This brief visit to the central belt allowed the celebrity soprano Jenny Lind, the famous 'Swedish Nightingale' to appear in four performances, embracing three of her most famous roles. While the journalistic material is not explicit, there seems to be an assumption that the tour was under the management of Benjamin Lumley, the impresario who at the time ran Her Majesty's Theatre in London's Haymarket, where the singers were engaged.
In addition to Lind herself, the other principals were of high quality - tenor Gustave Roger and baritone Giovanni Battista Belletti were quite young, but definitely fine singers with notable careers ahead of them. The bass Frederick Lablache may not have been quite on that level, and not as good as his famous father, the great bass Luigi Lablache, but he was still a high quality singer. The conductor was none other than Michael Balfe, whose Bohemian Girl was already one of the most popular operas of the day.
The four opera performances were: Mon Sep 25 Edinburgh Sonnambula; Thu Sep 28 Edinburgh Lucia di Lammermoor; Mon Oct 2 Figlia del Reggimento (in Italian); Wed Oct 4 Glasgow Sonnambula. On Friday, 6 October, there was also a concert in which the principals appeared.
© Copyright Opera Scotland 2024
Site by SiteBuddha