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Festival programme steps boldly on to centre stage

April 28, 2008 on 12:31 am | In Money |

THE jazz and Broadway tunes of Leonard Bernstein’s modern operetta Candide open the 61st Edinburgh International Festival tonight, in a sold-out opening concert at the Usher Hall.

The festival has reached the 2 million mark in ticket sales, organisers said yesterday, matching the pre-sales last year.

A gamble that Edinburgh audiences would buy into a concert trend for early classical music reaching back 400 years or more appears to have paid off.

“One of the new things in terms of our content this year, the repertoire, is the early music, and there has been a fantastic response for that,” said director of marketing and communications, Jackie Westbrook.

Claudio Monteverdi’s opera Orfeo, made a focal point of the music programme to celebrate its 400th anniversary, has sold out all three performances.

A Viola Da Gamba concert by the opera’s conductor, Jordi Savall, a leading European name on the early music scene, will also play before a capacity audience.

For the first time in 15 years the EIF has included a visual art stand. The EIF’director, Jonathan Mills, yesterday unveiled new works by three international artists, Michael Lin, Richard Wright and Apolonija Sustersic.

All eyes tomorrow night will be on The Bacchae, as much a tense night for the National Theatre of Scotland as for Mr Mills. It combines the skills of top Scottish playwright David Greig with John Tiffany, who directed last year’s NTS triumph, Blackwatch.

But media attention has been lavished on stage and film actor Alan Cumming’s return to the Scottish stage after 16 years.

The individual performances that have sold out include the pianist Alfred Brendel, an old Festival favourite.

Of the early-music series staged for the first time in the Greyfriars Kirk this year, a concert by the Tallis Scholars, specialists in Renaissance sacred music, has sold out. But tickets are still available for Monteverdi’s Madrigals in the kirk.

The Bacchae has just a few tickets left, but On Danfe , mixing live dancers with video imagery, still has tickets at the Playhouse, one of Europe’s biggest theatres.

Mr Mills, an Australian composer and festival director, was an unknown quantity when he was named to the job last year. Critics’ pens will be poised to ridicule or rave about his inaugural programme, a distinct change in direction from the long tenure of his predecessor, Sir Brian McMaster.

“Ticket sales continue to be strong,” Mr Mills said yesterday.

“We as a group of people spend a whole year of our lives preparing for something that is crazy and only lasts three weeks.

“We don’t have a second shot at this,” he points out. ” It’s all one huge adrenalin hit all at once. We can’t wait for tomorrow night.”

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- «news.scotsman.com»
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