Following the Scottish Government’s update to the route map out of the Covid-19 crisis, Scottish Opera is thrilled to announce a programme of seated outdoor performances, including a special production of Puccini’s La bohème and Pop-up Opera performances of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Gondoliers and a new work, The Song of the Clyde, by Scottish composer Karen MacIver.

These performances, the first with live audiences in over six months, are in addition to a live online stream on Friday 18 September of Janáček’s The Diary of One Who Disappeared, just announced as part of the Lammermuir Festival.

With a run of performances for both La bohème and the three Pop-up Operas, the Company brings live opera back to the stage with appropriate physical distancing observed at all times by performers, backstage staff and audiences.

Puccini’s tragic love story La bohème is given a powerful reinterpretation inspired by the current pandemic by Director Roxana Haines. Using an abridged score by Jonathan Dove, which involves seven soloists and a reduced orchestra, Scottish Opera’s staging places a small audience right in the middle of the action, in the car park (under a canopy) of the Company’s Edington Street Production Studios in Glasgow, for a run of five early evening performances from Saturday 5 September. Tickets go on sale from Thursday 27 August, 10am.

The popular Pop-up Opera roadshow kicks off on Friday 4 September at The Beacon Arts Centre in Greenock. Other confirmed locations include Platform Theatre in Easterhouse, The Riverside Museum in Glasgow, Eden Court in Inverness, Heart of Hawick in the Borders, Edinburgh Zoo and the Museum of Flight in East Lothian. Further dates and locations will be announced as details are confirmed. Tickets are FREE and will be available to reserve from Thursday 27 August.

Alex Reedijk, General Director, said:

After over five months of lockdown, I am delighted that Scottish Opera can now begin to bring live singing and playing back to our audiences in Scotland. Many of them have shared with us what an exceptionally difficult time this has been, so we are delighted that we can begin to offer live performances again, even if only in reduced scale and appropriately socially distanced at present. As we know, the shared, live experience of entertainment brings so much pleasure to audience and performers, and, of course, it is great for everyone at Scottish Opera to be making work again.

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