REVIEW OF THE ARTS
Sweet sinners in Edinburgh
Rodney Milnes
The Scott Memorial is (like his literary reputation?) festooned in scaffolding; licensing hours have been extended (last orders at 11.30 — good grief) for the Festival in 200 bars, but not, alas, in Bennet's, where the Belhaven heavy would give Richard Boston multiple hot flushes; the best second-hand bookshop has vanished without trace, leaving only an empty basement, an open log fire and crypto-squatters. Nothing remains the same, not even the city you thought you knew, where a corner in an unexplored quarter unveils vistas of unimagined harmony. Even the bow window, that wholly regrettable invention, seems tolerable in Edinburgh. If every city architect had been forced to spend a two-year observer-apprenticeship in the New Town, at least they might have blushed before embarking on their orgies of vandalism elsewhere.
The Festival has been a success despite all threats from the Grand Crisis, rising seat prices et al: bookings up on last year, more visitors from abroad — 1 suppose that means me — and a healthy tendency on the part of the citizenry to flock to those events about which the London press has been snooty. Not that that is going to prevent me from being sour about Festival Opera's Le Nozze di Figaro. Some dangerously slow tempos, chosen by Daniel Barenboim for musical rather than dramatic reasons, at least allowed the English Chamber Orchestra to play the score with luminous beauty, but the somewhat mature cast, chosen for star quality rather than dramatic plausibility, made this not so much the Marriage of Figaro as his Silver Wedding.
It was not easy to take seriously a production in which Marcellina looked more like Figaro's daughter than his mother, in which the Countess sailed confidently through a locked door, in which the sets did not mask properly, and which was full of myriad detail as irritating as it was irrelevant. The sets themselves, a symphony in powder-blue, Shabbitat garden furniture and carriage lamps, would have done nicely for Sadler's Wells twenty years ago, but not for an international festival today.
This ad hoc company could have learned much from the Deutsche OPer of Berlin who, after ritual complaints about the size of the . King's Theatre, mounted two extremely satisfying productions there. Edinburgh being a city where the word 'sin' still has some meaning, it was fitting, if not slyly humorous, to bring Salome and Lulu, those two great scarlet sinners of the lyric stage. Even more fitting, the productions recognised that each, contrary to popular misconception, is more sinned against than sinning — each a potent symbol of natural innocence used and destroyed by society. Wedekind's and Berg's Lulu, exploited since she was picked up at the age of twelve, has a superb arioso of self-defence before she pumps five bullets into the repellent Dr Schlin — a case of justifiable homicide if ever there was one and thus inevitably the cause of her downfall.
Catherine Gayer has just the right elfin looks for the role and sings it with apparent ease; perhaps there were moments of over-calculation in her dramatic performance, tempting though it must be to supply those hints of corruption
from the later, unfinished scenes. But all is forgiven for those legs, which must be the envy of every single Rockette — this was a magical performance. The rest of the cast, including Hans Glinter Wicker's visibly disintegrating Scholl, Patricia Johnson's tense and ,g.n.ified Geschwitz and Donald Grobe's de.gant Aiwa, played with a fluent ease that makes the work of our native ensembles look effortful, while Filippo Sanjust's black and white sets, with a touch of Caligari about them, made complete sense on the King's stage.
If there was a feeling of déjdvu about Wieland Wagner's nineyear-old production of Salome — the inevitable circular platform, black lurex and jet sequins — the characterisation still remained startlingly fresh. Jochanaan was not the usual hirsute freak; instead, in William Dooley's outstanding interpretation, we had a young ascetic, his Fuseli body sparsely clad, who bounded out of the cistern swinging his knotted scourge and went into a routine of advanced religious mania calculated to send even the best integrated Princess of Judaea clean off her rocker, let alone this incestuously besieged teenager. Like Dr Schott, he deserved everything he got. The Herod of Hans Beirer was King of Judaea as well as Humbert Humbert, and only in the case of Astrid Varnay's Herodias did we fall back into the bad old days of Salome characterisation. What is the use of Jochanaan telling everyone how frightful she is if her corruption, from net stockings to ToulouseLautrec wig, is paraded for all to see? The orchestra does all that for you, and the visual reference should be Vivien Merchant rather than Hermione Gingold.
In the title-role, Ursula Schroeder-Feinen displayed a tireless voice of burnished steel also capable of subtle delicacy. More important, she suggested the puppy-plump, mischievous teenager deprived of her latest toy and ready to play grown-up games to get it. Her child-like smile of satisfaction at the close — the unwitting hell-cat with her saucer of blood — will haunt me for months to come. Mme SchroederFeinen comes from Europe with a star reputation, and at this, her UK debut, she more than justified it.
The Berlin Opera Orchestra played the Berg under Reinhard Peters with admirable clarity and discretion: there was no problem with hearing the words. But Strauss in the King's Theatre does present just that problem, and the balance was only as good as it could be. The band started out gustily, but found its form by the middle of the piece and then gave a thoroughly distinguished account of the score under Gerd Albrecht. It is a very considerable privilege to be able to hear performances of this
standard without having to spend one's summer in Europe — a point born out by consistently full houses. Thank you, Peter Diamond.
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