Moments of despair

The Edinburgh International Festival got off to a shaky start this year. As usual, there was a large-scale orchestral and vocal work in the Usher Hall, but whereas it has normally been a choral blockbuster, this was Bernstein’s Candide, in a narrated version, with Thomas Allen doubling, or trebling, as Narrator and Pangloss and Martin. In the former role he repeated his urbane performance at the Festival Hall of two years ago, with many a nod and wink, and an overall tone of self-congratulation. His singing is now dry but of course supremely accomplished, more so than almost anyone else’s. Matthew Polenzani was a weedy Candide, Laura Aikin had little tone as Cunégonde, and Kathryn Harries seemed to be in shocking decline as the Old Lady. Still, there were affecting moments, above all Candide’s ‘It must be so’, which momentarily persuaded me that the work is not all synthetic.

Robert Spano conducted with the proper vigour, and the Festival Chorus and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, having been urged by the new Festival director Jonathan Mills to perform ‘Happy birthday to us’, obliged sheepishly before giving their all to this thin and increasingly barren work, which can appeal in Act 1 but has nothing new to deliver in Act 2. In any case, an opera about the folly of optimism is at best an equivocal way for a new regime to launch itself with.

The festival is themed, Orpheus being the subject. But his first outing the next evening in the Festival Theatre was depressing. Jordi Savall strode through the stalls in a billowing academic gown, and the players were dressed similarly. The scenery was attractive, with Styrofoam clouds and a Claude-style landscape, but the orchestra, though it produced attractive and sometimes weird sounds, was induced to play lumpily, draggingly, making Monteverdi’s passionate and compressed work seem to amble on for ever.