Scottish Opera's Progress

Gradually, very gradually, Scottish Opera is getting back to speed, even if it has yet to find a new music director. But with a small, very small, increase in its full-scale productions - bringing the total next season to five - things are looking a shade brighter, as last week’s announcement confirms.  Yet look closely and you will see that only two of these new productions seem to be exclusively Scottish Opera’s. 

These are the new versions of James MacMillan’s Ines de Castro, to be conducted by the composer himself with Olivia Fuchs as director,  and Gluck’s Orfeo with Ashley Page, formerly of Scottish Ballet, as director. Since neither work is new to the company’s repertoire - in fact a stronger case could perhaps be made for a new production of Thomas Wilson’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner or one of the other Scottish works commissioned in more prosperous times -  speed is not necessarily what, on second thoughts, Scottish Opera is getting back to. Why, for instance, is it not staging MacMillan’s more recent opera, The Sacrifice? Is it because the work was composed, highly successfully, for Wales, and has already been performed there?   

Who knows exactly what the company’s ambitions, and attitudes, now really are? Long ago they were perfectly clear and admirable. The last time The Trojans was staged at the Edinburgh Festival it was automatically by Scottish Opera. That is not the case this year. Such a possibility must look far beyond the company’s currently conductorless resources. So Gergiev and his Russians promise the feat of performing it on three consecutive nights.   

The Scottish company’s forthcoming new productions, in addition to the MacMillan and the Gluck,  are of Rossini’s Cinderella, a lovable work in a version shared with Strasbourg’s Opera National du Rhin,  and a co-production of Janacek’s Jenufa with the Danish National Opera. Co-productions, of course, are a long-established way of cost-trimming, even though neither of these works could be said to be new to Scotland. A revival of Peter Watson’s production of Verdi’s Il Trovatore completes the season a year from now. 

Well, it’s not a bad tally and, by today’s international standards, quite a presentable repertoire. Are Welsh National Opera and Opera North - Scottish Opera’s equivalents south of the Tweed - faring any better? Watch this space.

18 May 2014