Opera Scotland

Barbiere di Siviglia 1975Scottish Opera

Read more about the opera Barber of Seville

Following the success of the medium-scale production of The Magic Flute in early 1974, a revival of Ian Watt-Smith's 1971 Barber was an obvious successor for the following year, due to the extreme simplicity of its design concept. Stirling and Ayr saw it on a brief autumn tour in October. Between January 31 and March 8 a company with major roles again double cast was toured extensively round a similar network of small theatres. Dundee, as with the Flute, had a packed out schools' matinee as well as the two evening performances. In April, during the main company spring tour, two further performances were given in York and three in Perth (casts to be confirmed). During the traditional June week in Edinburgh, this time at the King's, the cast was joined by that great Rossini specialist Patricia Kern. Ian Wallace, whose performances of Bartolo had enlivened stagings going back to the fifties, appeared with the company for the last time. This whole sequence involved a total of thirty performances.

The need for Scottish Opera to employ orchestras when the SNO and BBC Scottish were unavailable was solved for a few years by the use of a composite band which used three names depending on the forces required. The Scottish Baroque Ensemble was a small group which played for the Britten works and other small scale pieces. When it was expanded for the Mozart and Rossini sized repertoire the title Scottish Chamber Orchestra was introduced. For nineteenth century repertoire requiring a small symphony orchestra, the name Scottish Philharmonia was adopted. Eventually the first two of these groups achieved separate identities on the concert platform, under which they still thrive (though the term Baroque was eventually dropped), and Scottish Opera formed its own orchestra.

This programme cover is for the final week at the Edinburgh King's in June, when the Barber played in repertoire with David Pountney's new Fledermaus staging.