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Scotch Corner

Sir Donald Tovey’s The Bride of Dionysus – dismal failure, or a lost Scottish gem?

This Scotch Corner article considers a curious opera which was born and died in Scotland, which should have been much better than it was, and which links together two unusual men – Sir Donald Tovey, Reid Professor of Music at the University of Edinburgh for twenty-six years, and his friend Robert Calverley Trevelyan, a ‘rumpled,...

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Scotch Corner

James Macpherson, Massenet, Werther and Ossian – a Scotch Myth

This Scottish operatic link is a peculiar one, and stems from Goethe’s enthusiasm for a piece of literary deception by a wily Scotsman. It links Massenet’s opera Werther with a completely non-existent but extremely influential ancient Scottish bard – Ossian. The Ossian fraud fooled many people for many years (including Napoleon, who was fascinated by...

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Scotch Corner

Berwick upon Tweed – operatic gateway to Italy

Handel’s great opera Ariodante, which is based on an incident in Lodovico Ariosto’s rambling epic of chivalry and adventure Orlando Furioso, is the only one of Handel’s thirty-odd operas which is set anywhere in the British Isles – it is in fact set in Scotland – so it is an ideal candidate for Scotch Corner,...

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