Previews: EIF Opera

Feature by Sarah Hardie | 15 Jul 2010

Porgy and Bess

Can flamboyant, sensual art and an exploration of slavery ever sit comfortably together in a production? EIF director, Jonathan Mills, clearly believes so, choosing Opera de Lyon’s production of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess as the highlight of this year's festival. Promising a contemporary take on the 1935 opera, it will incorporate both video-installation art and urban dance from the Compagnie Montalvo-Hervieu and Théâtre National de Chaillot. Blurring the lines between these genres, joint directors, José Montalvo—who brought On Danse to the EIF in 2007—and Dominique Hervieu are set to shed new world light on the injustices of the old world.

Montezuma

Written in 1755, more than 200 years after the tragedy that it explores, Carl Heinrich Graun's rarely-performed opera Montezuma details the subjugation of the Aztec people and their ancient culture by Spanish colonisers. Beautifully gilded temples and palaces form the backcloth to a discussion of the dilemmas of leadership – why, for instance, did General Cortes see fit to destroy a whole people, and why did the Aztec King allow him? In the hands of Claudio Valdés Kuri, the result couldn't be more pertinent to the EIF's New Worlds theme; a imaginative collaboration between a modern day Mexican director, a 18th century German writer and his forward-thinking royal patron, with theatre companies from the UK, Mexico and Spain.

Idomeneo

Apart from gifting us the amazing spectacle that is watching an 84 year old dominate the floor—the legendary conductor Sir Charles Mackerras, who made his festival debut 56 years ago—Mozart’s Idomeneo, set in the aftermath of the Trojan war, also returns Joyce DiDonato, a favourite of the Festival in 2009, to Edinburgh this August.

Rarely performed due to the virtuosic demands it makes of the singers, Idomeneo explores the aftermath of the Trojan War: Cretan world meets Trojan world.

As much as anything on the EIF bill this year, Idomeneo looks set not just to pose problems about the New and Old Worlds’ co-existence, but to suggest some kind of resolution. It promises to do so beautifully.

Porgy & Bess
Festival Theatre 
14-17 Aug, 7.15pm, £14-£64

Montezuma
King's Theatre
14-17 Aug, 7.15pm, £12-£35

Idomeneo
Usher Hall 
20th Aug, 7pm, £10-£40