Edinburgh Festival
Fingers crossed
Rupert Christiansen
Inevitably, last year's Edinburgh Festival was a dodgy, patchy, skin-of-its-teeth busi- ness. The programme assembled by Brian McMaster in his first year as Director was vitiated by the pitiful exhibitions, the well- intentioned but misguided tribute to C P Taylor, whose plays proved to be corpses rotted beyond revival, and by the dearth of opera (in anticipation of the jamboree which the opening of the new house in 1994 will provoke). Ticket sales were hit hard by the recession and by a certain lack of whoopee excitement and five-star attrac- tions: that the ultimate financial results eliminated a large deficit and even allowed a decent surplus is largely due to a one-off whack of funding from the good old Scot- tish Arts Council. Under my stringent creative accounting, the aesthetic balance- sheet just about teetered into the black, tipped by the British debut of the Mark Morris Dance Group with their unforget- table staging of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. But elsewhere it was a case of must do bet- ter next time.
At least on the deceptive medium of paper, it looks as though McMaster has
managed it. This year's plans propose a lot more razzle-dazzle, as well as a better bal- anced spread of goodies. At one level, there is what the catalogue suggests will be a superb exhibition, The Waking Dream, a retrospective of the first century of photog- raphy, from the great Gilman Collection of the Metropolitan Museum, New York (City Art Centre, until 2 October); at another, there is an imaginative project of recreating an evening of Scottish vaudeville circa 1955, complete with Jimmy Logan and a troupe of Tiller Girls (King's The- atre, 20-23 August): the blurb has the nerve to claim that this will be 'a serious look at a great art form' but it's the whiff of tinsel camp that titillates me more.
The operatic offerings are vastly more interesting than last year (but they could hardly not be). Two Verdi rarities, with strong casts, are scheduled: a concert per- formance of his first surviving work, Oberto, conducted by Sir Edward Downes (Usher Hall, 26 August) and a new produc- tion of the Byron-based I Due Foscari from Scottish Opera (King's Theatre, 16 and 18 August). There is also the delicious prospect of an all-stars concert perfor- mance of Cosi fan tutte, with Felicity Lott and Marie McLaughlin as the sisters (Usher Hall, 16 August). The last week will be graced with a revival of Peter Stein's serious but never solemn WNO production of Verdi's Falstaff — although I wonder whether its nuances will be registered in the ghastly cavern of the Playhouse The- atre (2 and 4 September).
The concert menu is still short on Salzburgesque glamour and big names, but that may not be a bad thing. Highlights should be the visits of the venerable Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra (Usher ' Fortunately George has never been able to tell the difference between a yawn and an orgasm.' . Hall, 1 and 2 September) and the much- admired Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra under Mariss Jansons (Usher Hall, 22 August). At the more intimate Queen's Hall, recitalists include Anne Evans singing Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder' (16 August), Andras Schiff (18 August), Sylvia McNair (21 August) and the madly fash- ionable partnership of Anne Sofie von Otter and Melvyn Tan (4 September).
But the most enterprising and exciting aspect of the Festival's music this year is the prominence given to an immensely promising (and already accomplished) young Scottish composer, James MacMil- lan. Sample his fervent, Catholic imagina- tion at the spiffing new Traverse Theatre, where two of his chamber operas, Anna and Tourist Variations, will be presented (17-18 and 20-21 August). His thrillingly theatrical Confession of Isobel Gowdie, a wow at its 1990 Proms premiere, opens the Philharmonia's concert on 28 August (Usher Hall) and the Chamber Group of Scotland will play some smaller-scale works at the Queen's Hall (17 August).
Elsewhere I would single out the return of the Mark Morris Dance Group — pure shining joy in motion, irresistible even to those who don't care for barefoot ballet. Morris, in my view, is a choreographic genius on the level of Ashton and Balan- chine. His first programme (Playhouse Theatre, 17-19 August) features his effort- lessly musical interpretation of Brahms's Liebeslieder Waltzes, vocally accompanied by the quartet of Amanda Roocroft, Felicity Palmer, John Mark Ainsley and Thomas Allen. Balm, bliss, cloud nine: miss this and you'll kick yourself ever after.
I don't quite know what to make of the drama programme. Productions from those greying transatlantic enfants terribles Peter Sellars and Robert Wilson are unlikely to be to the taste of sane Spectator readers. More substantial are the German imports: Peter Stein's epic version of Julius Caesar from Salzburg, with a cast of thousands (Royal Highland Exhibition Hall, 1-2 September); a staging of Kleist's comedy The Broken Jug from Berlin (King's The- atre, 2-4 September; and the Glasgow Citi- zens' Theatre bash at Lenz's brutally contemporary anti-militaristic masterpiece of 1775, The Soldiers, to be directed by the inexhaustible Philip Prowse (Royal Lyceum Theatre, 31 August - 4 September). A broad range of possibilities should open up to McMaster next year, if the large stage and auditorium of the Edinburgh Festival Theatre begins operation as planned next May. At last — after a saga of prevarication and parsimony which has shamed the most beautiful city in Northern Europe for thirty years or more — Edin- burgh will have a first-class large arena for the performing arts. If it proves as efficient as it should be, the Festival will have a wonderful opportunity to recover its long- lost éclat. My fingers are crossed, and there's every reason to be hopeful.
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