Operatic tragedy

Tim Cornwell is, unfortunately, only too right to lambast the standard of opera at this year's Festival - the flashy but musically feeble Porgy and Bess and the totally grotty Montezuma (your report, 19 August).

But this is only the culmination of a deliberately destructive trend. To me as a music critic, Edinburgh seems increasingly provincial compared with the foreign festivals I attend, and most of all in its opera - or lack of it.

Our past two or three Festival directors have practically vied with one another in doing down opera, struttingly proud of making it an increasingly token presence, importing minor works inflated by trendy productions, or diluted with dance la Mark Morris.

Large-scale core works such as Lohengrin, though not to be heard in Scotland otherwise, are increasingly edged out to the concert platform - even when, as with this year's Fanciulla del West, they lose half their effect without their dramatic context.

Thirty years ago we were told we couldn't have major productions because Edinburgh hadn't provided a decent theatre; yet in the Kings, cramped as it was, we managed to present a string of prestigious international companies, Scottish Opera at its height, and Festival-grown stagings such as a Marriage of Figaro with an excellent cast and Daniel Barenboim conducting.

Now we have a first-rate Festival Theatre, which provided a splendid venue for the Kirov/Maryinsky, no less, but has since housed a cascade of increasing mediocrity. Yet opera now is a far more popular, less elite-ridden artform than it was then - and, as festivals from Verona to Savonlinna demonstrate, a burgeoningly lucrative tourist attraction. It's not, please note, a matter of money, although inverted snobs will inevitably grind on about that. Duff productions cost just as much as - or more than - good ones.

Glyndebourne does ten times as well as Edinburgh; we could stand to ride on its coattails again, even save money by taking in its touring productions.

But Mr Cornwell's call for real, solid Festival-grown stagings is the right one, not least because these can go on paying for themselves through media releases, and on loan to other companies. But that will only happen if they're genuinely special.

Michael Scott Rohan

Learmonth Terrace

Edinburgh