Falstaff is a false dawn for our home-grown talent
KENNETH WALTON [The Scotsman Mon 24 Jan 2005]
ON CLASSICAL MUSIC
WHILE Scotland’s national opera company is in meltdown, how ironic is it that the opera school of our national music conservatoire is flying high? The two institutions may only be sited yards across the road from one another in Glasgow’s Cowcaddens district, but the fortunes of Scottish Opera and the Alexander Gibson Opera School at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD) could hardly be more diametrically opposed.
The problem with Scottish Opera, as we know, and as the company’s excellent new production of Tippett’s The Knot Garden readily proves, is not artistic. Without going over old ground, the cultural mandarins at the Scottish Executive simply don’t have the stomach for high art, the expertise that goes into making opera, or indeed the kudos a successful national company brings.
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