Opera Scotland

Carmen 1986Scottish Opera

Read more about the opera Carmen

One of the features of Scottish Opera’s early years was the apparent reluctance of management to put on some of the more obviously popular operas in the repertoire, perhaps because they had featured in the repertoire of Sadler's Wells on tour. Traviata waited nearly ten years, and Rigoletto and Trovatore longer still. Tosca was not staged until 1980, nearly twenty years on. As for Carmen, there was inevitably talk that the company should take over the memorable 1977 Edinburgh Festival staging by Piero Faggioni. While that would have been a distinct coup, a performance without Berganza and Domingo would have been very different.

As it was, Graham Vick accepted the challenge, and produced a staging which was very patchy, but had some excellent ideas. The acting area, essentially a plain black box, contained a circle of simple chairs for the chorus to sit on - clearly a bull-ring of sorts. There was a revolve, exploited to the full in the final scene, where the chorus entry and march was unusually effective, helped by expert lighting. Mauceri's conducting showed genuine flair, but the cast was dramatically under-projected, and this staging actually improved significantly on revival.

While the decision to perform in English made sense, the new version prepared by Anthony Burgess was not much better than his contribution to Vick's production of Oberon the year before, and it has not been taken up elsewhere. The Wexford discovery Sergei Leiferkus, in an otherwise excellent reading, was not the only singer to struggle with it.

 

Scottish Opera's Season - 1986/87

This season comprised Nine main stage productions plus an Opera-Go-Round staging with piano, and a most unusual Edinburgh Festival event.   The new productions were Carmen,  Iolanthe,  Intermezzo,  Flying Dutchman,   From the House of the Dead,  Billy Budd,  and  Madama Butterfly.  There were two revivals, The Marriage of Figaro and The Barber of Seville.  The Opera-Go Round production was of Verdi's Macbeth,  The season opened at the Edinburgh Festival, with a concert including music from Gershwin's Girl Crazy.