Intérprete: Robert Poulton

Scottish Opera’s final production of the season was a revival of the much-loved 1980 production of Tosca by the late Anthony Besch, redirected here by Jonathan Cocker. Besch was struck by the political parallel between the Napoleonic era of the 1800s and Italy under Mussolini in the 1940s, and he made the bold choice to set this production in 1943.

Murder. Suicide. Grand larceny. Puccini's triptych of short operas, two tragedies followed by a riotous farce, always makes for an evening of variety, with the potential for many snatches of greatness.

Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos boasts the most confusing cast list of any opera. Ariadne and Bacchus feature either as themselves or as "primadonna" and "tenor", in addition to figures from Greek mythology, we get Commedia dell'arte names like Scaramuccio and Truffaldino, there are backstage characters like the composer, the music master and the wigmaker, and a spoken part of the Major-Domo.