{"id":684908,"date":"2026-01-09T17:12:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T17:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/684908\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T17:12:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T17:12:10","slug":"a-tribute-edinburgh-music-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/684908\/","title":{"rendered":"A tribute \u2014 Edinburgh Music Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Frank Dunlop: A tribute<\/strong><\/p>\n

Frank Dunlop 1927-2006, Director of the Edinburgh International Festival 1984-1991 <\/p>\n

I met Frank Dunlop on the Festival Theatre stairs in August 2017. We\u2019d been at a Scottish Opera performance of Mark Antony Turnage\u2019s \u2018Greek\u2019, part of the Edinburgh International Festival. He was standing on his own, and I said, \u201cYou don\u2019t know me but I was at the first performance in Leith Town Hall.\u201d In 1988, Dunlop as Festival Director put on the British premiere of Turnage\u2019s adaptation of Steven Berkoff\u2019s \u2018Greek\u2019. Sung in English with an excellent cast, including the versatile Fiona Kimm, as the mother and Quentin Hayes as Eddy, the Oedipus character, it was conducted by Sian Edwards.\u00a0 It\u2019s unusual for any modern opera to be revived, but \u2018Greek\u2019 had achieved that fame, and both Frank Dunlop and I acknowledged that in our brief conversation. I hope I also said how much I\u2019d enjoyed so much in his Festivals. But Dunlop, I\u2019m sure, that night had a certain satisfaction in seeing himself acknowledged as someone who knew a thing or two about music!\u00a0 We chatted pleasantly and he said, \u2018We try to come over every year\u2019. I saw him the following year at Ian McKellen\u2019s 80th birthday show in the Assembly Hall where McKellen acknowledged him from the stage. <\/p>\n

The 1988 \u2018Greek\u2019 achieved notoriety before the first performance.\u00a0 Radio Scotland spoke about the \u2018shocking language\u2019 in the Policemen\u2019s Chorus. Inside Leith Town Hall, the audience sat avidly reading the libretto in the programme. It read: \u201cPolicemen (unison) \u201cFuck, fuck, piss and shit!\u201d The opera was watched attentively and applauded vigorously, as was the 2017 version\u00a0 – but it was bowdlerised!<\/p>\n

Frank Dunlop\u2019s term as Director of the EIF coincided with a time when I was keen to expand my knowledge of drama, and ready to explore opera. He became Festival Director in 1984, a late appointment, after John Drummond\u2019s unexpected resignation. Drummond, often supposed to be an \u2018elitist,\u2019 had wide-ranging interests and had in 1982 introduced the annual Fireworks Concert in Princes Street Gardens, the mainly free event which genuinely took the Festival to all parts of Edinburgh every year until 2019. Funding arguments became too much for him. Dunlop had wanted the job for years and, already a successful theatre director, was willing to take a cut in salary. His first programme had some hints of what to come, including an excellent Berliner Ensemble \u2018Galileo\u2019.<\/p>\n

World Theatre dominated the rest of his years as director, challenging and exciting Edinburgh audiences. And there were no surtitles in the 1980s \u2013 you read the Shakespeare in advance maybe, but otherwise, you had just the programme. The Japanese Toho theatre came in 1985 with \u2018Macbeth\u2019. The unforgettable production began with the cast of exotically dressed warriors processing through the theatre (the Lyceum had an aisle then). At the end were two old women, who took their places seated on the floor at either side of the stage. They sat attentively, perhaps sewing, through conflict and drifting cherry blossom, and when Macduff\u2019s wife and children were massacred, tears ran down their cheeks. Toho were back the next year with a breathtaking \u2018Medea\u2019, an outdoor performance in the Old College, which went on in all weathers \u2013 I remember the cast\u2019s white and blood-red costumes in pouring rain that year. Too, came Spanish director and actor\u2019s Nuria Espert\u2019s \u2018Yerma\u2019 for many the first chance to see the work of Federico Garcia Lorca, executed in Spain in 1936. \u2018Yerma\u2019, a play about infertility, was acted on a huge taut trampoline, an outrageous idea which worked. <\/p>\n

In 1987 the Berliner Ensemble returned with \u2018Troilus and Cressida\u2019, Shakespeare\u2019s ambiguous war play. At the production\u2019s centre was the great East German actor, Ekkehard Schall, as Thersites. In rags and covered in boils he sat on the front edge of the King\u2019s Theatre stage, declaiming his vituperative rants against mankind. From further afield came the charming Raun, Raun Theatre from New Guinea, who transformed St Bride\u2019s Centre into a maritime setting for their mythological trilogy written in \u2018Pidgin English\u2019 \u2013 not, as some people had hoped, easily intelligible to a UK audience. The following year the same venue was host to the Tomson Highway\u2019s \u2018The Rez Sisters\u2019, about a group of First Nations Canadian women who hope to win the biggest Bingo prize in the world. Played in the round, it was a great popular success, with cards handed out for a real game of bingo \u2013 with prizes! Its subplot concerned the tragic death of the female lover of the main character. Unbelievably it was panned as being \u201donly fit for the Fringe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0Interesting opera ran alongside this. In 1985 I saw the Opera de Lyons in Chabrier\u2019s \u2018L\u2019Etoile\u2019 at the King\u2019s Theatre, recently upgraded with 100-seat orchestra pit. King Ouf, in a side box, climbed onto the stage singing, \u201cMoi (pointing to himself) je suis le roi\u201d. Foreign opera and I could understand it! The following year Frank Dunlop himself tried the impossible \u2013 to put on a performance of Weber\u2019s \u2018Oberon.\u2019\u00a0 Seiji Osawa conducted the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie in a style which is familiar now \u2013 the orchestra sitting in the centre, the singers moving around without scores, and in this case, dressed in elaborate costumes. Over-the-top but great fun. So too was Dunlop\u2019s series of operas from the Stockholm Folkopera. Using Leith Town Hall, a reduced orchestration and with multiple casts, their first venture was \u2018Aida\u2019. Its notoriety preceded it, as, at its first night,\u00a0 which I attended, two audience members left the theatre as the introductory belly-dance started. The triumphal march began with chorus coming forwards individually to throw buckets of bloodied plastic hands on the stage. Audience giggles subsided as more and more of them piled inexorably higher. 1987\u2019s \u2018Magic Flute\u2019 saw a delightful Papageno\u00a0 apparently converse enthusiastically \u2013 in Swedish – with watching children! <\/p>\n

There was much more: Jazz and Classical Usher Hall collaborations, \u2018The Thrie Estaites\u2019 revived in the Assembly Hall, Eddie McGuire\u2019s composition for Yehudi Menuhin with the pick of Scottish fiddlers, and late-night at the Lyceum, \u2018Scotland the What\u2019! As well as Art exhibitions \u2013 important historical retrospectives and showcases for new artists. Much was made of the funding tensions between the \u201cextreme left\u201d District Council and Dunlop. In fact the astute Council Leader, Paolo Vestri, who sought to bring the arts to the whole city throughout the year, and Dunlop were on the same page. Dunlop, a great fixer \u2013often an admirable quality in public life\u2013 generally sought a way through difficulties.<\/p>\n

1988 saw Frank Dunlop\u2019s greatest triumph, the European Premiere of John Adams\u2019 \u2018Nixon in China\u2019. The Scotsman held a successful fundraising campaign to bring it to Edinburgh, and with an augmented Scottish Chamber Orchestra in the pit, conducted by the composer,\u00a0 Houston Grand Opera, played three nights at the Playhouse. That morning BBC Scotland played an excerpt from the opening chorus, and at 7.30, Airforce One taxied onto the stage and James Maddalena, as Richard M Nixon, and Carolann Page as Pat Nixon came down the steps.<\/p>\n

Controversial, of course. But which Festival Director wouldn\u2019t want to be controversial? Certainly not Frank Dunlop! <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thanks to Eileen Miller\u2019s \u2018The Edinburgh International Festival 1947-1996\u2019 (published 1996) especially for her index of all the performances in the EIF\u2019s first 50 years.<\/p>\n

Thanks also to Angus Calder\u2019s New Statesmen reviews 1985-198, which I\u2019ve recently edited for the Edinburgh Music Review<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Frank Dunlop: A tribute Frank Dunlop 1927-2006, Director of the Edinburgh International Festival 1984-1991 I met Frank Dunlop…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":684909,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,1102,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-684908","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edinburgh","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-edinburgh","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-scotland","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115866261755139256","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684908","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=684908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/684909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}