Scottish Opera Highlights tour springs up at Fife venue

Performers from Scottish Opera's Opera Highlights Autumn tour, with the Spring tour getting underway in February. (All photos: Fraser Band)

And one of its stops will be at Crail Community Hall on Thursday, February 16.

Marking its 60th anniversary, Opera Highlights forms part of the Company’s commitment to bring opera to over 60 communities across all points of the compass around Scotland this season.

Director Emma Jenkins and designer Janis Hart bring verve and creativity to this year’s original piano-accompanied production.

The overriding theme of Scottish Opera's Opera Highlights is love.

The cast includes Scottish Opera 2022/23 Emerging Artist Colin Murray alongside Annie Reilly, who both recently performed in the five-star production of Ainadamar; as well as Andrew Henley (Thérèse 2022) and Holly Teague, led from the piano by James Longford.

The production also features the world premiere of a new piece by Scottish Opera 2021/22 Emerging Artist and composer Toby Hession, with libretto by Emma Jenkins. Enitled ‘Told By An Idiot’ it is a modern and humorous re-working of Macbeth.

Scottish Opera’s Head of Music Derek Clark, introduces audiences to a treasure trove of work with a playlist from much-loved opera’s including Mozart’s The Magic Flute and The Marriage of Figaro, Beethoven’s Fidelio, Verdi’s Macbeth and Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers alongside music by Rimsky-Korsakov, Gounod and a composition written by Mendelssohn when he was just 12 years old.

Director Emma Jenkins said: ‘Four young singers in search of an identity find themselves, like Alice in Wonderland or the children of Narnia, propelled along an operatic rollercoaster of love and loss, devotion and desire, jealousy and jubilation.

“The overriding theme of the Opera Highlights is love. Our singers put on and take off various roles as if possessed by the force of love in a fast-paced performance that celebrates not only the voice, but also ensemble work and physical theatre. All this against the backdrop of Janis Hart's stunning design which combines a retro 70s feel with an anarchic theatrical space in which one feels that anything could happen!’

Opera Highlights tickets are available at www.scottishopera.org.uk/shows/opera-highlights-202223.