Harmony as singers get together

Scottish Opera is combining its talent with Russian performers

The curtain has been raised on a big collaboration between Scottish and Russian singers and musicians, who will perform Massenet's opera Cendrillon.

It will involve Scottish Opera, the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and the Rimsky Korsakov State Conservatory of St Petersburg.

The RSAMD in Glasgow has had links with St Petersburg for almost a decade.

The ambitious production will be staged in January.

Performances will take place in Glasgow, Edinburgh and St Petersburg.

Special ballet

Plans for a joint production between students in Scotland and Russia have been several years in the making.

Scottish Opera's orchestra will accompany the opera and its staff will train the students.

Trainees who are members of Scottish Ballet's Senior Associate Programme will perform in a specially choreographed section of the show.

A series of workshops and master classes are also being organised around the production.

Culture Minister Patricia Ferguson said she hoped it would be the first of many cultural collaborations between Scotland and Russia.