Scottish Opera is once again performing at the award-winning Lammermuir Festival in East Lothian, with a double bill of Mascagni’s Zanetto and Wolf-Ferrari’s Susanna’s Secret, on Friday 20 September at 7.30pm.
Curated by Scottish Opera Music Director Stuart Stratford, the first performance in the 2019/20 Opera in Concert series is conducted by David Parry (La traviata 2017). Rosie Purdie directs these semi-staged works, featuring four soloists and The Orchestra of Scottish Opera. They are performed in Haddington’s mediaeval St Mary’s Parish Church, where Scottish Opera staged Britten’s The Burning Fiery Furnace last September.
In this Scottish Opera premiere of Mascagni’s Zanetto, Hanna Hipp (Katyá Kabanová 2019) sings the title role and is joined by Sinéad Campbell-Wallace as Silvia, a lonely courtesan. Zanetto is set in the hills above Renaissance Florence, and tells how Silvia has lost her faith in love until she meets a wandering minstrel who re-awakens her heart.
It is performed alongside the sophisticated and charming Susanna’s Secret, the perfect comedic contrast, in which a husband who smells smoke on his wife’s clothes accuses her of cheating, but it isn’t what he expects. Clare Presland is Countess Susanna and Richard Burkhard (The Magic Flute 2019) is Count Gil.
Scottish Opera General Director Alex Reedijk said
Following on from the success of The Burning Fiery Furnace in 2018, we are very proud to be sharing with Lammermuir Festival a double bill of two rare opera treats: Mascagni’s Zanetto and the rarely performed Susanna’s Secret by Wolf-Ferrari. This ongoing partnership between Scottish Opera and one of the UK’s premiere classical music festivals in an amazing mediaeval church will see performances of a pair of sophisticated and charming operas that are sure to captivate the audience with some glorious singing and playing.
Lammermuir Festival, established in 2010 by Artistic Directors Hugh Macdonald and James Waters, runs from 13 to 22 September in beautiful venues around East Lothian. The festival won the 2017 Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Best Concert Series and Festival, and features several of Scotland’s leading ensembles, internationally renowned musicians and exciting new talent. It has a close ongoing relationship with BBC Radio 3.
In December, the Opera in Concert series continues with the Scottish Opera premiere of Mascagni’s Iris at City Halls, Glasgow. A gripping tale of innocence lost, Stuart Stratford conducts soloists including Ric Furman (Kátya Kabanová 2019), Natalya Romaniw (Eugene Onegin 2018) and Roland Wood (Pelléas and Mélisande 2017). Roxana Haines (Edgar 2018) directs.
The passionate and lyrical Cavalleria rusticana by Mascagni is performed in May 2020 at the Usher Hall, Edinburgh. Telling the tale of a young Sicilian villager who returns from war to find his fiancée has married someone else, conductor Stuart Stratford has chosen to pair it with Leoncavallo’s lesser-known work Zingari, another Scottish Opera premiere. With a parallel narrative that sees another love triangle go disastrously wrong, Zingari is based on Pushkin’s The Gypsies. Orpha Phelan directs soloists including Evez Abdulla, Justina Gringyte and Julia Sporsén.
The Opera in Concert series concludes with a semi-staged performance of Utopia, Limited. A new co-production with D’Oyly Carte Opera and State Opera South Australia, this Scottish Opera premiere has an updated libretto by director Stuart Maunder, and a revised musical version by Scottish Opera’s Head of Music, Derek Clark, who also conducts. Wittily satirising the British Empire’s politics, monarchy and press, Gilbert & Sullivan’s penultimate opera is performed by the cast of The Gondoliers, and designed by Dick Bird. Utopia, Limited tours to Glasgow, Edinburgh and Hackney Empire in London.