Opera and classical review: Montezuma | Porgy and Bess | Cleveland Orchestra | Finnish Radio Symphony | Fiesta Criolla

Much like a tall ship dropping anchor in an uncharted bay on the other side of the world, the Edinburgh International Festival can never be sure of the reception of the natives.

But the first week's musical offerings, pocked with the culture clash and colonialism of this year's New World theme, proved ripe material for opera, which has always liked a good face-off between hero and villain, and never mind the historical accuracy.

Graun's rarely heard 1755 opera, Montezuma, opened the opera programme in a brand new International Festival production with an almost inexhaustible list of international co-producers. Graun, or to be more precise, his paymaster and librettist, King Frederick II of Prussia, raged against the colonial machine in his lengthy, and here considerably cut, epic on the personal drama behind the Spanish conquest of Mexico.

Suffering from a rather debilitating lack of dramatic finesse, Frederick's protagonists frequently soliloquise at length about "cunning plans" which turn out to be dashed almost before the last note of the aria has faded. But this is what happens when one's King is one's librettist.

But Graun's partisan treatment of the subject paled in comparison to Mexican director Claudio Valds Kuri's ill-thought-out vision which pummelled the composer's work into an overly-symbolised diatribe on the evils of colonialism, globalisation, and the jackbooting of modern Mexico by its northern neighbour. As street sellers hawked tourist tat, a bare-chested Montezuma (a serviceable Flavio Oliver) ignored the warnings of his General Pilpato (an under-used Lucia Salas) and welcomed the Coke bottle-wielding Conquistadors to court. Promptly decked out in a poncho and a Viva Mexico sombrero, Montezuma was summarily raped by Adrin-George Popescu's Cortes.

There were redeeming features, but little of it was vocal, with the exception of Lourdes Ambriz as Montezuma's long-suffering fiance Eupaforice, valiantly battling through some fiendish coloratura whilst being prodded with a stick. Lina Lpez' maid Erissena also sang well whilst Gabriel Garrido's baroque instrument Concerto Elyma stumbled through the rather homogenous score in the pit.

In the end, hounded by the (stagestruck) barking dog of Spanish war, it wasn't so much over when the fat lady sang - fat ladies weren't allowed in this production - as when the buff counter tenor swan-dived off his podium, holding the Mexican flag, whilst a sorry chorus of downtrodden, greed-fuelled Mexicans ransacked the orchestra.

More oppression in the Festival Theatre a few nights later with an infinitely more successful marriage of drama and choreography, courtesy of Opra de Lyon's Porgy And Bess, directed by the choreographic duo Jos Montalvo and Dominque Hervieu, familiar to festival goers who saw their 2007 dance work, On Danse.

In Gershwin's tale of love in a 1930s ghetto, Porgy, a crippled beggar - Derrick Lawrence zipping about in a wheelchair - is in love with Janice Chandler-Eteme's Bess, a troubled woman hooked on drug dealer Sportin' Life's 'Happy Dust' and the 'good life' offered by Gregg Baker's dangerous, violent, no-good Crown.

Montalvo-Hervieu largely overcame problems of uneven length and much-debated subject matter in an inventive, exuberant production that breathed very real life into Gershwin's Catfish Row. A key part of their success was the intermix of opera singers with dancers from Compagnie Montalvo-Hervieu and the Theatre National de Chaillot, whose fluid mix of crump and expressive choreography subtly fleshed out the action, as the inhabitants crowded in and out of the graffitied shacks under a vast video screen relaying and complementing stage action, alongside archive footage of 20th century race struggles, although the super-close ups of the cast occasionally distracted.

Of the cast, Lawrence's Porgy was memorable but occasionally quiet, Chandler-Eteme's Bess sounded lovely but a little indistinct. Both Andrea Baker's grief-struck Serena and Ronald Samm's boisterous Sportin' Life - giving a memorable It Aint' Necessarily So - were excellent.

If Bess is an anti-heroine in a segregated 'New' World, it was in the Usher Hall that the Old World worked over its sins courtesy of the second of the Cleveland Orchestra's Edinburgh concerts under music director Franz Welser-Mst Opening with the orchestral suite from Alban Berg's Lulu, the eponymous anti-heroine of his 1930s opera is Gershwin's Bess gone to seed - and then some. In a society gripped by lust and greed, Lulu seduces and discards her lovers, murdering or inciting them to suicide, before being murdered herself by Jack the Ripper. American soprano Laura Aikin was somewhat lost in the Usher Hall as the Cleveland ran at full pelt behind her, delicately dissecting and ravishing Berg's evocative orchestration.

But it was the second half Brahms that revealed the brilliance and odd dichotomy of the Clevelanders, in an elegant, rich performance of his 'pastoral' Symphony No. 2 that, despite its wonderfully handled nuances, barely furrowed its brow at the dark undertones.

Earlier in the week, the more mellow toned Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra offered a similar programme under chief conductor Sakari Oramo. The all-Wagner operatic vignettes included the Prelude from Die Meistersinger, the monologue from Der fliegende Hollnder, and Wotan's Farewell, from Die Walkre, the second opera in the Ring Cycle - followed by Carl Neilsen's redemptive Symphony No. 5.

Wagner's heros are real Old World stalwarts, their timeless familiarity a conglomeration of folk legend and mythology.

Soloist Juha Uusitalo didn't lack for power, but his wandering Dutchman didn't plumb the depths of horror and damnation, and his Wotan lacked nuance, whilst the Finnish Radio Symphony brooded in an occasionally scrappy, stodgy performance. The Neilsen fared better, its oscillating strings and adamant voices resolving into a broad finale that exploited the Finnish orchestra's fine tone.

Back across the sea again for one of the most satisfying Latin American accounts of the week, as Ensemble Elyma and Garrison Garrido redeemed their Montezuma with Fiesta Criolla, an instructive, upbeat, inherently dramatic if overlong recreation of a "typical", colonial, 17th century Bolivian Lady Day fiesta.

This article was first published in Scotland on Sunday, 22 August, 2010

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