to him. He left the RCM without taking a degree. Shortly afterwards he had a success with his concert overture The Land of the Mountain and the Flood, premiered at the Crystal Palace in 1887. The Musical Times commented, "The work – which is spirited and bold in conception and brilliantly scored – was finely played and enthusiastically received". Bernard Shaw, in his capacity as a music critic, called it "a charming Scotch overture that carries you over the hills and far away". Some of the composer's songs and other works were premiered at the house of the painter John Pettie, whose daughter Alison married MacCunn in June 1889. They had one child, Fergus, who became a soldier. From 1888 to 1894 MacCunn was professor of harmony at the RCM's older rival the Royal Academy of Music and also took private pupils. Opera and conducting In 1889 the opera manager Carl Rosa commissioned MacCunn to write a work for the Carl Rosa Opera Company, and in 1891 MacCunn contracted to write an opera for Richard D'Oyly Carte's new Royal English Opera House. The work for Carte was to be based on H. Rider Haggard's 1888 novel Cleopatra, but the opera was never finished, and MacCunn's failure to provide a work to continue Carte's seasons (together with similar failures by two other British composers) led to the closure of the opera house and the abandonment of Carte's English opera enterprise. The commission for Rosa was eventually completed, although not produced until after the impresario's death."Jeanie Deans", The Era, 24 November 1894, p. 11 This opera was Jeanie Deans, based on Walter Scott's The Heart of Midlothian and first produced in 1894 in Edinburgh, conducted by the composer. It was a considerable success, despite what The Times called "the dubious advantage" of a libretto by Joseph Bennett. In 1896 Jeanie Deans received a London performance, and MacCunn composed another opera, Diarmid and Ghrine. The following year Manns performed MacCunn's new orchestral suite, Highland Memories, and the Carl Rosa company presented Diarmid and Ghrine at the Royal Opera House. From the premiere of Jeanie Deans onward, MacCunn became associated with British opera companies as a conductor. For two seasons from 1898 he was musical director of the Carl Rosa company, conducting, among much else, the first English-language productions of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and Siegfried. In 1900 he signed a two-year contract as