Little to sing about for opera lovers

Published on Thursday 3 April 2008 21:36

Having overdosed us on baroque music last year, Jonathan Mills, the Edinburgh Festival director, is going to dominate us with the theme of borders this year (your report, 3 April).

However, a festival is also about pleasure, and when it comes to opera, I can see little sign of that. There are only two staged operas over three weeks: I can remember past festivals under Brian McMaster, when we had ten operas and six of them staged. Also, the opening and closing concerts are a little odd, to say the least. I recall the failure of Candide as an opening work last year.

The staged operas are an obscure Polish opera and Scottish Opera doing a little-performed Smetana opera. This production attracts a grant of 277,000 from the Scottish Government as an export subsidy.

I am not sure where Scottish Opera are exporting Smetana to, but would they not be better off producing and exporting James Macmillan's new opera? At least it would be Scots in origin.

Jonathan Mills is clearly an intelligent and knowledgeable director. However, there is a danger he will make the Festival an avant-garde extravaganza that may intrigue the critics but leave many of the audience, as we were last year, discontented.

HUGH KERR

Braehead Avenue

Edinburgh