Opera Scotland

Trovatore 1996Scottish Opera

Read more about the opera Trovatore

For Scottish Opera, the great importance of the 1996-97 season is that it saw the premiere of Inés de Castro, the first full-length opera by James MacMillan. It had been over a decade since the company had last launched a new work - Harper's Hedda Gabler in 1985. The success of the opening at the Edinburgh Festival was deserved, and it was as well received during the main autumn season. That contained six other full-scale productions: Idomeneo, Trovatore, Bohème, Fledermaus, Samson and Delilah and Cunning Little Vixen. The Opera-Go-Round small-scale tour was an enjoyable staging of Così fan tutte. There was also a bonus in December, with an enjoyable series of concerts around the country under the title The Scottish Opera Collection.

This first revival of the staging was radically reworked by Karen Howard and made more effective use of the set designs of Tim Hatley. The new cast included a beautifully vocalised reading of Leonora from Penelope Walmsley-Clark and a powerfully dramatic Azucena from Anne-Marie Owens. Even so, the greatest novelty was probably to see the men so effectively cast on at least one night when Ian Storey took over from an indisposed Deng. He and Jason Howard both sang with a natural, unforced lyricism which is rarely heard in Trovatore, acted with appropriate vigour, and even managed to look alike, to the extent that the confusion of Leonora at her first appearance became credible for the first time.