Opera Scotland

Merry Widow 1974Scottish Opera

Read more about the opera Merry Widow

From the time of its first visit to Newcastle in 1968, the north of England became more and more important as a source of touring dates for Scottish Opera. Here, the first section of the spring tour, after the premiere of Catiline in Stirling, involved weeks in York, Sunderland and Oxford, before the company moved back north to Perth. They played The Merry Widow, The Catiline Conspiracy and The Magic Flute. The main dates then followed in Glasgow, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, where the "big" works were added, in this case revivals of Fidelio, Traviata and Boris Godunov. The establishment of Opera North in Leeds in 1979, and the gradual expansion of its own touring base, would eventually have a catastrophic effect on Scottish Opera's finances as its sphere of activity shrank.