New World order dominate line up for this year's Edinburgh International Festival

Published on Wednesday 17 March 2010 21:44

THE voices of the New World return to the old in this year's Edinburgh International Festival.

A flamboyant, colourful, thunderous line-up focused on Latin America and the United States ranges from the Grammy award-winning gospel group the Blind Boys of Alabama, to Australian opera, Brazilian dance and some of the world's greatest orchestras.

EIF director Jonathan Mills yesterday promised a 2010 Festival "about sensuality, about texture, about flamboyance, with very important and serious messages embedded in it to be sure – but it's a riot of colour, an enormous amount of fun".

"The New World is very much part of this Festival, and has all sorts of connotations. The New World was not new to the people who lived there, it was new to European explorers," he added.

"It has a kind of double edge to it, some of it optimistic, and some slightly dark. But as a person from the New World myself, there is an important conversation to be had, between the Old World and the New World."

Mr Mills said his initial contract in 2007 was five years plus one. He took up the additional year last year and will stay until at least 2012.

The launch saw council leader Jenny Dawe mount a defence of the economic and cultural value of the Festival to Edinburgh at a time of tightening budgets and rising demands from health or social care. The city's contribution of close to 2.44 million had only been cut by 12,000 this year, she said.

"Our festivals are crucially important to the economy and none more important than the EIF", she said, for the impact on the city's reputation as a world-class place to live, and visit, "with a quality of life in which our cultural offering is supremely important".

• The top 10 acts at this year's Edinburgh International Festival

"It is essential that the EIF continues to draw in audiences and build on its reputation each year … we have figures in mind as to how we will be able to support the Festival over the next few years."

Asked about the Festival's financial state, Mr Mills said: "We had very successful years in the last three to four years. There's no doubt that it is a tighter environment in which to trade." He predicted strong sales this year.

"Our sponsorships have remained intact, it is a difficult trading environment, but we go into this year very optimistic about our future." The content of this year's EIF, while centred around a serious theme, has a more accessible, jazzed-up feel than previous Augusts, where the music of Handel or Monteverdi set the tone.

The Gospel at Colonus, directed by American veteran Lee Breuer, is a musical extravaganza that features a Pentecostal preacher and the Blind Boys of Alabama. The gospel group founded in the 1930s have more recently played the original theme tune for the US TV series The Wire and have performed for US president Barack Obama.

One world premiere is The Sun Also Rises, a new US production of Ernest Hemingway's novel, climaxing amid the bullfights and fiestas in Pamplona, Spain. It was created by Elevator Repair Service, a New York group.

The National Theatre of Scotland takes front and centre stage: a promising new take on the Darien disaster, the tale of Scotland's hubristic attempt to forge a colony in Panama. Caledonia, written by satirist Alistair Beaton and directed by Anthony Neilson, is another world premiere.

The EIF appears to be strengthening co-productions in Europe and elsewhere. The other side of colonisation is told in Montezuma, a little-known opera written in 1755 by the German composer Carl Heinrich Graun, in a joint production with Mexican, German and Spanish festivals and theatres.

The 2010 Festival is not claiming a string of "world firsts", but Mr Mills defined his task yesterday partly as bringing new productions or companies to the UK for the first time. One of them is the Meredith Monk Company, mixing music, art and theatre, with Songs of Ascension.

The new Australian opera Bliss opened in Sydney this month, but its Edinburgh showing will give many European critics the chance to see the work for the first time – along with the Booker Prize-winning Australian author Peter Carey, on whose early novel it is based. Having missed the Australian premiere, he is planning to fly to Edinburgh to see the show.

Alongside some surprising twists for the lofty EIF – such as the Paco Pea Dance Company, with its new show Quimeras – Mr Mills has brought six international orchestras to the festival, from Minnesota to Sydney, Russia and Finland, to deliver major classical set pieces from Mahler to Elgar.

Festival favourites include Sir Charles Mackerras conducting the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in Idomeneo, while the orchestra's new music director, Robin Ticciati, also has his Festival debut. The Royal Scottish National Orchestra and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra take pride of place at the Usher Hall.

There is no production from Scottish Opera in the line-up, though its orchestra appears in a concert performance of Verdi's The Girl of the Golden West.

The EIF runs from 13 August to 5 September. Public booking opens on 27 March, with online booking through eif.co.uk.