular tour of operatic scenes and arias - Essential Scottish Opera.

This third run of David McVicar's wonderfully observed staging brought in a completely new cast. Perhaps most notable was the British debut of Italian conductor Francesco Corti, who was soon appointed to a permanent post with the company. Puccini certainly turned out to be one of the areas of the repertoire he did best.

In this revival, the four principals were all excellent, with Jennifer Johnston a superbly sensitive and well-observed Suzuki. Rebecca Nash confirmed the positive impression left by her Marschallin. Garry Magee had not visited the company for many years - a great pity, to judge from his Sharpless. And John Hudson added a final role to his list of repertoire staples that he had sung with Scottish Opera.