Opera Scotland

Valkyrie 1971Scottish Opera

Read more about the opera Walküre

Scottish Opera’s first Ring started out with Die Walküre in 1966. The production was revived for three performances at the Edinburgh Festival, with Charles Craig and David Ward repeating their roles of Siegmund and Wotan. Helga Dernesch, Gutrune in 1968, and Brünnhilde in Siegfried in Spring 1971, now sang a second Brünnhilde role. These three gave hugely impressive performances. Sadly Dernesch never completed the cycle. In December she was detained in Vienna, where the recording schedule for Tannhäuser with Solti and the Vienna Philharmonic overran .

Another company regular, Anna Reynolds, by now singing Fricka and other roles at Bayreuth, joined the cast. The Sieglinde, Leonore Kirschstein, was returning to Scotland for the first time since her Festival performances as Fiordiligi.

By comparison with the 1966 run, Alexander Gibson's reading had improved and was now warmly lyrical but with an appropriate sense of momentum and structure. Charles Bristow's lighting was now extremely effective, making use of the then-fashionable scrim (a gauze screen across the front of the stage) to spotlight faces and create a great sense of atmosphere, particularly impressive in the final scene.

 

Opera at the 1971 Festival

The principal operatic event at the 1971 Edinburgh Festival was a new staging of Rossini's Cenerentola, with an excellent cast that was recorded during the run. The Deutsche Oper, Berlin, visited for the first time, with an elderly staging of Die Entführung aus dem Serail and a brand new one of Reimann's Melusine. Scottish Opera revived its production of Die Walküre as part of its preparation for a cycle to be performed in December.