Latest news with #OrpheusandEurydice
Scotsman
01-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Why Edinburgh International Festival is unique, fantastic
Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... In November 1945, not long after the end of the Second World War, The Scotsman revealed plans were being drawn up for a music and drama festival in Edinburgh. 'Not only will the projected event probably be the first great post-war international art assembly in Europe but it will certainly be the first of its scope and importance to be held in Britain,' we reported. Two years later, the first Edinburgh International Festival was held, with a founding vision to 'reunite people through great art'. As the world's biggest and best arts festival gets underway, we should remember how it all started. Its ethos is just as important now as it was then. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Artists of the Circa and Opera Australia ensembles take part in a dress rehearsal of Orpheus and Eurydice | Keith Saunders However, this is not a time to be maudlin, it is a time to celebrate humanity at its finest. This year will see more than 2,000 artists from 42 nations put on 133 performances, including opera Orpheus and Eurydice, Scottish Ballet's Mary, Queen of Scots, in which the Renaissance meets punk meets haute couture, and Holst's The Planets, performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Scotsman
31-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Edinburgh International Festival 2025 preview supplement: e-mag
In a post-truth world, art still has the power to communicate timeless truths, writes Roger Cox Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... To read the 2025 Edinburgh International Festival preview supplement, click here The theme of this year's Edinburgh International Festival is 'The Truth We Seek', and given the current state of our post-truth world, it could hardly be more timely. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Of course, an arts festival can't fix our broken public discourse overnight, but what it can do is invite us to reflect on the concept of truth on a deeper level, and perhaps in doing so, equip us to better navigate our increasingly compromised and complicated information space. EIF director Nicola Benedetti has spoken about the way in which the arts can 'take us into realms of timeless truths that are more nuanced and precise than literal fact', and there are certainly some good examples of this in the shows previewed in this supplement. In their production Figures in Extinction, for example, previewed by our dance critic Kelly Apter on pages 5-6 of our EIF preview supplement, Simon McBurney and Crystal Pite explore some difficult truths about the ways in which humanity has become increasingly disconnected from the natural world. In a similar vein, in Works and Days – previewed by our theatre critic Joyce McMillan on pages 7-8 – the FC Bergman collective of Antwerp transport us back to a time when most humans still survived through a communal process of working the land, thereby forcing us to confront the extent to which we have now become cut off from the natural rhythms of nature, and from each other. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Meanwhile, speaking to our classical music critic Ken Walton, Yaron Lifschitz explains how he went about creating a radical, circus-inspired reimagining of Gluck's opera Orpheus and Eurydice by finding his own version of the universal truths at the heart of the tale.
Scotsman
30-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
EIF opera Orpheus and Eurydice to feature 'acrobats doing very dangerous things'
If you think opera staging is mannered and boring, wait until you see this production of Orpheus and Eurydice, writes Ken Walton Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Yaron Lifschitz has serious issues with opera. 'Some of it is excruciating,' he declares, which you'd reckon should worry the pants off the Edinburgh International Festival. After all, the affable founder and director of the Australian contemporary circus group Circa is the mastermind behind this year's flagship opera production of Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice, and here he is, revealing his 'dirty secret – that I've no knowledge of Debussy past 20 minutes of Pelléas et Mélisande because I've never remained awake long enough to hear it. I get bored very easily.' The thing is, it's not so much opera that's the problem as its mannered traditions, Lifschitz argues. 'Opera at its core is a covers band, people doing other people's music, singing in a way they were told to sing, about stuff they were told to do with a great apparatus and significant amount of funding, devoted to essentially keeping the art fairly sclerotic, inured to change. It's not the operas that are boring, but the lack of compelling ways to do them.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Orpheus and Eurydice Received wisdom, he suggests, has stifled instinct. 'I love working on Monteverdi, for instance, and one of the things I used to ask was, how could there be a set way of singing this if it was the first of its kind? Back in the 17th century it would just have been people who sang as they felt inclined, so maybe we should just go back to that rather than everyone sounding like they went to the same academy for stifling joy and creativity. I have to say I was howled down by a bunch of people who'd been to that academy and in some cases ran it.' So yes, Lifschitz is a maverick, an inquisitive free spirit who has nonetheless proved his worth in imaginative cross-genre productions that challenge the norm, including this collaborative Orpheus and Eurydice. Unveiled in Brisbane in 2019, this summer's European premiere production at the Edinburgh Playhouse draws together the original combined resources of Circa and Opera Queensland with Opera Australia, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Scottish Opera Chorus, conducted by period music specialist Laurence Cummings. That Gluck himself was a reforming phenomenon, freeing 18th century opera of its stilted affectations and even adapting his most famous opera to suit opposing Viennese and Parisian tastes, clearly appealed to Lifschitz, and needless to say, he's taken brazen liberties. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The traditional frontline cast of three has been reduced to two, the role of Eurydice (Australian/British soprano Samantha Clarke) now conflated with that of Amor. The first sighting of Orpheus (countertenor Iestyn Davies) is in an asylum. 'My basic interpretation of the piece is that on their wedding night Eurydice dies, possibly at Orpheus's hands,' Lifschitz explains. Orpheus and Eurydice 'I'm not suggesting any ill will. Maybe they took the wrong substances to celebrate their wedding night; he wakes up in a mental institution and has no recollection of what happened. It becomes a process of memory, journeying into the Underworld. Every woman looks like her, every man is an extension of him and it probably doesn't end well. I don't want to give a spoiler, but it's opera: generally she dies, and he might.' What then of Circa's circus performers, whose virtuosic acrobatics – devised jointly by Lifschitz and fellow choreographer Bridie Hooper – provide an aligned counterpoint to the entire piece? They are, says the director, essential to his 'poetic' vision of the opera, part of 'a constant play with foregrounding and backgrounding' that respects both the polished classicism of Gluck's piece and its emotional volatility, 'that mixture of hope and fear that reminds us we're alive'. 'Working with the artists back in Brisbane on the physical embodiment of the production, the thing I keep coming back to is you have to feel a lot and show very little. Sometimes it just oozes out, sometimes the floodgates open and explode into acrobatics, but then it very quickly turns back into its classical form.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Of course, that's just the circus contingent. Is Lifschitz also expecting his singing cast to turn cartwheels? Opera Australia; Orpheus + Eurydice; Dress Rehearsal; JST; January 2024 'We're putting very experienced opera singers in fairly uncomfortable and difficult positions, very close to acrobats doing very complex and dangerous things,' he admits. How does that go down with Iestyn Davies, appearing in his first ever staged Orpheus? 'I've watched a video of the original production and know that late on in the show I have to stand on someone's shoulders,' says the English countertenor, who will eventually join the troupe for a final nine days of rehearsal. 'The biggest challenge for any singer in such a physical show is getting the breathing worked out.' Working with new people is healthy for the production, Lifschitz believes. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Every staging is different. They're all based on the same choreography, the same ideas, but when only half the artists have performed this production before – as in Edinburgh – you use that opportunity to freshen things up.' Is there one thing he'd like audiences to take away from this Orpheus? 'That's something I've thought about very carefully,' he says. 'Circa brings a show to the Fringe every year – this year we're bringing Wolf – and we have a specific following. But for an International Festival production like this I feel we have to appeal to two different audiences simultaneously. 'I'd like an opera audience to come along and think 'Wow, this is so alive', where the operatic norms of music meeting dramaturgy exceed and challenge expectations. And I'd love circus audiences to go and sense that this is richer, touches bigger emotions, moves them even more profoundly than straight circus. I want everyone to walk out of the performance at the end of the day and think it would be difficult to figure this opera any other way. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad And the litmus test? 'Circus is written with one huge commandment – Thou Shalt Not Bore! When you come out of Orpheus you may love it, you may hate it, but you won't be bored.'
San Francisco Chronicle
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale appoints new music director
For only the fourth time in more than four decades, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale is passing the baton to a new music director. Irish conductor Peter Whelan is poised to take the role for a three-year term starting next July for the 2026-27 season, which marks the company's 45th anniversary. He steps in for Richard Egarr, who resigned after four years in 2024 to pursue new opportunities. 'I'm just so excited to be starting this new adventure,' Whelan told the Chronicle. 'I think the most important thing nowadays is building a community around the arts and that community is already there in San Francisco.' Whelan has been highly regarded for the way in which he breathes new life into early music, bringing a vibrant perspective to the works. He made his first appearance with Philharmonia in March, conducting Handel's 'Alceste,' and debuted with the San Francisco Opera in 2022, helming Gluck's ' Orpheus and Eurydice.' The Chronicle's longtime classical music critic, Joshua Kosman, who retired last year, once praised Whelan as 'an artist of delicate but unmistakable mastery.' 'Peter brings a rare combination of historical insight and creative energy that resonates deeply with our mission,' said Emma Moon, Philharmonia's executive director and CEO. 'His work with us on 'Alceste' was both masterful and inspiring. We're excited to embark on this new chapter with him at the artistic helm.' Whelan studied at the Royal Irish Academy of Music and Trinity College Dublin, and has an extensive discography as a solo bassoonist in addition to his work as a conductor. In 2022, he won a Laurence Olivier Award for outstanding achievement in opera for a production of Vivaldi's 'Bajazet' with Irish National Opera. Whelan currently serves as artistic director of Irish Baroque Orchestra and founding artistic director of Ensemble Marsyas, both based in the U.K. He plans to initially remain there and travel to San Francisco for rehearsals, concerts and other engagements. He said that he hopes by bringing his expertise to Philharmonia that he'll be able to foster an environment of inclusivity and community. 'Live concerts and live music making is a place where you can confront biases, you can see how other people feel,' he noted. 'I think that that's such an important thing in the world today.' Before heading across the pond, however, Whelan is set to make his conducting debut at BBC Proms, an eight-week classical music festival, in August with a performance of Handel's 'Alexander's Feast' alongside the Irish Baroque Orchestra. The milestone performance will mark the ensemble's first Prom appearance and the second time in more than 100 years that an Irish orchestra has performed during the series. Correction: A previous version of this story misstated where Whelan will be living when he begins his new position. He will remain based in the U.K. and travel to San Francisco regularly for the job.
