The accent in the new season unveiled by Scottish Opera is unashamedly on accessibility. Although new work and premiere performances are part of the mix, the relatively light fare of Lehar’s The Merry Widow and Gilbert & Sullivan are the new shows in spring and summer of next year, while this autumn’s production revives the staging of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale first seen a decade ago.
David Stout, acclaimed as Dr Bartolo in last year's Barber of Seville, takes the title role in Renaud Doucet and André Barbe’s staging of the bel canto comedy, which opens in Glasgow’s Theatre Royal in October and tours to Inverness, Edinburgh and Aberdeen.
Scottish Opera’s General Director Alex Reedijk said: “Renaud and André will be coming to cast an eye over it, as it is ten years since we did it, but it has been seen quite recently in Canada, where it is nominated for three Dora awards.”
In an interesting experiment in scheduling, the Theatre Royal and Edinburgh Festival Theatre performances will be interspersed with performances of a new production of Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring, directed by Daisy Evans.
It is being created as the company’s regular contribution to East Lothian’s Lammermuir Festival, premiering in Haddington Corn Exchange at the start of September with a cast that includes all the company’s new group of Emerging Artists, a returning one, Glen Cunningham, in the title role, and company favourites Jamie MacDougall and Susan Bullock also in the cast.
Scottish Opera’s new season begins at the Edinburgh Festival, with the previously-announced Roxana Haines staging of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex in the atrium of the National Museum of Scotland. One of the fastest-selling events in the 2024 EIF programme, the company sees the project as a successor to its other recent shows with a community chorus, Pagliacci in Paisley and the promenade performances of Bernstein’s Candide.
“The National Museum of Scotland is the right place for it,” said Music Director Stuart Stratford. “Stravinsky said it was ‘written in stone’ in its use of the Latin language, and doing it in a very generous acoustic will help that. The orchestra will be in the middle with the promenade audience on either side and various different elevations for the principal characters and chorus.
“An hour long, it is the first time you’ll hear the piece with soprano and altos, as Boosey and Hawkes have given permission for us to do our own choral arrangement.”
The first production of 2025 will be Scotland’s chance to experience the company’s co-production with Welsh National Opera of Janacek’s The Makropolus Affair, which opened in Cardiff to glowing reviews in 2022.
Scottish Opera’s version of Olivia Fuchs’s staging will play Glasgow and Edinburgh and be sung in English rather than Czech, with a cast that includes Orla Boylan (seen in Marx in London! this year), Brad Cooper (Apollo in Daphne in 2023) and former Emerging Artist Catriona Hewitson. It will be conducted by Martyn Brabbins, who resigned as Music Director of English National Opera over proposed changes there.
Mr Stratford said: “I’ve always wanted to have Martyn work with us and we are very fortunate that he is now free, because he’s great at this repertoire.”
The Merry Widow is a collaboration with both D’Oyly Carte Opera and Opera Holland Park, so will have London performances. Last staged for a small scale tour 15 years ago, this time it will be seen in new translation by director John Savournin and David Eaton.
Again touring to all four cities, as with the autumn repertoire, this new production will be seen in Glasgow and Edinburgh in tandem with another show. It is a double-bill of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury teamed with contemporary political and legal satire of A Matter of Misconduct!, commissioned from librettist Emma Jenkins and composer Toby Hession, who will conduct.
With 2025 being the 150th anniversary of Gilbert & Sullivan’s partnership, brought together by theatre manager Richard D’Oyly Carte to create Trial by Jury, the ensemble for the double-bill will use the quartet of Emerging Artists alongside G&S stalwart Richard Suart and tenor Jamie MacDougall, who is coincidentally currently working with Glyndebourne Opera on its summer staging of The Merry Widow.
The mainstage roles for the young singers follow their 24-date Opera Highlights tour to small venues across Scotland earlier in the year. One of the reductions in the coming season’s schedule is the autumn tour of the same show, a casualty of an anticipated cut in Scottish Government funding.
In fact all five national performing arts companies were recently given a modest increase, the first since 2011.
The “13 opera adventures” Mr Reedijk identifies in the new Scottish Opera brochure also include composer-focused concerts with the orchestra and soloists at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall and Edinburgh’s Usher Hall: The Puccini Collection, in November, and The Strauss Collection in March.
Full details and booking information at scottishopera.org.uk
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