...intense direction by Olivia Fuchs...Triumphant and bloody new production of James MacMillan’s first opera

In Scottish Opera’s new production of James MacMillan’s 20-year-old opera‚ directed by Olivia Fuchs‚ there is no flinching from the horror of the events as they unfold.

Olivia Fuchs’s intelligent staging‚ strikingly well designed by Kai Fischer‚ substitutes a vaguely mid 20th-century Fascistic setting for the medieval original. Although there is no attempt to sugar the pill or minimise the melodrama‚ it keeps things the right side of camp ghoulishness.

Shocking and unmissable...Director Olivia Fuchs has moved the action to a highly repressed regime in the 1970s‚ possibly Pinochet’s Chile‚ so Kai Fischer’s sets are crumbling concrete lattice‚ dust and votive candles illuminating pictures‚ presumably of the disappeared...With its unrelenting assault on the senses Inés de Castro is not a comfortable evening. It is not supposed to be. Scottish Opera‚ with its welcome bold new foyer development‚ is firing on all cylinders in this powerful and unmissable production‚ the big disappointment being that there are only a total of four performances.