Review: Semiramide by a first time opera-goer

Photo: Annemie Augustijns

By Órla Murray

My first opera experience was a four hour and twenty minute baptism of fire, with Vlaamse Opera's production Rossini’s Semiramide severely testing both my clapping etiquette and endurance. Having never before seen an opera, and having a variety of expectations – it would be incomprehensible; I would become bored; the audience would be old and posh – I was suitably nervous about attending. Although it did feel a little like the opening of an Edith Wharton novel (being at the opera to see and be seen), the performance itself was so phenomenally beautiful and engaging, that Semiramide retained my attention and managed to evoke a potent emotional response.

With strong overtones of Sophoclean tragedy and Shakespearean level plot twists, accompanied by melodramatic music, my expectations that the musical talent and plot would be exceptional, were heartily met. An astonishingly powerful level of singing told the musical story well with each piece ebbing and flowing appropriately, catching the audience up in its relaxing and elegant embrace. It did all become a tad too soporific at certain points, however, as I felt my attention drifting and eyelids drooping in a content and relaxed state.

This may have been more so due to my attending the performance straight after an 8-hour shift at work rather than a comment on it as a performance. It thankfully transpired that I enjoyed the performance despite its length and my tiredness; in my appreciative amateur opinion the event was most certainly worth setting time aside for, as I thoroughly enjoyed my night and felt someone cleansed afterwards.

The performance was staged to perfection with exquisitely painted scenery and set from Nigel Lowery, both of which had a versatility and storyline all of their own. The costumes and lighting were subtly effective; bathing the golden furniture in green hues, and set on a hugely expansive stage, making things seem simultaneously expensive and mouldy. This captured the decaying decadence of the story’s Babylonian backdrop, which hung ominously over the delicately dressed lead characters. The addition of what appeared to be a real fire roaring in a fireplace added that little bit extra to the final scene, proving that at this level of opera no holds are barred when providing the perfect atmosphere for the outstanding music.

However, whilst the setting proved a wonderful match for the sublime music and singing, conducted by Alberto Zedda, the directing and most of the supporting chorus cast unfortunately seemed dramatically out of their depth. The chorus made very visible mistakes throughout the performance, with their movement pieces seeming crowded and messy which ultimately distracted from the main action and singing.  Additionally, there were moments when the performance seemed to rely too heavily on the power of the music, when in fact the huge stage and dramatic staging dwarfed the singers onstage, making it seem ill thought out rather than allegorically important as it might have been intended. 

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my first night at the opera, but would like to see a production which ensures its dramatic aspects match the musical elements, which unfortunately was not always the case here. As a piece of beautiful performance, both musically and visually, it is well worth the lengthy experience, with any storyline or dramatic elements being mere bonuses to the aural treat that is Semiramide.

Semiramide
Thursday 25 and Saturday 27 August, 6pm
Festival Theatre, Edinburgh

eif.co.uk/semiramide

The Edinburgh International Festival runs from 12 August – 4 September. Browse and book online at eif.co.uk or call 0131 473 2000.

Preview: Sriyah

Photo: Uma Dhanwatey

By Mateusz Jazdzewski

Audiences at the King’s Theatre, Edinburgh this weekend will have the chance not only to appreciate beautiful dance but to experience something really special – a performance of classical Indian dance from the Nrityagram Dance Ensemble, entitled Śriyah.

When Protima Gauri Bedi founded the group she created something more than just another dance troupe. Nrityagram village is home to a school which welcomes any talented dancers – the school is free to attend but students must commit to daily practice.

Dance in Nrityagram is not only a means of artistic expression, it is a way of life. The students and graduates of the school who live, work and dance in the village are not only fit but fluent in philosophy, literature, spirituality, ethics and music. As a result their dance is intellectually evocative as well as visually attractive.

In her choreography, Protima Gauri always aimed to create the perfect piece and she would not accept any middle ground. This philosophy of perfection has continued at the school and in the ensemble since her death in 1998 and her legacy has not been forgotten.

She was succeeded as artistic director and choregrapher by Surupa Sen, who joined the school as a dancer in 1990 and was one of the first students to complete Protima Gauri’s intensive training programme. Sen is not only a sensitive artist she also works to promote Indian arts all over the world.

The mission of Nrityagram is not to invent new dances but to intelligently connect many existing traditional Indian styles including Odissi, Manipuri and Kathak. This fascinating cultural mix will be central to Śriyah, a programme of five pieces performed by three talented dancers including Surupa Sen herself.

Śriyah
Friday 26, Saturday 27 and Monday 29 August, 8pm
Sunday 28 August, 3pm
King’s Theatre, Edinburgh

Book now at eif.co.uk/sriyah

The Edinburgh International Festival runs from 12 August – 4 September. Browse and book online at eif.co.uk or call 0131 473 2000.

This article has also been published on stv.tv which features reviews, previews and features from this year's Festival.

Review: Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Photo: Chris Christodoulou  

By Jane Compton

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra, led by Principal Conductor Robin Ticciati, opened the concert on 21 August at the Usher Hall with a flawless performance of the four movement orchestrated version of Ravel’s  Le tombeau de Couperin.  One of the composer’s most personal works, Ravel’s tribute to friends who died fighting in the First World War is styled upon a Baroque dance suite.  An entertaining start to the evening, the prominence given to the melancholy tones of the oboe served as a reminder of this lively music’s underlying memorial nature.

This was followed by the world premiere of the EIF commission Blossoming II, a compellingly beautiful short piece of music for chamber orchestra by the internationally renowned Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa that he based loosely on his 2007 string quartet Blossoming.  An important aspect of Hosokawa’s aesthetic and his originality is that he seeks to fuse the sounds of the natural world with music in a very close relationship. 

In this work the stages of growth and decay of a lotus, a symbol denoting the essence of enlightenment in Buddhism, are meticulously charted.  The journey begins when the plant stem is ascending purposefully up through the murky depths of the water towards the surface where it will finally emerge and reveal its existence.

Hosokawa’s unique musical language was interpreted with care and attention to detail by Ticciati, and realised with precision by the SCO musicians who used western instruments to produce sounds that were often eerie and other-worldly. Delicate, wispy music introduced by the strings materialised out of the silence in one long, sustained note in the middle register that represented the surface of a pond.  Sounds lower than this note echoed the plant’s energy under the water and sounds that were higher portrayed the world above.  The rapturous applause afterwards intensified when the Japanese composer briefly appeared on stage to take a bow. 

For the final part of the programme the SCO were joined by over a hundred young singers aged 16 to 24 from the National Youth Choir of Scotland, and by two soloists, baritone Simon Keenlyside and mezzo-soprano Sophie Koch who replaced Magdalena Kožená at short notice.  During the superb rendition of Duruflé’s atmospheric nine part Requiem the excellent acoustics of the grand auditorium were fully exploited as the singers’ voices soared upwards in a series of crescendos that delighted the audience.  

For those who missed a wonderful evening there will be another chance to hear the music on 15 September 2011 when it is broadcast as Performance on Three on BBC Radio 3 (90 – 93 FM).  The SCO will bring the Edinburgh International Festival to a dramatic finale on Sunday 4 September at the eagerly anticipated Virgin Money Fireworks Concert in the stunning setting of Princes Street Gardens where the talented musicians are set to perform an eclectic programme of music inspired by Asia, Arabia and the east.  Over 100,000 fireworks, tonnes of explosives and hundreds of firing sequences launched from Edinburgh Castle will be choreographed by Pyrovision alongside pieces that include Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, Borodin’s Prince Igor, and Glinka’s Overture from Ruslan and Ludmilla.

The Edinburgh International Festival runs from 12 August – 4 September. Browse and book online at eif.co.uk or call 0131 473 2000.

Princes Street Gardens tickets are still available for the Virgin Money Fireworks concert on Sunday 4 September. Visit eif.co.uk/virginmoneyfireworks for more information and to book.

This article has also been published on stv.tv which features reviews, previews and features from this year's Festival.

One Thousand and One Nights at Festival 2011

Photo: Matthew Andrews

By Jane Compton

One of the highlights of the Edinburgh International Festival this year is the European premiere of One Thousand and One Nights – or Alf Layla wa-Layla in Arabic – at the Royal Lyceum Theatre. After witnessing his wife in an orgy with slaves, the despotic King Shahrayar embarks upon a mission to marry a virgin each night then behead her in the morning before she has the chance to dishonour him. But the grim cycle of executions is temporarily halted when he takes Shahrazad as his bride.

Unwilling to accept the fate that has been dealt to many women before her, this strong and resourceful heroine relies upon her intellect to stay alive, regaling her husband with fascinating stories to retain his passive interest. She concludes her nightly narratives with the promise that the next story will be even better, persuading King Shahrayar to postpone her death for one more day.

Director Tim Supple’s ambitious goal to create a sumptuous stage version of this famous work from ancient Arabic literature was given the go-ahead in 2009 when Dash Arts, the production company he runs with Josephine Burton, secured a commission from Luminato, the multidisciplinary arts festival held annually in Toronto where the show received its world premiere in June. This funding enabled Supple to begin the considerable research and preparation required for what would eventually become an epic six-hour, multilingual dramatisation performed in two parts.

The dialogue is in Arabic, French and English to reflect that the tales were first translated from Arabic to French in 1704 and then into English two years later. Supple travelled extensively across the Middle East including Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon and Syria, holding workshops and auditions in major cities to find talented actors, musicians and dancers for his creative team. Rehearsals were moved from Egypt to Morocco following the start of the Egyptian uprising in January.

The historical origins of the Nights are obscure, but the tales are understood to be a living document in the sense that over the centuries numerous writers have contributed to a body of work that includes stories from India, Persia and across the great Arab empire. Supple had no interest in the sanitised western translations first produced in the eighteenth century which reinterpreted and reshaped the stories to make them suitable for children under the new guise of The Arabian Nights and which also added new stories from outside the Arabic version including The Seven Voyages of Sinbad and Aladdin and his Lamp.

Intent upon giving theatre audiences the opportunity to experience the deep and hidden riches of these classic tales as they appear in the oldest Arabic manuscripts, Supple called upon the translation skills of respected Lebanese novelist Hanan al-Shaykh to adapt 19 stories for the stage in a manner that reveals their sophistication and complexity. As Supple has said: “At their heart there’s a serious investigation into every aspect of social life: marriage, power, money, law, love, hate, parents and children. They’re graphic, startling, bleak, joyous and brutal, about sex, violence and human relations.”

One Thousand and One Nights

Part One
Tuesday 23, Thursday 25 and Tuesday 30 August, 7pm
Sunday 21, Saturday 27, Sunday 28 and Wednesday 31 August, Friday 2 and Saturday 3 September, 2pm

Part Two
Sunday 21, Wednesday 24, Friday 26, Saturday 27, Sunday 28 and Wednesday 31 August, Thursday 1, Friday 2 and Saturday 3 September, 7pm

**See both performances in one day on Sunday 21, Saturday 27, Sunday 28 and Wednesday 31 August, and Friday 2 and Saturday 3 September**

**Book for both parts on any day in the same transaction and receive 10% off each ticket**

The Edinburgh International Festival runs from 12 August – 4 September. Browse and book online at eif.co.uk or call 0131 473 2000.

This article has also been published on stv.tv which features reviews, previews and features from this year's Festival.

Review: The Revenge of Prince Zi Dan

Photo: Liu Haifa

By Alice Longhurst

How many Shakespeare performances do you think get put on in this country every year? Far too many to count of course, but each is subtly different, ranging from stiff traditional stagings to loose contemporary interpretations. As our favourite playwright, and a keystone of our culture, he is a constantly familiar presence, like an old amiable uncle everyone talks to, but never takes the time to fully get to know and understand. This is probably our main problem with interpreting Shakespeare, we think we know him so well, and thus we do not make the effort to dig more deeply.

A possible antidote to this over-familiarity can be found when Shakespeare is translated into other cultures, resulting in a fusion of his timeless tales with striking performance traditions from other countries. The Revenge of Prince Zi Dan, a Peking Opera version of Hamlet, which closes tonight at the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh is one such example. This performance provides a beautiful and unusual interpretation, combining a typically Chinese performance method with a European-based story which actually began life as a Viking folk tale.

One of the most noticeable differences about this Chinese version is how it renders Hamlet comical when in this country we usually identify the story as a tragedy. There are many humorous touches, including the dwarf prime minister who goes about on his knees, and even the final death scene which is made amusing by his odd manner of collapse. This is a clear example of how such different performances can challenge audiences to look again at their bard and appreciate new ways of understanding his work.

The production is exquisite, showcasing the distinct elements of Peking Opera. Royal characters wear heavy elaborate costumes with wonderful headdresses, and have bold painted faces which obscure their human identity. Adding further meaning to the finery is the traditional Chinese colour vocabulary; yellow is for kings and queens, while white indicates youth and is worn by Zi Dan and Yin Le, his Ophelia.

The acting itself is very formal, conforming to traditional conventions on vocal roles, graceful ritual dance, and fighting scenes. Tension is added to the action on stage by harsh percussion pieces using cymbals, wood clappers and drums, while the orchestra play typically Chinese instruments like the moon-lute, or zhongruan, and jinghu, a two-stringed fiddle which is covered with snakeskin.

Although the singing is in Mandarin, the narrative is explained by the English surtitles which cleverly convey much of the poetry of the original. Intriguingly, the use of a foreign language actually makes Hamlet more accessible. Forcing the audience to really focus on reading the translation and to pay careful attention to the happenings on stage brings a deeper understanding of both the story and the human emotions that lie behind it. The Prince of Zi Dan is at once an impeccably beautiful production by a talented opera troupe and an invitation for Western audiences to look afresh at a work they think they know so well.

The Revenge of Prince Zi Dan

Shanghai Peking Opera Troupe

Friday 19 – Sunday 21 August

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh

eif.co.uk/revenge

The Edinburgh International Festival runs from 12 August – 4 September. Browse the programme and book online at eif.co.uk or call 0131 473 2000.

Continental Shifts: All the World’s a Stage

By Alice Longhurst

Today, Shakespeare’s plays are performed all over the world in a diverse range of languages, styles and forms and the global artistic fusions the bard invites are well represented at this year’s Edinburgh International Festival.

The programme boasts several Shakespeare-inspired productions – the dramatic Korean TheTempest, a solo King Lear performed in Mandarin by Taiwanese actor Wu Hsing-kuo and the Chinese Peking Opera version of Hamlet, entitled The Revenge of Prince Zi Dan.

To accompany these performances the Festival brought together Korean director of The Tempest Tae-Suk Oh, the Chinese Shakespeare expert Alexander C Y Huang and theatre critic Michael Billington to discuss the significance of these unique productions at an event entitled All the World’s a Stage.

As one of the world’s favourite playwrights, the relevance of discussing how Shakespeare can be fused with other traditions is obvious. Indeed the history of exporting Shakespeare, Huang explained, goes all the way back to the playwright’s own lifetime. In 1610 Hamlet was taken to Jakarta, then part of the Dutch West Indies.

Since then the plays have spread across the world, the stories intermingling with local cultures, reaching new people and societies and being used by them to express their own feelings and troubles. Master Oh explained that as The Tempest is not based on historical events or specific myths it provided the ideal play to help him encourage forgiveness in Korea, where he feels growing hatred, and to allow him to convince his domestic audiences of the need to preserve the beauty of the Korean language which is currently threatened by technological advances.

So what can we in the west learn from these unfamiliar performances? The panel seemed to agree that we know Shakespeare almost too well. Using the motifs and methods of a completely different culture can bring a distance from the work and force us to see it in a different way. While we may not understand the meanings of the music, costumes and symbolism used in productions like The Tempest, there is much we can gain by being forced to use our imaginations and to really think for ourselves about the significance of the tales played out before us.

This insightful discussion was part of the Festival’s Continental Shifts series, in association with the British Council, which bring together a variety of performers, writers, academics and cultural specialists. Forthcoming events include Global Philosophies on Monday 22 August when Scottish author Christopher Brookmyre and philosophers Dr Richard Holloway and Tu Weiming will explore the changing face of world religion, two discussions of India’s position on the world stage on Saturday 27 August and two events focusing on China – How Chinese Money is Changing the World and Contemporary Chinese thought.

The Continental Shifts series is presented in association with the British Council and all events take place in The Hub, Castlehill, Edinburgh.

The Edinburgh International Festival runs from 12 August – 3 September. Browse and book online at eif.co.uk or call 0131 473 2000.

All the World’s a Stage
Monday 15 August, 2.30pm

Global Philosophies
Monday 22 August, 2.30pm

How Chinese Money is Changing the World
Wednesday 24 August, 2.30pm

India
Saturday 27 August, 2.30pm

A Changing India
Saturday 27 August, 5pm

Contemporary Chinese Thought
Monday 29 August, 2.30pm