Italian Circle

The relationship between Italian opera and Scotland stretches back several centuries, to the 1720s, and has always been a genuine cultural exchange. Italy brought its musicians, singers, composers and distinctive operatic traditions to Scotland. In return, Scotland gave Italian composers its history, literature, landscapes and stories filled with the passion, romance, conflict and tragedy from which great opera is made. 

Italian musicians were already helping to shape Scotland’s musical life during the eighteenth century. The composer, teacher and impresario Domenico Corri came to Edinburgh in the 1770s, followed by his brother Natale. The Corri family became highly influential in Scotland as performers, singing teachers, music publishers and concert promoters. Through their work, Scottish audiences were introduced to some of the finest Italian music and performers of the period. 

In Glasgow, Italian opera has a history stretching back more than two centuries. In 1810, the celebrated Italian soprano Angelica Catalani appeared at the city’s Theatre Royal. This was not the Theatre Royal we know today, but a magnificent 1,500-seat theatre on Queen Street designed by David Hamilton, close to the present-day Gallery of Modern Art. Opened in 1805 and described as being unequalled outside London, it welcomed one of Europe’s greatest operatic stars to the heart of Glasgow.  

The connection continued to grow. In 1827, the celebrated Italian baritone Giuseppe de Begnis brought a company of Italian singers to Edinburgh. Their repertoire included works by Rossini such as The Barber of Seville, The Turk in Italy and The Thieving Magpie. These performances helped establish an appetite for Italian opera in Scotland, which has continued for generations since. 

This is not simply a story of Italian opera coming to Scotland. Scotland travelled to Italy too, not necessarily through its people, but through its imagination. 

Few figures demonstrate this more powerfully than Sir Walter Scott. His poems and novels captured the imagination of composers across Europe, particularly in Italy. Sir Walter’s influence on opera was extraordinary. Scholars have traced around 90 operas inspired directly or indirectly by his poems and novels, more than 40 of them Italian. His stories inspired Rossini’s La donna del lago, Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and Elisabetta al castello di Kenilworth, as well as operas by Bellini, Pacini and many others. Ivanhoe and Kenilworth alone each inspired around 11 operatic treatments. Scotland did not simply welcome Italian opera; through Sir Walter, Scotland helped to shape it. 

To nineteenth-century Italian composers and audiences, Scotland offered a wonderfully operatic world: mist-covered landscapes, ancient castles, divided families, political rivalry, forbidden love and tragic heroines. In many ways, the emotional drama of Scotland found its natural musical voice in Italian opera.