Opera Scotland

Salome 1975Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Read more about the opera Salome

The 1975 Festival had a promising programme, with four operas on display. Scottish Opera gave the premiere of Robin Orr's Hermiston, based on Robert Louis Stevenson's unfinished masterpiece. The Deutsche Oper from Berlin paid its second visit to Edinburgh with classic productions of Salome and Lulu. The Festival followed up its production of Don Giovanni, with Geraint Evans and Daniel Barenboim, which had been the centrepiece of the 1973 and 1974 programmes, with a new staging, by Evans himself, of Figaro, which would return in 1976. Like the Don Giovanni, it was recorded for posterity.

Wieland Wagner was generally reckoned to have produced his best work at Bayreuth, and he’d been dead for a decade by the time this famous Berlin staging of Salome reached Edinburgh. However the Herod and Herodias were famous veterans who had worked with him on many occasions, including in major Wagner roles at Bayreuth, and something rubbed off. These were the only appearances in Britain by Ursula Schröder-Feinen, who had a short but starry career on the continent. Peter Gougaloff also died at a young age before fulfilling his potential.