Opera at the Edinburgh International Festival: history and repertoire, 1957–1966

Opera continued to be one of the main features of the Edinburgh International Festival in the second decade.

The tradition of inviting one or more guest companies each year to bring productions to the festival continued with La Scala (Piccola Scala), the Stuttgart State Opera, Royal Opera Stockholm, Glyndebourne Opera, Covent Garden Opera, Belgrade Opera, the English Opera Group, Teatro San Carlo, Naples, Budapest Opera and Ballet, National Theatre, Prague, the Holland Festival and the Bavarian State Opera.

Distinguished conductors included the large Italian contingent of Antonino Votto, Nino Sanzogno, Gianandrea Gavazzeni, Vittorio Gui, Carlo Maria Giulini, Alberto Erede and Oliviero De Fabritiis, the Hungarians Georg Solti and János Ferencsik, the British John Pritchard and Benjamin Britten, as well as the German Ferdinand Leitner, the Austrian Carlos Kleiber, and the Croatian Lovro von Matačić.

Major opera directors included Luchino Visconti, Giorgio Strehler, Franco Zeffirelli, Wieland Wagner, Günther Rennert and Carl Ebert.

Star female singers included Maria Callas, Joan Sutherland, Magda Olivero, Renata Scotto, Fiorenza Cossotto, Inge Borkh, Irmgard Seefried, Victoria de los Ángeles, Birgit Nilsson, Anja Silja, Kerstin Meyer, and Elisabeth Söderström, while male singers included Luigi Alva, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Nicolai Gedda, Alfredo Kraus, Fritz Wunderlich, Wolfgang Windgassen, Peter Pears, Fernando Corena, Sesto Bruscantini, Geraint Evans and Boris Christoff.