Opera Scotland

Arias and Energy

Arias will accompany ground-breaking green energy production when Byre Opera, the University of St Andrews opera company, performs at the University’s biomass plant within the Eden Campus Energy Centre Guardbridge next month.

The £25m plant on the east side of the former paper mill site houses a biomass boiler which uses clean, sustainable fuel from sources across Scotland to produce hot water. This water is then pumped four miles underground to St Andrews where it heats University...

Posted 12 May 2019 | Comments

Opera North and Aïda at the Usher Hall

Another welcome visit from Opera North who bolster the major operatic programmes of Scottish Opera and the Edinburgh International Festival.

Opera North's renowned presentations of opera in concert form are coming again to the Usher Hall on Tuesday 21 May. Their production of Verdi's great work Aïda has earned praise from all quarters. This work presents great challenges for any company in alternating scenes of powerful intimacy with operatic spectacle of the highest order.

Reunited for...

Posted 5 May 2019 | Comments

Stuart Stratford, Scottish Opera Music Director and Alex Reedijk, General Director. Scottish Opera

Scottish Opera's 2019/20 Season revealed

Looking ahead to 2019-20, what were we hoping for? Something new certainly, something interesting at any rate. In these difficult times, something to raise the spirits. Not too many revivals, no sense of playing safe and finally, a programme that would be distinctive in the UK context. So we are absolutely delighted to see our hopes more than met.

On offer is a strong and hugely varied programme that has something for almost every taste, from those completely new to opera (Tosca) to those...

Posted 12 Apr 2019 | Comments

Edinburgh Festival Programme announced

The Edinburgh International Festival runs from 2 – 26 August 2019, bringing its usual extravagant mix of theatre, music and dance from across the world to Scotland’s capital. The programme features 93 events, with 293 performances across 17 venues and 2600 artists from 40 nations.

Opera

The staged opera programme features two contrasting works. Komische Oper Berlin and its Artistic Director Barrie Kosky return with a production of Tchaikovsky’s best-loved opera Eugene Onegin. The first cast...

Posted 27 Mar 2019 | Comments

Hawaiian-language opera for Fringe

The Battle of Kuamoo a new opera in the Hawaiian language, is reportedly headed for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

In August, 25 students from Kamehameha Schools will travel to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, an annual performing arts festival in Scotland, to perform the opera in front of a...

Death of John Calder

John Calder died on 13th August at the age of 91.

Most of the obituarists refer to his remarkable career as a publisher, to campaigns for freedom of expression, and to his support for writers and the book trade.

However to the team behind OperaScotland, he will be remembered as one of a handful...

Looking for a speaker?

Iain, Peter and Stephen Fraser, co-founders of OperaScotland and researchers into Carl Rosa Opera, offer organisations such as Probus and Arts societies the chance to learn about the origin and development of this website and the amazing life of Carl Rosa.

Carl Rosa: from ‘juvenile Paganini’ to...

What's new: an update on progress with OperaScotland

Since this website was launched almost ten years ago, a vast amount of information has been uploaded. In addition many relatively small changes have been made to improve ease of use.

Traffic has continued to build and it is clear from the visits and comments we receive that OperaScotland is highly valued both by performers and opera fans. However, to ensure that the site continues to be relevant, we have decided to launch a major review. We therefore need again to be asking what you, the users, want from the site.

Some of our recent work is summarised below. What do we do well? What could we do better?

Please email us with comments and ideas. In the first instance please send your suggestions to iain@operascotland.org.

Carl Rosa Opera

We have been concentrating on building up performance details of Carl Rosa Opera. This amazing organisation, under shifting managements after the death of Carl Rosa, took opera in English to the provinces and made it into a popular form of entertainment. From its first visit to Scotland, in 1874, to its last in 1957, it gave mainstage performances not just in Glasgow and Edinburgh, but Dundee and Aberdeen. Greenock and Perth too were visited.

Our list of the Rosa’s mainstage performances in Scotland now totals 2916. Doubtless there will be some more to add in due course.

Richness of content

New items of interest are found and published on the site. These should be quite clear because visible. Site development 'backstage' is less obvious. For example, as well as adding more performances, we have been inserting more links to develop navigation between entries. This is inevitably a slow process.

Look at these examples –

Tannhauser 1905

Pagliacci 1916

Jeanie Deans 1918

Barber of Seville 1948

Benvenuto Cellini 1957

Scroll down each page, then click on the links and work your way round other performances on the tours.

Posted 5 May 2019