Where are they now?

How many of Scottish Opera’s past successes still exist?  Without looking back to early days, I am impatient to know if Berg’s Lulu and Wozzeck - good productions of the two finest operas since Debussy’s Pelleas - survive in the company’s capacious storage premises, recently pictured in Brio, the Scottish Opera magazine.    And what of Pelleas itself?

Is Britten’s Death in Venice, a brilliant production shared with the Geneva Opera, still revivable,  even if the sets rest in Switzerland?   And what of the company’s great enduring Britten cycle itself? What of Luc Bondy’s Macbeth, seen in Vienna and Bordeaux after its Edinburgh debut? Bomdy has died but has his production been preserved?

What remains of David Pountney’s substantial Janacek cycle shared with Wales, and of his vivid Street Scene?   It would be interesting to know these things, which are, after all, things that should matter more to the company than some of its less desirable revivals.

No doubt it is too much to hope that we may see the most recent of the Ring cycles anytime soon,  though every national company should have a serviceable Ring - and this one is more than that - in its repertoire, not to mention a Rosenkavalier  as good as McVicar’s, along with his dark, strong Idomeneo.

Meanwhile, in an interview in the February issue of Opera Magazine, the company’s new music director seems to be envisaging a cycle of the works of the insignificant Jonathan Dove - could this be another looming Scottish Opera misadventure?
17 February 2016