To conclude this season’s Opera in Concert series from Scottish Opera (SO), Music Director Stuart Stratford conducts The French Collection at Dundee’s Caird Hall and the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on 1st and 3rd March.
In a gala performance, The Orchestra of Scottish Opera captures this musical epoch and is accompanied by a group of singers that includes Scottish mezzo-soprano Catriona Morison (winner of BBC Cardiff Singer of the World 2017) who was last with the Company at the 50th Perth Festival of the Arts opening gala concert in 2022 and known for her French repertoire performances. Joining her is tenor Alok Kumar who played Don José in SO’s 2023 production of Bizet’s Carmen, and soprano Alexandra Lowe and bass-baritone Callum Thorpe who are making their debuts with the Company.
Few cities saw as much innovation and creative output in opera as Paris did during the 19th century. With three major opera houses and composers from France and further abroad vying for a coveted premiere at one or more of them, French opera contains a vast variety of musical and dramatic styles as its artists pushed boundaries on stage and in the pit.
Leaning heavily into French lyric opera, a character and drama-focused subgenre that dominated Paris’ stages during the last half of the 1800s, The French Collection includes excerpts from some of the era’s grandest and most beloved operas as well as its rarer gems that deserve a second hearing. These include the famous tenor and baritone duet in Les pêcheurs de perles by Georges Bizet, Charles Gounod’s dynamic, devilish Faust and a Bacchanale from Samson et Dalila by Camille Saint-Saëns, depicting a wild, drunken party. In Massenet’s Werther, audiences can hear the plaintive sounds of a saxophone accompaniment, a rare occurrence in a 19th-century opera.
The French Collection, supported by Friends of Scottish Opera and The Scottish Opera Endowment Trust, will be a night of romance, drama and beautiful music, and rounds off the Opera in Concert series for the 2023/24 Season, which also included much-praised performances of Richard Strauss’ Daphne.
Stuart Stratford, who curated the programme with SOs Head of Music, Fiona MacSherry, said “These concerts embrace the perfume, powder and poetry of French Grand Opera. Experience the heady aroma of Bizet’s exotic The Pearl Fishers, sumptuous sheen of Gounod’s Faust and be closeted in a steamy domestic drama of Massenet’s Werther. With a fabulous international cast and the virtuosic Orchestra of Scottish Opera, I promise you an outstanding evening to remember.”
To book your tickets, visit http://www.scottishopera.org.uk/shows/the-french-collection/
Performance Dates are:
Caird Hall, Dundee
1st March 2024, 7.30pm
Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
3rd March 2024, 3pm
Irene Brown
Radio Summerhall Arts 