It has been a long winter, but the sturdy thump of Scottish Opera’s 2018/19 season brochure through the letterbox is as welcome a sign of spring as the emerging beech leaves on the trees. The majority of Scotland’s population lives within striking distance of Edinburgh and Glasgow’s theatres, but many live miles and even ferry journeys away from the central belt, throwing up a huge geographical engagement challenge for a national opera company. Scottish Opera’s answer is an innovative mixture of mainstay productions in the cities combined with boutique touring activity. Opera Highlights takes a piano and singers into tiny, remote and usually packed village halls and small venues, spreading genuine operatic delight right across Scotland, while Pop-Up Opera provides operatic tasters of Eugene Onegin, H.M.S. Pinafore and a special show for four- to seven-year-olds called Be a Sport, Spike! in an adapted lorry trailer visiting various events. But there is more – much more...
Scottish Opera was the first European opera company to have an Education and Outreach department, and in the coming season 8,000 older primary school children will take part in workshops and performances of 1719! an opera by David Munro about the Jacobite risings, while younger children will experience The Opera Factory, a whirlwind experience which explains how operas are made. The excitement of Scottish Opera arriving at a primary school for a day is genuinely wonderful to see, as is the enjoyment of the community who attend the performances.
In recent years, Scottish Opera’s Connect Company for young singers, instrumentalists and stage managers has developed significantly, now emerging rebranded as the Scottish Opera Young Company. These lively 16- to 23-year-olds will be joined by new Artistic Director Jonathon Swinard and professional singers in a new production of Gluck’s Orfeo and Euridice in April 2019.
Taking a baby to the opera might strike one as inadvisable, but Lliam Paterson’s BambinO for six- to 18-month-olds has been an extraordinary success story, enjoying sell-out runs in Scotland. It is touring to Paris and New York (Scottish Opera goes to the Met!) this spring and returns home, appearing in the Edinburgh Fringe before travelling across the country in September, finishing in Shetland.
With a £10 ticket price for the under-26s at all Scottish Opera’s main shows, this all adds up to a significant and meaningful commitment to sowing the seeds of future audiences and even performers, building enthusiasm and chiming with Scotland’s 2018 Year of Young People. The company’s Emerging Artists programme nurtures young singers, a repetiteur and costume trainee at the start of their careers, a welcome commitment to opera development cemented by the appointment of Samuel Bordoli as Composer-in-Residence.
Stuart Stratford, Scottish Opera’s Music Director, describes the new season as “Old and new, rare and classic” exemplifying what Scottish Opera is all about. Two mainstay revivals bookend the main theatre performances: Matthew Richardson’s 2011 powerful film noir macabre production of Rigoletto opens the season in October with baritone Aris Argiris and soprano Lina Johnson heading up the cast, conducted by Rumon Gamba. Sir Thomas Allen’s delightful steampunk production of The Magic Flute returns in May 2019 with its witty libretto from Kit Hesketh-Harvey, stove-pipe hats, flying boys with parasols and astonishing dresses for the three ladies. Peter Gijsbertsen is joined by Gemma Summerfield (first prize winner at the 2015 Kathleen Ferrier Awards) and Julia Sitkovetsky with Richard Burkhard returning to recreate his 2012 Papageno.