Opera Scotland

Opera Highlights 2019Scottish Opera

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The performance in Perth, which we saw, was the ninth of seventeen scheduled.  By this point therefore the performers were well into their stride and drew an enthusiastic reception from the audience.

This edition of Opera Highlights is staged by Scottish Opera Staff Director Roxana Haines, inviting audiences to a beautiful garden party.

The well-tried format involves a storyline credibly linking a variety of arias, ranging from popular favourites to some less well known.  In a highly entertaining and polished show, there was no sign of staleness.

Musical highlights include the popular ‘Flower Duet’ from Lakmé (Delibes), 'Vilja' from the Merry Widow and 'Papagena, Papagena...pa pa, pa' from the Magic Flute to the new and rarely performed ('Meet me tonight' from Mildred Jessup's Ethelinda, and indeed one written for this tour by Scottish Opera Composer in Residence Samuel Bordoli 'O Let the Earth Devour me Quicke') and many more (in French and Italian as well as English). 

Composers represented included Sullivan, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten, Donizetti, Lully and Handel.  Acting and diction was generally excellent.  The humour in the staging seemed more than usually effective due to some grand comic acting and finely observed inter-personal  relationships between four very different characters.

The sequence ended with a group of highly atmospheric post-war American works - the immigrant Kurt Weill's Broadway opera sandwiched between two rarer works by Caarlisle Floyd and Aaron Copland.

The audience of around 150 were all in the stalls at Perth Theatre, something that generated a sense of intimacy.

The quartet all sang and acted with conviction.  Indeed the whole team deserves congratulations for what turned out to be a thoroughly enjoyable entertainment.

The full programme was:

Part 1

Mozart: La finta giardiniera - 'Che lieto giorno' CD (Sandrina), MJ (Ramiro), AB (Podestà), MN (Nardo).

Donizetti: L'elisir d'amore - 'Come Paride vezzoso' MN (Belcore).

Thomas: Mignon - 'Connais-tu le pays?' MJ (Mignon).

Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro - 'Oh, why are you so cruel?' CD (Susanna), MN (Count Almaviva).

Lully: Amadis - 'Bois épais' AB (Amadis).

Handel: Rodelinda - 'Morrai, sì' CD (Rodelinda).

Mozart: Così fan tutte - 'Il core vi dono'MJ (Dorabella), MN (Guglielmo).

Jessup: Ethelinda - 'Meet me tonight' CD (Ethelinda), AB (Sir Lionel).

Britten: The Rape of Lucretia - 'Give him this orchid'  MJ (Lucretia).

Delibes: Lakmé - 'Dôme épais' CD (Lakmé), MJ (Mallika).

Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin - 'How far you seem now!' AB (Lensky).

Mozart: The Magic Flute - 'Papagena, Papagena!' MN (Papageno), CD (Papagena).

Part 2

Bordoli - 'O let the earth devour me quicke' CD, MJ, AB, MN.

Lehár: The Merry Widoe - 'Vilja-Song' and 'All's one to all men' CD (Anna Glawari), MN (Danilo).

German: Merrie England - 'Dan Cupid hath a garden' AB (Sir Walter Raleigh).

Cellier: Dorothy - 'Queen pof my heart' MN (Harry Sherwood).

Vaughan Williams: The Poisoned Kiss - 'Blue larkspur in a garden' CD (Tormentilla), AB (Amaryllus).

Sullivan: Ruddigore - 'There grew a little flower' MJ (Dame Hannah).

Sullivan: The Gondoliers - 'We're called gondolieri' AB (Marco), MN (Giuseppe).

Floyd: Susannah - 'The trees in the mountains' CD (Susannah).

Weill: Street Scene: What good would the moon be?' MJ (Rose Maurrant).

Cop;and: The Tender Land - 'The promise of living' CD (Laurie), MJ (Ma Moss), AB (Mr Jenks), MN (Grandpa Moss). 

 

Scottish Opera's 2019/20 Season

The season opened at the Edinburgh International Festival with the European premiere of Breaking the Waves by Missy Mazzoli.  The autumn performances got under way with a visit to the Lammermuir Festival on 20 September with a single performance in concert of an unusual double bill - Mascagni's Zanetto and Wolf-Ferrari's Susanna's Secret. The Glasgow season opens with a welcome revival of Tosca. There is a Sunday afternoon concert of Iris, another rare work by Mascagni.

In the New Year we can look forward to new productions of Nixon in China by John Adams as well as Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream. and Sullivan's Gondoliers. Further concerts include a pairing of Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana with Leoncavallo's Zingari. There are also concert performances of a late Sullivan piece, Utopia, Limited,  as well as the usual Opera Highlights tour of the Highlands and Islands.