Opera at the Edinburgh International Festival: history and repertoire, 1967–1976

Opera continued to be one of the most important features of the Edinburgh International Festival in the third decade.

Edinburgh Festival Opera, a company which first presented operas at the festival in 1965, contributed five productions (with two of them performed over two years), while Glasgow-based Scottish Opera performed seven. Meanwhile, the tradition of inviting guest companies continued with the English Opera Group, Hamburg State Opera, Teatro Comunale, Florence (Maggio Musicale Fiorentino), Frankfurt Municipal Opera, National Theatre, Prague, Deutsche Oper Berlin (twice), Deutsche Oper am Rhein (twice), Teatro Massimo, Palermo, Hungarian State Opera, and Royal Opera, Stockholm all appeared at the festival.

Distinguished conductors included Claudio Abbado, Gerd Albrecht, Daniel Barenboim, Richard Bonynge, Christoph von Dohnányi, Alexander Gibson, Charles Mackerras, and Giuseppe Patanè.

Major opera directors included Peter Ebert, Götz Friedrich, Colin Graham, Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, Peter Ustinov, and Wieland Wagner.

Star female singers included Janet Baker, Agnes Baltsa, Teresa Berganza, Ileana Cotrubaș, Leyla Gencer, Anna Moffo, Birgit Nilsson, Regina Resnik, Renata Scotto, Anja Silja, Elisabeth Söderström, Joan Sutherland, Tatiana Troyanos, Julia Varady, Shirley Verrett, and Galina Vishnevskaya, while male singers included Luigi Alva, Nicolai Gedda, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Geraint Evans, Tito Gobbi, Luciano Pavarotti, Peter Pears, Ruggero Raimondi and John Shirley-Quirk.

Opera in concert
Die drei Pintos by Carl Maria von Weber, orchestrated by Gustav Mahler, was performed by the Edinburgh Festival Opera, in concert at the Usher Hall on 25 August 1976.