Opera Scotland

Eugene Onegin 1971Glyndebourne Touring Opera

Read more about the opera Eugene Onegin

At this stage in its development, the Glyndebourne tour, established in 1967, took place in the spring, as a warm-up for the main Festival, though with a different orchestra. The company had never visited Scotland before, and appearances have continued to be very rare and treasured events. On this tour, there were three operas, as usual, two of them, Eugene Onegin and The Magic Flute, being in excellent, established stagings. Il turco in Italia was in a less satisfactory production that had only opened the previous summer and which was never revived.

This excellent Glyndebourne staging played at the main Festival for many years and was toured twice as well. In those days visits by Russian companies were extremely rare, and it hardly seemed likely that visits from Moscow or Leningrad (sorry, St Petersburg) would become almost commonplace within the next quarter century. Even at the Edinburgh Festival performances in Russian were rare (only the Belgrade company in 1962, and some of their performances were in Serbo-Croat). Onegin had not been given in Scotland since the single performance by Gibson and the Sadler's Wells company in 1957 (in Glasgow).

This cast, without a single native Russian speaker, was generally excellent.  Conductor Myer Fredman had a long and important career working mainly with the Opera of South Australia.  Benjamin Luxon worked with most of the major British companies -  Covent Garden, Glyndebourne and the English Opera Group as well as Scottish Opera.  Anthony Roden and Rosanne Creffield worked frequently with Scottish Opera thereafter, and Elizabeth Tippett and Terry Jenkins became regulars with Sadler's Wells.

Maurice Arthur was a distinguished tenor who can be heard in several of the early recordings of unknown Donizetti and Offenbach works by Opera Rara.  Filipyevna became one of the central parts in Enid Hartle's repertoire, and she sings it in the complete recording conducted by Sir Georg Solti.

 

Glyndebourne Touring Opera in Scotland - 1971

The order of performance in Edinburgh was as follows:

Week commencing 5 Apr:  Mon 5 Il turco in Italia;  Tue 6 Zauberflöte;  Wed 7 Eugene Onegin;  Thu 8 Turco in Italia;  Fri 9 Eugene Onegin;  Sat 10 Zauberflöte.