Opera Scotland

Samson and Delilah 1964Sadler's Wells Opera

Read more about the opera Samson et Dalila

The spring 1964 Sadler's Wells tour was limited to a fortnight in the central belt, starting at the Glasgow Alhambra on 6 April. The performance schedule for Glasgow was as follows: Mon Così; Tue Peter Grimes; Wed Rigoletto; Thu Così; Fri Samson and Delilah; Sat mat & eve La Vie Parisienne. In Edinburgh the order changed, except for Monday and Saturday, but the content was the same.

Cast details are from a Glasgow programme in the OperaScotland collection. In the Scotsman of Friday 17 April, the reviewer, Conrad Wilson, was unimpressed by what he describes as 'surely one of the most static operas ever written' in which 'the music consistently fails to live up to the splendour of the story'. Box office returns must have contradicted this to some extent, as the staging would return a couple of times in 1966 and 1967.