Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805) ranks as one of the greatest figures in European drama and literature. That Verdi based four of his operas on Schiller's plays is not surprising (I masnadieri, Giovanna d'Arco, Luisa Miller, Don Carlos). Both men were deeply preoccupied with the battle for political freedon, projecting the moral victory of the doomed individual over the power of the immutable State as potent historical drama. Schiller's nobility of theatrical concept perfectly suited the energy and majesty of Verdi's scores. Yet in the English-speaking world Schiller's works are comparatively little known to theatregoers. The dedication of the renowned Glasgow-based Citizens' Company and the inspired decision to present the plays alongside Verdi's operas at the Edinburgh International Festival have gone a long way to remedy this neglect. The fifth play included in this edition was the source fro the opera by Donizetti (Maria Stuarda). Also translated for the Citizens' Company by Robert David MacDonald, Schiller's 'Mary Stuart' is acknowldged masterpiece.

These two tragedies, written at the peak of Schiller's career as a dramatist, contain his most telling, and touching, portrayals of women. His heroines are propelled, by birth or a sense of divine mission, into exalted political positions, where their qualities as human beings, and particularly as women, are put to the severest tests, from which they emerge triumphant, but doomed. Schiller's breadth of sentiment, combined with his consummate stagecraft, and Shakespearean mastery of verse and nobility of language, ensure his position as Germany's greatest dramatist, and these translations, prepared for, and performed by Glasgow's famous Citizens Company, should go far to ensure his long overdue acceptance in Britain as a master of the European Theatre.