Opera Scotland

Zauberflöte 1966Stuttgart State Opera

Read more about the opera Magic Flute

The Wurttemberg (Stuttgart) company's second visit to Edinburgh brought a repertoire of four German works, of which The Magic Flute was inevitably the most conventional.  Lohengrin was already a rarity in Scotland, and has not received a professional staging since, just one concert performance at the Usher Hall.  To bring both the Berg operas, Wozzeck and Lulu, with the latter in its Scottish premiere, was a highly enterprising choice.

Leopold Lindtberg’s traditional Flute was not rated especially highly at the time, and one or two of the star performers, such as Gundula Janowitz, were reckoned to be below their best.  However the last two nights will always be noted because they represented the final performances by the wonderful Mozartian tenor Fritz Wunderlich, on his third visit to the Festival.

After singing to great acclaim on September 2 and 5, he went home to Heidelberg for a holiday, and died as the result of a domestic accident on September 17.  He was a few days short of his 36th birthday.