Belshazzar's Feast 1979Edinburgh International Festival
Read more about the opera Belshazzar's Feast
Walton's roof-raising cantata is the perfect festival piece for the Festival Chorus to get its teeth into from time to time. Here the guest orchestra was the Hallé under its Scottish conductor James Loughran. He had inherited the top job after the death of Sir John Barbirolli a few years previously.
The soloist was the Cornish baritone Benjamin Luxon, an urbane and popular figure in most of the British opera houses, including Scottish Opera and the English Opera Group (with whom he had created the title-role in Britten's TV opera Owen Wingrave).
Belshazzar does not take up a complete evening and what to precede it with can be problematical. On this occasion the complete contrast of Beethoven's 7th Symphony was an effective contrast.
