Edinburgh International Festival was established to champion the civilising power of European high culture in a spirit of postwar healing. But its lustre and mission have now been largely eclipsed by the viral spread of its anarchic bastard offspring, the Fringe. In competition with the latter\u2019s potty-mouthed stand-ups and numberless student hopefuls, the dignified old Festival proper struggles to make much mark on the hordes who descend on the city in August, inflating prices and infuriating the residents.<\/p>\n
\nPerhaps the kids will love it, but if this is the future of ballet, then count me out<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Nicola Benedetti, a splendid woman and a wonderful violinist, is now in her third year directing this beleaguered institution. She hasn\u2019t at her disposal the generous budgets financing comparable festivals in Salzburg and Aix, and she\u2019s been charged with \u2018bringing in younger audiences\u2019 without antagonising the conservative loyalists. Both these challenges make it more difficult for her, and I don\u2019t feel her programming has yet struck gold.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The shortfall is most evident in opera \u2013 expensive and complicated to import, and in any case not a lot that\u2019s any good is available in August. But her immediate predecessor Fergus Linehan landed, among much else, Cecilia Bartoli in Norma and Asmik Grigorian in Barrie Kosky\u2019s production of Eugene Onegin. Certainly nothing of that quality was on offer this (or last) year.<\/p>\n
The one fully staged opera was Gluck\u2019s Orpheus and Eurydice, sung in its Italian version and presented in that grim barn of a theatre, the Edinburgh Playhouse. It received three performances, each lasting 80 minutes. The cast consisted of two soloists and a chorus largely made up of students, complemented by a troupe of Australian acrobats who somersaulted over tables, dangled from ropes and formed towers and pyramids of themselves. I was not convinced that their presence was anything but a distraction, but this was opera \u00e0 la mode \u2013 the cast barefoot in black suits, framed by a white box, its walls latterly smeared with blood-red graffiti. Lazy clich\u00e9, in other words, albeit crisply directed and designed by Yaron Lifschitz.<\/p>\n
The musical execution, fortunately, was a delight. As Orpheus, Iestyn Davies seemed undaunted by the vast proportions of the Playhouse and managed to project his beautiful countertenor with stylish confidence and rich variety of expression. Samantha Clarke doubled impressively as Eurydice and Amor, the chorus was enthusiastic and Laurence Cummings conducted the Scottish Chamber Orchestra with muscular vigour. A full house responded with wild applause, but the acrobats stole the show from the singers, which didn\u2019t seem right.<\/p>\n
If staged opera is at a premium, the Festival has a long and rich tradition of superb concert performances in the dear old Usher Hall: Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in Les Troyens, the young Jonas Kaufmann in Meistersinger, Maria Stuarda conducted by Charles Mackerras, and the recent Ring cycle, are among many such in my personal treasury.<\/p>\n
This year brought Puccini\u2019s larmoyant one-act masterpiece Suor Angelica, an adorable work but one not really suited to concert presentation. Set in a convent and climaxing in a vision of the blessed Virgin Mary, it loses something of its emotional impact when the drama is being conveyed by an assortment of ladies in d\u00e9collet\u00e9 frocks and extravagant coiffures lined up behind music stands. But Antonio Pappano was on hand to conduct the London Symphony Orchestra in a reading of delicate sensitivity and the glamorous Carolina Lopez Moreno sang gorgeously and piteously as the eponymous nun with a guilty secret, so there was much to jerk the tear ducts. Among the smaller roles, the veteran Elena Zilio gave an exemplary display of italianit\u00e0, and Sarah Dufresne sang prettily as perky Suor Genovieffa. (You can hear a repeat performance from the Proms, with the same cast, on BBC Sounds.)<\/p>\n
Dance has recently been the weakest feature of the Festival menu (except when Brian MacMaster bagged Mark Morris\u2019s company in the 1990s) and I feel that Scottish Ballet\u2019s Mary, Queen of Scots smacks of desperation. Heavy on plot if not on historical fact (Bothwell is entirely redacted), it opens with the dying Elizabeth (Charlotta Ofverholm), presented as a crazy old crone dancing through a snowstorm in a bra and big knickers as she revisits a haunted past. In yet another white box (come on, Soutra Gilmour, you can design better than this), a mash-up of the familiar story unrolls to the accompaniment of a crude electronic score I can only describe as my idea of aural hell.<\/p>\n
\nWhen all else fails, there is always the balm of the daily 11 a.m. chamber concert at the Queen\u2019s Hall<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Mary, with a gar\u00e7on haircut, makes oddly little impression in Roseanna Leney\u2019s pallid performance, but then she hasn\u2019t been given anything very characterful to dance \u2013 Sophie Laplane\u2019s choreography is brutally ugly and sexualised, all kicks and thrusts, much more convincing on the men than the women. Evan Loudon is rather good as devious Darnley, as is Javier Andreu as his boyfriend Rizzio \u2013 even if I kept muddling him up with Thomas Edwards\u2019s Walsingham. And who on earth was this bizarre gender-fluid popinjay, dressed to evoke a Nicholas Hilliard miniature, walking on tippity toes with a stuffed dog on a leash? On consulting the programme, he-she turns out to be the young Elizabeth, danced with aplomb by Harvey Littlefield.<\/p>\n
It is all incoherently pretentious and over-emphatic, crucially lacking in any sense of what dance can and cannot communicate. Perhaps the kids will love it, but if this is the future of ballet, then count me out.<\/p>\n
Still when all else in the Festival fails, there is always the balm of the daily 11 a.m. chamber concert at the Queen\u2019s Hall to bring restorative joy. I heard the Old Etonian and BBC Young Musician of the Year Ryan Wang playing Chopin: unadulterated great music, delivered with wonderful elegance and panache, provided two hours of serious bliss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Edinburgh International Festival was established to champion the civilising power of European high culture in a spirit of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[127810,748,16925,20905,1102,31356,69435,84115,12458,4884,127811,127812,16928,127813,63183,712,127814,16,15,10005],"class_list":{"0":"post-364688","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edinburgh","8":"tag-acrobats","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-classical-music","11":"tag-dance","12":"tag-edinburgh","13":"tag-edinburgh-festival-fringe","14":"tag-edinburgh-international-festival","15":"tag-edinburgh-playhouse","16":"tag-festival-theatre","17":"tag-great-britain","18":"tag-iestyn-davies","19":"tag-nicola-benedetti","20":"tag-opera","21":"tag-pappano","22":"tag-queens-hall","23":"tag-scotland","24":"tag-scottish-ballet","25":"tag-uk","26":"tag-united-kingdom","27":"tag-usher-hall"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115072559165152507","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}