Opera Scotland

Midsummer Night's Dream 1976Scottish Opera

Read more about the opera Midsummer Night's Dream

Scottish Opera's first subscription season at the newly restored Theatre Royal (1975-76) contained ten operas in total, played in sequence. The gala Fledermaus was followed by short runs of Otello, Hermiston, Ariadne on Naxos, Così fan tutte, The Golden Cockerel, Die Fledermaus, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Don Giovanni, Madama Butterfly and Falstaff. The Otello had been seen regularly since 1963, the Falstaff only once before, in 1966. Fledermaus had been launched during the summer while Hermiston had been premiered at the recent Edinburgh Festival - both were previously unseen in Glasgow. The only productions that were brand new were Ariadne and Rimsky-Korsakov's Golden Cockerel, unseen in Scotland for half a century, and only occasionally since then at Covent Garden.

A well-routined revival of Toby Robertson's much-travelled 1972 Dream production slotted in to the subscription season with minimal effort. The cast could also be brought together easily if required for the odd performance on tour.

Scottish Opera supplied the operatic element of the 1976 York Festival. The delightfully intimate vintage Georgian auditorium of that Theatre Royal was also the perfect venue for the existing productions of the Dream and Ariadne on Naxos, as well as the world premiere of Thomas Wilson's intriguing, though very Scottish, Confessions of a Justified Sinner.