Opera Scotland

Iphigenia in Tauris 1961Covent Garden Opera

Read more about the opera Iphigénie en Tauride

The first visit to the Edinburgh Festival of the Covent Garden Opera included this new production, not yet seen in London, of a work which was, indeed still is, far less often performed than it should be. There were initial problems due to the technical limitations at the King’s. The wonderfully dramatic Belgian singer Rita Gorr also took time to reduce her huge voice to a scale acceptable. The other three principal roles were taken either by French (Massard) or French-Canadian (Turp and Quilico) singers, so at least the language was handled competently – not necessarily something that could be taken for granted. On this visit Georg Solti conducted this work plus some performances of the recently premiered A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He never conducted opera in Scotland again.

Cast details are from our copy of the programme.