programme. The city did not have, and still doesn't have, ideal facilities for creating original staged opera productions, so guest companies were invited to the festival. In the early years, Glyndebourne fulfilled this role, bringing two productions a year between 1947 and 1951. Hamburg took over in 1952, with no less than six productions. Glyndebourne returned from 1953 to 1955, now with three operas each year, with Hamburg coming again in 1956 with four productions. During the second decade (1957–1966), Edinburgh received a series of different opera companies, starting with La Scala (Piccola Scala), and continuing with the Stuttgart State Opera, Royal Opera Stockholm, Glyndebourne Opera, Covent Garden Opera, Belgrade Opera, the English Opera Group, Teatro San Carlo, Naples, Budapest Opera and Ballet, National Theatre, Prague, the Holland Festival and the Bavarian State Opera, with an average of four or five productions each year. Also from 1965, an Edinburgh Festival Opera began to offer locally created shows. During the third decade (1967–1976), Edinburgh Festival Opera were prominent performers, together with the Glasgow-based Scottish Opera. Meanwhile, the tradition of inviting guest companies continued with the German companies Deutsche Oper Berlin, Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Hamburg State Opera, and Frankfurt Municipal Opera, the Italian companies Teatro Comunale, Florence and Teatro Massimo, Palermo, as well as National Theatre, Prague, Hungarian State Opera, and Royal Opera, Stockholm and the English Opera Group. Major artists came to Edinburgh during the first thirty years, such as the conductors Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Thomas Beecham, Fritz Busch, Christoph von Dohnányi, Ferenc Fricsay, Alexander Gibson, Carlo Maria Giulini, Vittorio Gui, Rafael Kubelik, Georg Solti, Alberto Erede, János Ferencsik, John Pritchard, and Carlos Kleiber, and the directors Carl Ebert, Peter Ebert, Götz Friedrich, Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, Günther Rennert, Giorgio Strehler, Luchino Visconti, Wieland Wagner and Franco Zeffirelli. Star singers appearing in staged operas included Victoria de los Angeles, Teresa Berganza, Maria Callas, Lisa della Casa, Ileana Cotrubaș, Sena Jurinac, Birgit Nilsson, Magda Olivero, Renata Scotto, Anja Silja, Elisabeth Söderström, Joan Sutherland, Galina Vishnevskaya, and Ljuba Welitsch, Luigi Alva, Sesto Bruscantini, Boris Christoff, Fernando Corena, Geraint Evans, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Nicolai Gedda, Tito Gobbi, Alfredo Kraus, George London, Luciano Pavarotti, Peter Pears, Hermann Prey, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Wolfgang Windgassen, and Fritz Wunderlich. Ballet Ballet was inaugurated at the festival with performances of The Sleeping Beauty with Margot Fonteyn, Robert Helpmann and the Sadler's Wells Ballet Company at the Empire Theatre. They returned