Opera Scotland

Navarraise 1894Royal Italian Opera Company

Read more about the opera Navarraise

Touring to Scotland only three months after its première, La navarraise seems a strange companion piece for Gluck's Orfeo - as indeed was Pagliacci on the previous year's visit by Sir Augustus Harris's company from Covent Garden.  However Massenet packs a lot of powerfully effective music into three-quarters of an hour.

Philip Brozel was at the start of a distinguished career, while Armand Castelmary was nearing the end of one in which he created roles at the Paris Opéra in works by Meyerbeer (Don Diego in L'africaine); Thomas (Horatio in Hamlet);  and Verdi (the Monk in Don Carlos).