Rodney Elms on a Scottish triumph in Edinburgh
The international side of the Edinburgh Festival has a distinctly Swedish tinge this year. The Stockholm Royal Opera is bringing four productions; the Gothenburg City Theatre their version of Strindberg's Gustav III, that enlightened and over-made-up monarch whom the Swedes, Auber and Verdi all contrived to assassinate; the hottest tickets in town are Nilsson in Elektra and a duet recital by Elisabeth SOderstrom and Kerstin Meyer; and the foetid air of the Press Bureau vibrates with the plangent cries of persistent Nordic critics soliciting seats they somehow forgot to ask for before.
Of all of which, more next week. First must be celebrated the triumph of Scottish Opera who, after a mere twelve years of existence, are now an established and welcome feature of the Festival. Their presentation of Gluck's Alceste proved, musically at least, to be one of the most distinguished operatic offerings for some years.
Wagner is accused of making outrageous demands on the human voice, but Gluck ran him close a century earlier, and it is no coincidence that in the only recording of this opera, the title-role is taken by Flagstad. Janet Baker was announced for this production, and for once 1 am glad she chose not to • appear; had she done so, it might well have been the last opera she sang in. 1 do not envy Scottish Opera having to find a replacement: by the greatest good fortune the Romanian soprano Julia Varady chanced to be free. Tiny, slim of stature, with the cheekbones and doe eyes of a young Katharine Hepburn, she also has a luscious-toned, beautifully even voice powerful enough to shake the foundations of the Castle itself and to cope with Gluck's mercilessly exposed and sustained line. The very vulnerability of her stage presence made her heroic action, within the context of the slightly odd production, all the more moving.
Miss Varady was most sympathetically accompanied by the SNO under Alexander Gibson; throughout, he emphasised the lyrical beauty of Gluck's writing, even in the long passages of recitative, without sacrificing any of its dramatic power. How carefully, for instance, he graded the trombone stabs in Divinites du Styx', saving the most pungent for the third utterance of that radiantly defiant challenge. The third glory of the performance was Arthur Oldham's Scottish Opera Chorus, who not only sang like angels and caught each musical mood exactly, but also set all the soloists an example in the clarity of their enunciation of the French text.
It is quite understandable that the Anthony Besch/John Stoddart team should fight shy of their successful Covent Garden Tito formula, but to set Alceste in a murky prehistoric pumice-stone box when the music shrieks "neoclassical" at you does seem a little perverse. The stage action was vaguely 1950s naturalistic, in that the chorus clutched each other a good deal, and the principals'. movements were not free from standard operatic gesture. The queen, I believe, spent more time grovelling on the floor than any eighteenth-century tragedienne would have countenanced.
In the temple scene the High Priest, done up as a witch doctor, eviscerated a dear little stuffed toy lamb from Jenners and led his congregation in what I can only describe as "The Sacrifice Waltz." Of course the magnificent chorus "dieu puissant" demands some sort of movement but, brother, this it is not. Once at the Gates of Hell, Mr Stoddart's volcanic rocks came into their own and Mr Beech's production too found its form even to the
extent of dealing tactfully with 1-lercules's comic-strip rescue. It must have been difficult to know what to do with Gluck's ballet in this setting, but at least they did it, and while Peter Darrell's choreography was perforce stylistically amorphous it was surely a mistake in Act 2 not only to re-cap the story so far in dance terms, but to tell us (and the cast) what was going to happen next. Just when the time seems ripe for the foundation of an Anti-Schoenberg Society (not anti the gentleman himself so much as his all-pervasive influence) something as beautiful as the Tel Aviv Quartet's playing of his second quartet turns up to spike our guns. Heather Harper sang the smokey Stefan George settings with calm radiance, and if the players made the music sound more romantic than some would like, I for one am grateful. The quartet, who match extreme opulence of tone with a modest approach to vibrato and phrasing, got acclimatised to the acoustics of the Freemasons' Hall with Haydn Op 20 No 4, and thereafter were able to deliver a clear and exact Mendelssohn E minor Op 44, which nicely emphasised the passion lurking beneath the correct exterior.
On the Fringe, I relished Bracket and Hinge, two devastatingly demure drag artistes (all lavender bags and fur tippetts) who have a knitting-needle-sharp way with Gilbert and Sullivan. It can well be imagined what they do with "A regular royal queen" and "the aria generally known as Mabel's entrance," but the joy is that they don't over do ft Well worth seeking out if they hit London, which they surely must.
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