Opera Scotland

War and Peace 2010Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD)

Read more about the opera War and Peace

Scottish Opera's 2009/10 season contained four full main-stage productions plus one small-scall-tour. The two works the company had never touched before were the young Rossini's frothy Italian Girl in Algiers and Leoš Janáček'a Adventures of Mr Brouček. The two revivals were an ultra-traditional Elisir d'amore and an ultra-modern Bohème. There was also  a piano-accompanied tour of a second Janáček piece, Kátya Kabanová.

There were some additional elements, however, including a third programme of new short chamber pieces under the 5:15 umbrella. There was also a 'Scenes & Arias' tour by four  young singers and a pianist, the old Essential Scottish Opera format now revised as Opera Highlights. There was a new 'Interactive Opera for 3 to 6 Year Olds', entitled Auntie Janet Saves The Planet. Two well-contrasted co-productions also featured. Music Theatre Wales brought a new chamber piece by Eleanor Alberga, Letters of a Love Betrayed, while the RSAMD joined forces with the orchestra and technical staff of Scottish Opera to mount the Scottish premiere of Prokofiev's wonderful Tolstoy adaptation War and Peace.

After its 2009 success with Love for Three Oranges, the RSAMD Prokofiev project moved on to the almost unimaginably challenging world of War and Peace. That they tackled it with almost total success speaks volumes for the talent and quality of training undergone by such young artists.

These performances were billed as the premiere of the original version of Prokofiev’s massive opera, as edited by Dr Rita McAllister. The significance of this is that the composer was obliged by the Stalin regime to include, particularly in the war sections, memorably tuneful scenes of a patriotic and propagandist nature which were not in his original scenario.

Orchestral players and technical support were drawn from Scottish Opera. This was a co-production between RSAMD and the Conservatoire of Rostov-on-Don.

In the extensive cast list given below, the first fifteen roles (down to, and including, Platon Karatayev) may be said to be major parts - they either recur throughout the opera, or make a particularly important contribution to the scenes in which they appear. The other parts are of less importance individually, but all contribute to the astonishing tapestry that makes up this great work.