Tosca

Tosca, Scottish Opera

This is a glorious, uplifting and gorgeously staged reminder of the immense power and passion of Puccini’s musical storytelling. Anthony Besch’s landmark 1980 production of Tosca forms the core of this revival directed by Jonathan Cocker, with the action transposed from 1800 to 1940s Italy under Mussolini’s fascists. There is good reason for the longevity…

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Robert the Bruce

This is not the story of a man who has been defeated in war coming back with a sword in his hand. This is the story of a family broken apart by war coming together with love in its heart. This beautifully woven piece of cinema is captured with ravishing photography by John Garret, and…

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Anthropocene

Anthropocene by Scottish Opera. Photo credit James Glossop

There was a tangible buzz in the air for the world premiere of this opera in Glasgow’s Theatre Royal. With music by Stuart MacRae and libretto by author Louise Welsh, the story is set in the frozen wilderness of Greenland, where a scientific expedition comes to grief when plummeting temperatures cause the exploration ship King’s…

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Rigoletto

Aris Argiris as Rigoletto and Lina Johnson as Gilda. Scottish Opera 2018. Photo: Julie Howden

Rigoletto’s daughter Gilda is an innocent who is first deceptively seduced, then kidnapped, and raped – behind this are powerful men acting with complete impunity and treating a woman as nothing more than a disposable object for their pleasure. Written in 1850, Rigoletto was perhaps the first opera to deal openly with the issue of…

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Eugene Onegin

Eugene Onegin - Scottish Opera

Eugene Onegin towers over the Russian literature of the 19th century, and Tchaikovsky’s decision to create an opera based on a text which is still widely read (and regularly re-read) by Russians today was highly audacious. It is a sign of Tchaikovsky’s brilliance that the Opera, rather than the novel in verse it was based…

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