Opera Scotland

Mastersingers of Nuremberg 1929Covent Garden Opera

Read more about the opera Meistersinger von Nürnberg

These performances gave Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh audiences their first sight of the newly formed Covent Garden Opera Company.

A comparison with the cast details of the 1927 visit shows a marked similarity - as might be expected when the company had arisen from the ashes of the defunct BNOC which had performed most of Wagner's operas during the previous few years.

The chorus members performing their brief solos as Masters were largely the same singers as before, and in the same roles, except that Percy Harris switched from Vogelgesang to Zorn. Several of the principals had also appeared with BNOC, even if this work was new to them. Philip Bertram was promoted from Nightwatchman to Pogner. Stage director George King had also moved over from the old company, in tandem with the conductor.

Cast details are taken from an Edinburgh programme in the NLS collection.

 

The Scotsman:  Tuesday, 29 October 1929 (p8):

'Possibly the finest performance of The Mastersingers that has ever been heard in Edinburgh was given at the King's Theatre last night by the Covent Garden artists.  Other occasions within the forty years or so which have elapsed since the work was first heard in Edinburgh may have produced a more admirable artist in one rôe or another,  but certainly never before has the level of performance on the whole been so high as it was last night.

'The large cast presented no weak points;  chorus and orchestra were alike fine, and above all, there was that crispness of touch which speaks so eloquently of the confidence born of plentiful rehearsals. (tbc)