Opera Scotland

Belle Hélène 1967Sadler's Wells Opera

Read more about the opera Belle Hélène

Basil Coleman's effervescent staging of Offenbach's masterpiece was a fixture in the Sadler's Wells repertoire for most of the sixties, and toured several times with equal success. Here Here Joan Davies moves up to the title role, and Lawrence Folley also takes on a larger part than before. David Hillman, with his immaculate sense of comic timing, continues in the role of Paris.

The even longer-lived Wells staging of Orpheus in the Underworld would tour again (to Glasgow) in the autumn - this was a good period for Offenbach revivals in the UK.

Cast details are from an Edinburgh programme in the NLS and a Glasgow one in the OperaScotland collection.