Kenneth Walton: More than enough room for both International and Fringe festivals in Edinburgh in August

Published on Tuesday 31 August 2010 12:35

All this talk of merging the Edinburgh International Festival with the Fringe is perennial bluster. Why on earth would anyone want to kill the sparring dynamic that is Edinburgh in August, and create a cultural blancmange that would demote the past two-and-a-half weeks (and the few days still to go) to some Anytown Summer Arts Bazaar? I see no point in lobotomising the geese that lay the golden eggs - financially or artistically.

• Grupo Corpo performs at the International Festival

Sure, you'll find many Festival visitors picking and choosing between the expensive high art of the International programme and the raw flamboyance of the Fringe, with all its hectic informality and desperation to be noticed. But why blur the defining boundaries?

Thankfully, we are currently witnessing an International Festival programme - and an EIF management - that seems to be resisting the calls to merge. On the one hand, Festival director Jonathan Mills has made it plain he sees his own EIF domain as a cultural entity in itself - this year's overriding theme, Oceans Apart, is all but a statement of that autonomy. At the same time, he is not blind to the vital dynamic that the two festivals create simply by existing side by side.

If anything poses a threat to this vital symbiosis, it is money. As the Fringe drew to a close early this week, it was trumpeting record ticket sales for the second year in a row. While on BBC's Newsnight last week, Mills was valiantly defending the value of top-end cultural output as fears grew that funding will be hit severely by swingeing public-sector cuts. High art - the hallmark and key selling point of the International Festival - is clearly under threat.

Has there been any sign of that in this year's flagship classical music programme? In content, it has actually been one of Mills's strongest to date. I had wondered if the constraints of his theme would limit the potential of orchestras such as the Minnesota (no danger there, it transpired), Cleveland or even our own home-grown BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Opera and Scottish Chamber Orchestra, to express comfortably their respective characteristics and strengths.But, with only a couple of exceptions, and the odd lean audience, Oceans Apart has proved an innervating catalyst and robust thread for a truly diverse musical programme.

And it certainly hasn't put paid to what is surely the EIF's most sellable asset - the courage and ability to present a size and scale of musical performance that is not only unique to what we in Scotland can ever experience in the normal course of the year, but which has enough curiosity and cache to draw a worldwide audience to our capital city. It's what puts the "I" in "EIF".

I'm thinking here of the likes of John Adams's modern take on the age-old concept of the oratorio, El Nio, the Scottish premiere of which opened the Festival, albeit lacking sparkle; and the prospect this Saturday of Mahler's gargantuan "Symphony of a Thousand", both of which, like World Cup Finals, sold out the second the box office opened. These are expensive commodities, but ones that place Edinburgh on the international cultural map.

But what of opera which was, after all, why all this August madness began in the first place? Concerns have rightly been expressed about the perceived erosion of fully-staged opera in the EIF programme. One correspondent to The Scotsman last week questioned whether there is there any point to presenting this expensive art form, which by its very nature encompasses the theatrical and the musical, in its cheaper unstaged format at the Usher Hall? For that is how the majority of EIF opera now happens.

There are genuine cases where concert performance is justified. For instance, it was a revelation last week, despite the overbearing loudness of the Scottish Opera Orchestra and a woefully static support cast, to witness Puccini's gorgeous score for La Fanciulla del West sung so exquisitely by leading lady Susan Bullock.

But what of the unadorned Usher Hall readings of Mozart's Idomeneo, Purcell's The Indian Queen, and Ravel's L'heure espagnole - a lesser array of staged opera that had mixed results.

All we've had so far in full production are Opera Lyon's over-busy multimedia Porgy and Bess and the reportedly under-par Montezuma. Will tomorrow's European premiere of Brett Dean's Bliss give us at least one resoundingly successful staged opera production this year, despite word that tickets are still easily available? Even if it does, there is a genuine concern that fully-staged opera is becoming less feasible as an EIF cornerstone than it once was.

There are two good reasons why this should not be allowed to happen. The appearance last week of what is left of Scottish Opera (the orchestra is unlikely to survive as a full-time concern beyond current negotiations, and could, in the worst case scenario, be completely axed, like the former Scottish Opera Chorus) was a gaunt reminder that seasonal staged opera in Scotland, in any grand sustainable scale, is facing an inevitable spiral of decline.All the more reason for the EIF to ensure there's a feast amid the impending famine, enabled, of course, by adequate funding.

Then there's international prestige - which keeps the Festival flame alive - and the potential of the EIF to counter the earthiness of the Fringe with art at its most opulent and sophisticated, the greatest manifestation of which is surely opera, performed in the way it was intended.

Back in 2003, when Scottish Opera was presenting its epic Festival production of Wagner's Ring cycle, it was also possible to catch a cheap and cheery spoof version on the Fringe. I went to both. When the subversive cocks a snook at the sublime, Edinburgh is at its Festival best.