Love is in the air as Scottish Opera heads for Strathpeffer Pavilion with highlights tour set for indoor performance as Covid restrictions are lifted

AN opera highlights tour is heading for an iconic Ross-shire venue.

On September 14, Scottish Opera’s hugely popular Opera Highlights tour kicks off, journeying the length and breadth of Scotland to nine venues for a total of 11 performances.

It hits Strathpeffer Pavilion on Thursday, September 23.

This will be the first time in 18 months that Scottish Opera has been able to perform inside local venues for a live audience.

The tour is at the heart of the company’s ethos to deliver opera to local communities, making it accessible to all.

With performances indoors, there will be reduced audience numbers to allow communities to once again safely enjoy the live opera experience in their own venues.

Opera Highlights is an opportunity to hear a whole range of music in just one evening. This heartfelt hour-long show is full of fun and bittersweet comedy featuring a playlist of much loved classics, curated by Scottish Opera’s head of music Derek Clark, from Carmen, Don Giovanni and Gounod's Romeo et Juliette, alongside some lesser-known gems.

Soprano Meinir Wyn Roberts and baritone Seán Boylan are joined by Scottish Opera 2021/22 Emerging Artists, mezzo-soprano Lea Shaw and tenor Glen Cunningham, with accompaniment on piano by Musical Director Fiona MacSherry.

Director, Jeanne Pansard-Besson, said: "In this Opera Highlights, everyone says I love you. Fragments of very different operas across time and space show all the different states of being in love and in a relationship, from the extreme highs to the extreme lows. And this is what opera is about: it expresses and reveals all human emotions, all the feelings that we all feel, have felt, and will feel. Hard not to fall in love with opera after this!"

Tickets are on sale now at www.scottishopera.org.uk and for the first time are free for under 18s.

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