Alexandra Cravero: savour French sensuality and Spanish elegance
A new season of opera kicks off in East Lothian, writes DAISY URE-BINEZES
Scottish Opera’s 2025/26 season opens at Lammermuir Festival in East Lothian in September with a performance of two caustic comedies of infidelity: Maurice Ravel’s L’heure espagnole, marking 150 years since the composer’s birth, and William Walton’s The Bear.
The evening of musical mischief takes place at St Mary’s Parish Church in Haddington and is conducted by French opera expert Alexandra Cravero (Thérèse 2022.) Jacopo Spirei, who worked extensively with renowned opera director Sir Graham Vick, directs this new concert staging, reimagining these operas as short, comic television episodes.
Designs are by Kenneth MacLeod, who is also working with the company this Season on Opera Highlights.
This concert continues Scottish Opera’s long-running partnership with Lammermuir Festival, established in 2010, and demonstrates its commitment to exploring and championing lesser-known pieces by great composers.
The Festival has built a reputation for a distinctive and carefully curated programme of rare gems and fresh takes on popular works which attracts some of the world’s finest musicians to East Lothian each September.
It has had a long association with BBC Radio 3 and the partnership continues in 2025 with the broadcast of three concerts.
There are further opportunities to see Ravel’s and Walton’s mini masterpieces at Theatre Royal Glasgow in October and Festival Theatre Edinburgh in November.
These performances, supported by The Scottish Opera Endowment Trust, feature former Emerging and Associate Artist and Education Artist-in-Residence Lea Shaw; Chloe Harris and Edward Jowle, returning as 2025/26 Emerging Artists; Company favourite Jamie MacDougall; and 2025/26 Emerging Artists Daniel Barrett and Luvo Maranti. They are accompanied by The Orchestra of Scottish Opera.
Ravel’s Spanish-influenced L’heure espagnole sees a turn from melodramatic to farcical. A clockmaker’s serially unfaithful wife must come up with increasingly creative ways to hide her lovers over 21 fast-paced scenes.
The Bear, a witty one-act opera by English composer William Walton based on a Chekhov play, finds a widow confronting her late husband’s legacy — and serial adultery — when a creditor comes knocking.
While the two composers’ sound worlds are unique, they both examine the workings of imperfect human hearts with wry empathy.
Spirei said: “I wanted to explore how two women, one trapped in time, the other in mourning, fight to reclaim control of their own narratives. L’heure espagnole and The Bear may be comedies, but beneath the farce lies a sharp, emotional truth about independence, desire, and transformation.
‘Over the last eight years, our partnership with Scottish Opera has brought festival goers a fantastic variety of works’
“By reframing L’heure espagnole and The Bear as if they were episodes in your Netflix queue, we hold up a screen to modern life, where emotions are edited, stories are bingeable, and even grief gets a promo. But what happens when women stop playing the roles they’ve been given?”
Cravero said: ‘L’heure espagnole and The Bear are both about women in love and highlight the differences between Ravel’s French style and the British style of Walton.
“The French style invites us to savour the sensuality of orchestral colour, enhanced with a touch of Spanish elegance. In contrast, the British style surprises with its rhythmic intensity. Though composed 60 years apart, these two works humorously explore the complexities of love, across centuries and civilisations.”
James Waters, co-director of Lammermuir Festival said: ‘Over the last eight years, our partnership with Scottish Opera has brought festival goers a fantastic variety of works and is always a much talked about highlight of the festival.
“This year, as the centrepiece of our tribute to Ravel in his 150th anniversary year, Scottish Opera’s concert staging of his one-act opera L’heure espagnole is certain to be a huge hit. In addition, this double bill promises more with Walton’s one-act chamber opera, The Bear. It’s a great programme, a night of operatic comedy and ravishing music and we look forward to being entertained and wowed once again.”
Opera series continues
In December, Scottish Opera’s concert series continues at Usher Hall, Edinburgh with Tchaikovsky’s Heroines & Heroes. This features selections from Eugene Onegin, Iolanta, and The Maid of Orleans conducted by Scottish Opera Music Director Stuart Stratford.
With a cast including Lauren Fagan (Ainadamar 2022), Josef Jeongmeen Ahn (Don Pasquale 2024), and Natalia Kutateladze and Robert Lewis in their Company debuts, this concert features extended excerpts from three of the iconic Russian composer’s best works, which all centre complex and richly drawn women.
Eugene Onegin is a deeply moving tale of unrequited love and high society life; The Maid of Orleans is a romantic retelling of the story of Joan of Arc; and Iolanta, the last opera Tchaikovsky composed, is a dreamlike fairy tale of a blind princess discovering the world outside her isolated garden home. Allowing audiences to discover his music — which blended French and German influences with Russian traditions — beyond The Nutcracker, this is the perfect winter night out.
L’heure espagnole & The Bear and Tchaikovsky’s Heroines & Heroes are supported by The Scottish Opera Endowment Trust and Friends of Scottish Opera.
Lammermuir Festival
St Mary’s Church, Haddington
4 September 7.30pm
Theatre Royal Glasgow
18 & 22 October 7.15pm
Festival Theatre Edinburgh
15 November 7.15pm
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