Scottish Opera and visual artist Fraser Taylor are collaborating on a new series of exhibitions inspired by the Company’s productions, staged in Theatre Royal Glasgow’s public foyers.
The inaugural exhibition, entitled Back Drops, is a response to Scottish Opera’s new production of Turandot which opens on Thursday 22 October, and showcases a series of six new textile works by Glasgow-based artist and researcher Mhari McMullan.
Each of the works is a complex fabric collage incorporating techniques including sublimation print (printing an image directly into fabric using heat), patchwork, smocking, and structural knotting, drawing on the opera’s riddles and ritual and the decadent, decaying theatrical world created by director Sir David McVicar.
Mhari’s making process deliberately subverts the viewer’s perception; printed folds, loose threads, and physical fragments merge to generate moments of trompe l’œil, confusing what is printed, constructed, or draped. The physical rendering of the textiles becomes a riddle in itself – a dream factory of pattern, process, and illusion that echoes the psychological maze of Puccini’s narrative.
The exhibition builds directly upon the success of the free public exhibition Digital x Hokusai in Scotland: The Life of Hokusai, staged in the foyers of Theatre Royal Glasgow and Festival Theatre Edinburgh in February of this year during performances of the Company’s production of Dai Fujikura’s The Great Wave. Following its popularity, Scottish Opera has invited Fraser Taylor to curate exhibitions by local artists once or twice a year during the Company’s performances at the Theatre Royal.
Fraser Taylor said: ‘Theatre and textiles share a language of fabric, costume, drapery and illusion. Mhari McMullan’s seductively manipulated textiles play with exactly that, asking us to question what we are looking at, just as Turandot’s riddles do. I am thrilled that Mhari is the first artist to exhibit as part of this exciting partnership with Scottish Opera, and that audiences will encounter her work as part of their night at the opera. It creates a genuinely contemporary connection to Puccini’s final work.’
Mhari McMullan said: ‘It has been a real pleasure developing Back Drops for Scottish Opera with Fraser Taylor. Fraser brings such generous creative energy to a collaboration, and having access to Scottish Opera’s incredible production facilities has allowed us to think about the presentation and scale of the work in a completely different way. I have really enjoyed playing with the theatricality of the textiles: what is printed, what is constructed and what might not be quite what it first appears.’
Alex Reedijk, Scottish Opera General Director, said: ‘The Theatre Royal is Scottish Opera’s home in Glasgow, and its foyers welcome a huge number of people each year. We want those spaces to be as alive with creativity as the stage itself. Through this new programme, we are opening the foyers to visual artists, putting their work in front of opera audiences and the public, and sharing the skills of our production workshops to help them show it at its best. We are thrilled to work closely with Fraser Taylor to contribute to the visual arts ecology of Glasgow by hosting what we plan to be an ambitious series of exhibitions and delighted to open with Mhari McMullan’s extraordinary Back Drops.’
Back Drops is open to Turandot ticket holders from 5.30pm before evening performances, and 1pm before the matinee performance, as well as free to members of the public on 24, 29 and 30 October, from 2pm – 5pm.
Visitors to this exhibition can also experience The Butterfly, a tapestry designed by celebrated Scottish artist Alison Watt. Commissioned by Scottish Opera and woven by Master Weaver Naomi Robertson and her team at Edinburgh’s Dovecot Studios, the tapestry was installed in 2015. It is inspired by Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, which Scottish Opera is staging in February as part of its 2026/27 Season.
Turandot is a co-production with Irish National Opera, conducted by Scottish Opera Music Director Stuart Stratford, and confronts the darkness, power dynamics, and trauma inherent in Puccini’s final masterpiece head-on.
It features otherworldly, surreal set designs by Charles Edwards, drawing inspiration from David Lean’s film adaptation of Dickens’ Great Expectations, gothic cinematic works like The Shining, and the fading grandeur of abandoned vaudeville halls. Costume designs are by Doey Lüthi, lighting by Ben Pickersgill, sound by Andy Pink, and choreography by Gareth Mole. The stellar cast features Danish soprano Trine Møller in her company debut as Princess Turandot, alongside Victor Starsky as Calaf and Hye-Youn Lee as Liù.