Opera Scotland

Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda 2017Edinburgh International Festival

Read more about the opera Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda

2017 being the 70th year of the Edinburgh International Festival, the opera programme was a celebratory one with a distinctly expanded line-up of nine works.

There were three further events, not part of the opera programme, but which should be highlighted.  The gloriously dramatic Damnation of Faust by Berlioz was performed by Mark Elder and the Hallé, while the Festival continued its exploration of rare Elgar with a revival of the cantata King Olaf. No Festival visit is complete without enjoying a morning concert at the Queen's Hall. Here, on the first Saturday, there was a performance by John Butt's Dunedin Consort of Monteverdi's brief experimental drama Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda in a recently discovered German translation now attributed to Heinrich Schütz. This fitted in beautifully as a prelude to the series of performances of the three full-length Monteverdi operas led by John Eliot Gardiner later in the Festival.