Opera Scotland

Edinburgh International Festival

Posted 12 Mar 2013

The programme for the Edinburgh International Festival 2013 has been announced, and it offers opera lovers six evenings of staged performances.  Opéra de Lyon are presenting Beethoven's Fidelio for two nights.  This opera production is the first by pioneering media artist Gary Hill, the story unfolding on the spaceship Aniara as it hurtles through space.  This is a reference back to the 1959 Festival, when the Stockholm Opera brought a new science-fiction based piece, Blomdahl's Aniara. Oper Frankfurt are staging two performances of a double bill, Purcell's Dido and Aeneas and Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle (pictured).  These are all at the Festival Theatre.  At the King's Theatre,  the final Festival offering is a co-production between the Opera Group, Scottish Opera, Bregenzer Festspiele and Young Vic in association with the London Sinfonietta.  A new version of Alban Berg's Lulu titled American Lulu, has been composed and re-orchestrated by Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth. The action is set in the Deep South against the backdrop of the civil rights struggles.

In recent years, there have been some excellent concert performances of operas in the Usher Hall, but sadly nothing is on offer for the opera-minded in this year's programme.