Opera Scotland

Macbeth 1997Royal Opera

Read more about the opera Macbeth

The extended closure of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, to allow for its spectacular redevelopment, had the benefit for Scottish audiences of making its resident company available to visit the Edinburgh Festival Theatre for the 1997 and 1998 Festivals. During the post-war years, the Covent Garden Opera had made annual tours to the major British 'provincial' cities - a phase that culminated in a visit to the 1961 Edinburgh Festival, using the much smaller King's Theatre. The domestic touring then stopped apart from two brief visits to Manchester in the eighties.

With the staged production this time being a hugely enjoyable version of Rameau's Platée, the Covent Garden company only brought Macbeth in concert, though with a rather good cast. However the 1998 return would include three Verdi items - stagings of Don Carlos and I masnadieri, with concert performances of Luisa Miller.