Glagolitic Mass 1978Edinburgh International Festival
Read more about the opera Glagolitic Mass
The closing concert of the 1978 Festival saw Sir Alexander Gibson and the SNO performing two unusual Czech pieces - the Te Deum by Dvořák and Glagolitic Mass by Leoš Janáček. The central item was more conventional - Sir Clifford Curzon playing the Mozart C major Piano Concerto, K467.
Although Janáček's operas had been introduced to the Edinburgh Festival by the National Theatre from Prague in 1964 and 1970, it was later in the decade (the Stockholm Opera visit of 1974) that had stimulated the joint venture of Scottish Opera and Welsh National Opera to stage five of the operas in succession.
This was therefore a propitious time for Edinburgh audiences to be introduced to this wonderful, life-affirming Mass, with its potentially forbidding Old Slavonic text. The presence of a superb native tenor, familiar for his interpretation of Dalibor, must have helped. South African soprano Wendy Fine was recognised as an expert in the Slavonic repertoire. Having already sung the title role in Jenůfa at Covent Garden (with Charles Mackerras), she would return a few weeks after the Festival to sing it with Scottish Opera again under Gibson.
