Opera Scotland

Rape of Lucretia 1977Scottish Opera

Read more about the opera Rape of Lucretia

Anthony Besch's excellent 1976 production was successful at its opening, so it was no surprise that it should appear in the subscription season at the Theatre Royal. Scottish Opera's second season there (1976-77) again consisted of ten varied operas. It opened with a revival of the successful Ebert staging of La bohème. This was followed by Confessions of a Justified Sinner (new in the summer), The Magic Flute, Don Pasquale, Macbeth (launched at the previous Edinburgh Festival), Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, The Merry Widow, Fidelio, The Rape of Lucretia and Jenůfa.

Two guest artists came in just for these five performances. Robert Tear and John Shirley-Quirk sang frequently with the company, but had not before appeared in any of the Britten works with which they were so closely associated. It seems they had originally been recruited to appear in a revival of Peter Grimes, but stayed on when that group of performances was replaced with something cheaper.

In the spring the staging was taken abroad, in tandem with a revival of Turn of the Screw. Neither of these masterly Britten chamber pieces had been seen in Poland before.