Music
The King's Purse
By DAVID CAIRNS
It would be absurd to treat this incident as if it were typical of a Festival which, in the scope and coherence and bold imaginativeness of its programmes, surpasses all predecessors. But I
mention it because it gives in a word the reason why the Festival, which has become musicallY one of the most splendid and necessary in the world, is in serious jeopardy. The artistic director, Lord Harewood, to whose brilliance and tough- ness the Festival owes its present pre-eminence, has made it clear that he will go if the Corpora- tion do not provide a decent opera house (that is, an auditorium seating 2,000 or slightly less and a stage roughly the size of Covent Garden s and therefore suitable for all the major com- panies except La Scala, the Bolshoi and the Metropolitan).
For the fact is that it is now almost impossible to provide the Festival with opera of the standard which its pretensions and (in the field of con- certs) achievements demand. There are very few companies whose productions can be put into the confines of the King's without damage, and who can be persuaded to face the primitive light' ing and inefficient backstage management once they know what they are in for. The Covent Garden setting of Lucia was mutilated almost out of recognition last year. Yet, in normal con- ditions, Covent Garden might be expected to bring its best productions fairly regularly to the Festival. The experience of Lucia also showed that even a work on the fringe of grand opera (`decibelly' speaking) produces too much sound for the theatre to take in comfort.
Glyndebourne, one of the rare companies of international standard which produce opera on a scale suitable to the size of the King's (and it is an admirable house to hear Mozart in), at present ends its season just as the Festival opens;
what inducement can it have to shorten that season in order to play for three weeks in a theatre miserably ill-equipped compared its own? The English Opera Group is willing. and is engaged (it is giving The Turn of the Screw in the third week); but its repertoire is too small and specialised to sustain even one Edinburgh Festival by itself. The German companies, like Hamburg and Stuttgart, which were delighted to come to Edinburgh ten or twelve years ago, would not dream of it now that they have new opera houses and productions designed to fit them. I do not know whether the Yugoslays would ever consider coming back to what the Times has christened the Black Hole of Caledonia; but in any case, with all respect, they are a lively well-integrated national company with a large repertoire, an orchestra strong to the string department and an excellent chords, not a company of international stature.
No doubt Lord Harewood has something up his sleeve for next year. He can perhaps continue a little longer with the expedient of engaging second-rate companies with a corporat° personality which suits the larger scheme of the Festival, or persuading a first-rate company, like Covent Garden at its best, to adapt its finest Pro- ductions to the King's and thereby inevitably give a less-than-just account of itself. But mt guess is that if he does not get the new opera house by 1965, or at the very latest 1966, he will resign. What is being done to make this calamity unnecessary? The Corporation have a plan for building an opera house; but neither the details of this plan so far as one can discover them (they have not been made public) nor the manner in Which it appears to be being handled suggest that they have begun to understand the nature or the urgency of the problem. In a later article 1 hope to explain how much I believe to be wrong with the present approach. Opera apart, the Festival is so rich and decisive In character that not even the absence of Richte and Britten, and the consequent collapse or trans formation of the concerts associated with them, has seriously spoiled its shape or dimmed its Best of all that I have heard so far have been two recitals (and particularly the first) in which Rostropovich played the six unaccom- rIanied cello suites a Bach in St. Cuthbert' Church, below the Castle. The soaring grandeur of style, the melodic splendour, the vigour and subtlety of rhythm, the vast range of dynamics contained within a sure grasp of form, the corn bMation of expressiveness with simplicity, make Up a near-perfection of playing which no descrip Lion can come close to conveying. I shall, how ever, attempt to describe it, and some of the other memorable events of the Festival, in a further article next week.
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