4 February 2012 
Scottish Opera is Scotland's national opera company and the largest performing arts organisation in Scotland.

PMF involvement:

Audience development and touring

1993/4 and 1995/6 Scottish Opera Go Round tours to UK primary schools in London, Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham

1994/5 tour to Barbados

1996 Irish cross-border project to perform an opera by David Monroe at a Community Centre in Co. Leitrim

June 2007 tour of Puccini's Madama Butterfly and Donizetti's Lucia Di Lammermoor to Stoke-on-Trent

Rarely performed opera

1993/4 Bellini's Norma

1994/5 Donizetti's Maria Stuarda
Puccini’s Madama Butterfly

The Guardian:

‘It's a triumph. Nothing is superfluous. Everything is important. This economy of scale encourages an abundance of emotion and gives Puccini's glorious, impressionistic music masses of room to dominate and drive the action. Central to the whole piece, of course, is the performance of Butterfly herself, and here Scottish Opera score 11 out of 10 for casting Rebecca Nash, who sings with such grace and elegance that we quite forget the ludicrous requirement of the libretto that she be 15 years old. Age is immaterial here: Cio-Cio-San represents all abandoned women the world over. In a landmark performance, Nash moves from naivete, through denial to eventual despair with a measured intelligence that matches her magical, honeyed voice. It's an extraordinary achievement. She leads a rock-solid cast of principals.’

Donizetti’s Lucia Di Lammermoor

The Guardian

‘The abiding dourness will not be to all tastes, especially when juxtaposed with the excesses of Donizetti's music, but it adds to the atmosphere of claustrophobic intensity surrounding the characters. Lucia is two parts drama, one part vocal pyrotechnics, and in this production the latter is never allowed to dominate for once. There is, however, some excellent singing, particularly from South African soprano Sally Silver as Lucia. Bulent Bezduz is an impassioned Edgardo, while Andrew Schroeder comes across strangely sympathetically as Enrico. Most charismatic of all, however, is Alan Fairs's splendidly stentorian Raimondo...  It is a striking and stylish production, which also has strong support in the pit from the Scottish Opera Orchestra and bel canto veteran Julian Smith.’