Opera Scotland

Cambiale di matrimonio 1984Scottish Opera

Read more about the opera Marriage Contract

The company had been sending out medium-scale tours of popular operas for a decade when it was decided to try a couple of unknown works. A pairing of two of Rossini's juvenile farces turned out to be ideal. Indeed they were not strictly-speaking medium-scale either, since they were probably played at about the scale Rossini would have recognized and found quite acceptable.  

The Marriage Contract and The Silken Ladder were only known for their overtures, but turned out to be good-natured comedies which were effortlessly put across by such experts as Eric Roberts, Bill McCue and Alan Watt, while Meryl Drower and Harry Nicoll had an ideally light touch for the romantic leads. This one was set by Vick in 1840s London, so Dickensian costumes were the order of the day and it all worked beautifully. The second piece, being a French farce, was appropriately given the style of Feydeau.

The productions were revived in 1985 for four more performances, a pair in each of the larger theatres of Glasgow and Newcastle, with slight cast changes.

 

Scottish Opera's Season - 1983/84

Scottish Opera's 1983/84 season at the Theatre Royal opened with a new Death in Venice, followed before Christmas by Idomeneo (also new), and revivals of The Golden Cockerel and Hansel and Gretel. In the New Year, the season continued with revivals of L'elisir d'amore, La bohème and L'Egisto, before a final new production, Turandot, opened. There was also a short tour of the medium-scale theatres with a double bill of early one-act farces by Rossini, The Marriage Contract and The Silken Ladder. The autumn saw a further handful of performances of the recent Jonathan Miller Magic Flute, while the second half of December featured a two-week run of a musical, My Fair Lady.