Opera Scotland

Fliegende Holländer 1987Scottish Opera

Read more about the opera Flying Dutchman

This excellent staging by John Cox was Scottish Opera’s first ever production of the earliest of Wagner’s music dramas to remain in regular performance. It was also Cox's debut as a director of Wagner. The production was shared with Washington, and after it travelled across the Atlantic it never returned, which was a great pity.

It was performed in one act, and the set was cleverly designed to cope with the necessary changes without intervention by curtains. The cast was uniformly excellent, and the chorus danced as well as they sang - no mean feat when the hydraulically-operated deck took on some odd angles from time to time - some very rough seas in the fjord. Norman Bailey's peerless interpretation was superb, as expected, but he and Gibson also drew excellent contributions from the others.

 

Scottish Opera's Season - 1986/87

This season comprised Nine main stage productions plus an Opera-Go-Round staging with piano, and a most unusual Edinburgh Festival event.   The new productions were Carmen,  Iolanthe,  Intermezzo,  Flying Dutchman,   From the House of the Dead,   Billy Budd,  and  Madama Butterfly.  There were two revivals, The Marriage of Figaro and The Barber of Seville.  The Opera-Go Round production was of Verdi's Macbeth,  The season opened at the Edinburgh Festival, with a concert including music from Gershwin's Girl Crazy.