A Night At The Opera

**JonathanB** · 15th July 13, 07:58 AM

The Royal Opera production assumed a certain awareness of Scottish history and how Scottish history has been seen differently. It begins with Joyce Di Donato in a glass case (the Highlands are now a museum piece) and ends with Juan Diego Florez in a Royal Stewart kilt, recalling George IV's visit to Edinburgh, which was arranged by Walter Scot, who wrote the original poem.

**cck** · 15th July 13, 08:43 AM

Originally Posted by JonathanB

The Royal Opera production assumed a certain awareness of Scottish history and how Scottish history has been seen differently. It begins with Joyce Di Donato in a glass case (the Highlands are now a museum piece) and ends with Juan Diego Florez in a Royal Stewart kilt, recalling George IV's visit to Edinburgh, which was arranged by Walter Scot, who wrote the original poem.

It is interesting to compare this with the 1992 Milan production with June Anderson.

**JonathanB** · 15th July 13, 08:46 AM

It was clever clever in a way that so many international opera productions are nowadys, but it was a great improvement on the previous Covent Garden production with Marilyn Horne looking silly in a kilt.

**cck** · 15th July 13, 09:00 AM

I totally agree on the cleverness of the London production and very glad it was made available (although I don't really know why) to be seen on YouTube. Will they do a similar staging in Santa Fe? Their stage is different. The Milan version was very dark and drab - perhaps more true to the time.

**JonathanB** · 15th July 13, 09:40 AM

I've just looked through the programme. There's nothing about the production being with another opera company, which happens a lot. It doesn't look as though it's going to happen in this case.

(The Covent Garden programmes usually give a production history of the work in case of all the C20 productions and the lead singers. Since there was one production within my memory - Frederica Von Stade and Marilyn Horne - and it was frequently performed in the early C19 you'd have thought they'd provide the information this time. All they said was the night I went was the 59th performance of the work at Covent Garden.)

**cck** · 15th July 13, 01:15 PM

I checked the casts. The only singer doing both productions is Joyce DiDonato. On the subject of Joyce, the recent Met Opera production of Maria Stuarda was on TV here yesterday. Not set in Scotland, but about a Scot. Incredible voice, incredible roles.