Opera Scotland

Fidelio 1991Scottish Opera

Read more about the opera Fidelio

A single run of this Fidelio staging by Stephen Wadsworth, conducted by Roderick Brydon, in his final performances in a long career with Scottish Opera, has to be seen as a near-miss. The first setting, the exterior of a bullet-scarred stately home, worked well. But the dungeon setting was quite odd, if novel – Florestan was pegged down in what seemed to be the house's library, complete with parquet flooring - presumably Pizarro had another use in mind for the wine cellar. There was an audible, and disapproving, sucking of teeth in the audience when Rocco and Leonore began to vandalise the flooring - as if the house hadn't suffered enough.

The cast was quite good, Greer Grimsley, a future Wotan in the USA, being a familiar visitor by now, and Gudrun Volkert and Richard Brunner quite acceptable as Leonore and Florestan. The greatest peculiarity was perhaps that Graeme Broadbent, a young bass making his excellent debut as Don Fernando, then disappeared from view for the next twenty years. He was, of course, busy elsewhere.

 

Scottish Opera's Season - 1990/91

The 1990/91 season of Scottish Opera featured nine operas, most notably the world premiere of a new piece by Judith Weir, The Vanishing Bridegroom and the British premiere of an unknown American work, Regina by Mark Blitzstein. The three other new productions were Les Troyens, Fidelio and Falstaff. There were also revivals of Bohème,  Tosca, The Cunning Little Vixen and The Barber of Seville. It was also the first season in which the company introduced supertitles, though not yet when the work was being sung in English.