Opera Scotland

Capriccio 2024Edinburgh International Festival

Read more about the opera Capriccio

The closing concert at the 2024 Edinburgh International Festival was an event to anticipate with the greatest pleasure.  It is twenty years since the Festival previously gave Capriccio in concert, with luminaries such as Soile Isokoski (Countess), Christopher Maltman (Olivier), Anne Sophie von Otter (Clairon) and none other than Jonas Kaufmann as Flamand leading a superb cast.  A staging imported in 2007 does not stick in the memory to such an extent.

This performance was to have been conducted by Sir Andrew Davis, who led a whole series of Strauss operas when he worked at Glyndebourne early in his career.  It seems that this late masterpiece was the first opera that he ever conducted. Sadly, his death on 20 April prevented us from hearing his mature view of the piece.  The performance was dedicated to his memory and was led by Alexander Soddy, a young English conductor who has been working successfully in Germany and Austria.  He had just had a great success at Covent Garden, conducting Così fan tutte.  Whether he had previous experience with the Strauss work in Klagenfurt, Hamburg or Mannheim is not clear, but he certainly drew a beautiful interpretation from the orchestra.

The cast was led by the wonderful Swedish soprano Malin Byström, last heard here a couple of Festivals ago, as Salome. There cannot be many sopranos with the technique to give such convincing interpretations of two completely different Strauss characters.  This work was reminiscent of a wonderful Swedish soprno of an earlier generation, Elisabeth Söderström.  She once gave a memorable interpretation of the Countess at Glyndebourne, which was televised (and on which Andrew Davis must have worked as a youngster).

The excellent Danish baritone Bo Skovhus played her brother, a delightful characterisation of a slightly raffish lounge lizard.  A few years ago Dame Sarah Connolly appeared with Scottish Opera as Octavian in Der Rosenkavaler.  It was luxury casting to have her in the part of the flirtatious actress Clairon.

Peter Rose sang Ochs in an earlier run of Sir David McVicar's staging, before launching his international career, and is still clearly on excellent form.  The rival suitors were very well taken by tenor Sebastian Kohlhepp and baritone Stephen Marsh (even if they didn't quite extinguish memories of Kaufmann and Maltman).  The brief but important role of the major-domo was an excellent vehicle for the experienced bass Reinhard Hagen.

The orchestra was of particular interest this time.  The Philharmonia was established some seventy years ago by the impresario Walter Legge, with the purpose of making great recordings of operas and operettas as well as orchestral and choral music (Mrs Legge, who sang in many of those recordings, was the soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf).  The musicians' quality at that time is still recognised today - the principal horn was Dennis Brain.  Their records included Tristan und Isolde (under Furtwängler) and Der Rosenkavalier (under Karajan).  Capriccio followed these in 1957, conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch, with a miraculous cast including Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (Countess), Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (Count), Nicolai Gedda (Flamand), Eberhard Wächter (Olivier), Christa Ludwig (Clairon) and Hans Hotter (La Roche).  For many years after no other recording companies bothered to compete.  Has the orchestra ever played this music since?

During its three day residency the Philharmonia also played the night before for Verdi's Messa da Requiem, which it recorded in 1963 and played memorably at the 1969 Festival, both under the great Carlo Maria Giulini.

A regrettable feature of the evening was something completely beyond the control of Festival management.  Aware that public transport still tends to shut down early on Sundays, they scheduled this Capriccio with a 6pm start.  With final trains often before 10pm this still allowed plenty of time for patrons to reach Waverley or Haymarket stations after the concert.  Sadly, the problem that blighted the entire Festival - industrial action (essentially an overtime ban) by the train drivers' union ASLEF, meant that Scotrail management introduced a new timetable for the duration, ostensibly in order to avoid cancellations.  Thus the final departure for Cupar, Leuchars (St Andrews) and Dundee was at 6.30, making any attendance by patrons who had bought their tickets months before essentially impossible.  Fortunately, many visitors to the city had left earlier in the day, making some accommodation available. As it was, a significant number of ticket holders, having decided to hear as much of this rarity as they could, began to leave before the performance had been going for an hour.  Most succeeded in doing this in comparative silence, but it was all highly reminiscent of what was standard practice for provincial opera-goers up until thirty years ago when late trains were introduced.  Very frustrating.