Opera Scotland

Masked Ball 1957Glasgow Grand Opera Society

Read more about the opera Ballo in maschera

In spite of being one of Verdi's most tunefully enjoyable works, Un ballo in maschera has remained rarely performed in Scotland. At this point it had been done very occasionally by Carl Rosa, then by Glyndebourne at an early Edinburgh Festival.

Covent Garden had mounted a production restored to the correct Swedish location in 1952, but the standard text used was still generally that of the relocation to Boston, with a British Governor being assassinated. This production retained that edition as far as altered names are concerned - Riccardo, Renato, Ulrica, Sam, Tom, Silvano - but Riccardo was here described as 'Duke of Olivares and Governor of Naples', thus rather cheekily transferring the whole piece to the city where the censors had first brought about the problem.

While Ballo was an unusual work, the real rarity in the Glasgow Grand repertoire thatt week was the only appearance in Scotland to date of Rimsky-Korsakov's wonderful folk tale The Snow Maiden.

Sometimes these amateur organizations struggled to cast lead roles that were particularly demanding from their own ranks.  In this case Gerald Davies was brought in, a few years before he sang a couple of Rossini leads on tour with Sadler's Wells.