A carousel rolls into a decaying town. It promises to cure every ailment — pain, grief, the ache of just getting by. The town says yes. Then the price goes up.

Scottish Opera and Opera Ventures Productions reunites the creative forces behind Breaking the Waves — Grammy-nominated composer Missy Mazzoli and Pulitzer-winning writer Royce Vavrek, and Tony award-winning director Tom Morris (War Horse) — as they set Pulitzer-winning novelist Karen Russell's loose reimagining of Franz Kafka, updating the story for the opioid crisis that has gripped too many communities. 

For Mazzoli and Vavrek, these issues are not just ripped from headlines; both have lost family to addiction. They now build a fable out of that grief — populated by singing sheep, talking dogs, and a showman selling salvation by the ride.

Think Sweeney Todd meets Trainspotting; Euphoria meets Into the Woods. A morality opera for a troubled world, ripping the mask off the lies and deception that seem to claw at us from all sides. When the need for profit excuses every action, who will protect our human need for community and care?

The Galloping Cure is darkly funny, wildly imagined, and impossible to look away from: club beats collide with folk Americana, comedy with bloodlust, rave with tragedy.

A new co-production with Opera Ventures Productions, Scottish Opera, NorrlandsOperan AB, Canadian Opera Company, San Francisco Opera and State Opera of South Australia, co-presented with Edinburgh International Festival
Co-commissioned by Opera Ventures Productions, Scottish Opera, NorrlandsOperan AB, Edinburgh International Festival and San Francisco Opera
Kindly supported by Scottish Opera’s New Commissions Circle; The Scottish Opera Endowment Trust; and a syndicate of donors including Howard and Sarah D Solomon Foundation, Susie Thompson, Eli and Ashley Wald, Malcolm Herring, Sally Groves in memory of Dennis Marks, and Ann Orton

Part of Scottish Opera's 2026/27 Season
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