Opera in Scotland

Scottish opera is a subgenre of Scottish music. This article deals with three separate, but overlapping subjects:

• Opera on Scottish themes, subject matter, or inspired by Scottish writers
• Opera by Scottish (-based) composers
• Opera in Scotland, including performers, production personnel, and opera companies, etc.

A number of operas have been set in Scotland, or based around Scottish themes, but the number of notable operas written by Scots is far lower. Their actual connection to Scotland varies greatly.

Searching for its typical and characteristic features, Scottish opera (and Scottish classical music as a whole), has often been under strong foreign influence. Italian, French, English and German operas have served as models, even when composers sought to introduce characteristically national elements into their work. This dualism, to a greater or lesser degree, has persisted throughout the whole history of Scottish opera.

The Italian style of classical music was probably first brought to Scotland by the Italian cellist and composer Lorenzo Bocchi, who travelled to Scotland in the 1720s, introducing the cello to the country and then developing settings for lowland Scots songs. He possibly had a hand in the first Scottish Opera, the pastoral The Gentle Shepherd, with libretto by the poet Allan Ramsay.^[1]

The most significant figure in Scottish classical music of the mid-eighteenth century was Thomas Erskine, 6th Earl of Kellie (1732–81), whose chamber music was frequently performed at the time, but quickly forgotten after his death and has only just begun to be reappraised.^[2] Growing audiences for classical music can be seen from the drawing up of a constitution for The Musical Society of Edinburgh in 1728^[3] and the opening of a new 2,200 square feet, oval concert hall for the Society in the shape of St Cecilia's Hall, Niddry Street, Edinburgh, in 1762.^[4]

From the late-Victorian period onwards, opera-loving Scots had to make do with the offerings of small or family-based companies that toured extensively throughout the British Isles. What the standards were like in those days long before recording can only be imagined. However the creation in 1873 of the Liverpool-based Carl Rosa Opera Company was hailed at the time as offering touring opera of an ambition and standard never before seen in Scotland.^[5] Perhaps the most detailed account of the travelling opera phenomenon of that time is offered by Rodmell.^[6] Clearly this exposure to travelling opera must have done a significant amount to form public taste.

However, despite the impressive strides in historical research that have been made here and elsewhere, the quantity of performances and companies in Scotland is not known in much detail. Establishing the facts is labour-intensive and problematic. Digitisation of newspapers, magazines and other print media helps researchers in some respects but nationally this process is still a long way from being complete. Performing companies and even theatres have mainly been temporary phenomena and their performance records are almost always lost. The best archives are found where companies or venues have not only survived, but maintained their own records. Prominent musical examples are in New York the Metropolitan Opera; and in London the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and the Royal Albert Hall.

Memoirs, even those of impresarios, tend to be long in anecdote and short of detail. Little or nothing survives of their business records to enable estimates of attendance, for example. National and local libraries and even specialist archives of performing arts material tend to hold only a haphazard handful of programmes or other memorabilia.

For Scotland the task is more challenging. Attempts must therefore be made to identify and build the detail of early performances and casts using mainly newspaper reviews, programmes and playbills. An ambitious attempt to pursue this online, and unique in trying to work nationally rather than in relation to a single company, is that of OperaScotland, a website for listings and performance history. Current content runs from 1755 to the present day, includes 650 operas and the names of over 11,000 performers. Much remains to be found, however.^[7]