Opera Scotland

Valkyrie 1921Carl Rosa Opera Company

Read more about the opera Walküre

The Valkyrie had only just been taken into the Carl Rosa repertoire after a long gap, and the work had not been seen in Edinburgh since the Denhof seasons before the Great War.

This cast is quite astonishing, with Eva Turner having a first run at a role that would continue to be important for her.  She was only just twenty-nine - a rather young age to be singing such a part.  Beatrice Miranda, Australian-born, was now well settled in Britain, and she and her husband, the baritone Hebden Foster, eventually took up residence in Edinburgh.  William Boland and Doris Woodall were long-term leading members of the company.

The cast is taken from a programme in the V&A collection in London, confirmed by the following day's Scotsman review.  Neither specifies which of the remaining seven singers took which particular Valkyrie character, but simply lists them as Eveline Witty,  Winifred Geverding,  Eva Colton,  Ethel Earl,  Gladys Parker,  Eveline Tay and  Irene Milton.  Some were regular names while others were apparently new.

A programme for the performance on 21 April survives in the Edinburgh Central Library.