Over the past few years, the company has hired out staging to the Festival to anti-rake the King's Theatre and this year was to be no exception. But then it was asked to supply a visiting company, Canadian Opera, with stock staging units for the production of Oedipus Rex at the Playhouse Theatre. And Scottish Opera itself needed staging for its own large-scale production of Siegfried . "Next year," explained production manager Steve Green, "Scottish Opera will need around 70 units for our own performances at the festival and I anticipate that we'll continue to supply the festival with staging for the Kings' Theatre. With this in mind I decided that it would be sensible to significantly increase our own staging stock."
When Green found that his existing staging was no longer readily available, he approached staging specialist Maltbury. Having seen its stand at this year's ABTT show and its demountable staging systems in use at the Royal Opera House, Green wanted to see if it could provide him with a solution. "It was essential that the new decks were 100% compatible with Scottish Opera's existing system. So we took one of its original stage units as a template," said Philip Sparkes, Maltbury's managing director," and simply produced 50 new units of the staging, which were collected in late July and taken straight up to Edinburgh for a debut performance." The new units will play a significant role in next year's Edinburgh Festival performance of Wagner's Ring Cycle.
(Ruth Rossington)
