The new director of the Edinburgh International Festival, Jonathan Mills, has just announced his plans for this year's programme. From the classical music point of view it promises to be as ambitious and varied an event as is traditional, marrying musical works to their ideal performers in many cases. Running from 10 August to 2 September 2007, the Festival starts two days earlier than has normally been the case in the past, thereby allowing an extra weekend of concerts which will bring in thousands of extra visitors to the event.
Opera plays as important a role in the festivities as ever, with complete performances of works by Bernstein, Monteverdi, Strauss, Vivaldi, Stravinsky, Salieri and Purcell offering an eclectic mix of the familiar and unfamiliar.
Bernstein's Candide opens the festival on 10 August with an irresistible concert performance starring Sir Thomas Allen as Dr Pangloss. A staged production of Monteverdi's Orfeo is performed three times on 11, 13 and 14 August in the Edinburgh Festival Theatre; Jordi Savall brings his period instrument orchestra Hesperion XXI and choir La Capella Reial de Catalunya (who also sing Monteverdi's Vespers on 16 August) for this special restaging of a production that was first seen in Barcelona in 2002.
The highlight for me will be a concert performance of Vivaldi's wonderful opera Orlando Furioso with a great cast headed by mezzo Jennifer Larmore; see this for proof that Handel was not the only opera composer of the period with a sense of drama and character (12 August). Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts and two ex-Royal Opera Young Artists, Matthew Rose and Andrew Kennedy, take on Stravinsky's Orpheus and Oedipus Rex on 23 August, while Roderick Williams brings his special artistry to an intriguing double bill of Purcell's evergreen Dido and Aeneas and Salieri's Prima la musica, poi le parole on 26 August.
Salieri's opera involves a debate between a composer and a librettist of which comes first when writing an opera, the words or the music? This neatly foreshadows the other big staged opera of the season, Richard Strauss' Capriccio (which addresses the same theme) starring soprano Gabriele Fontana, on 28 and 30 August and 1 September. The production is brand new and is being presented by the Cologne Opera.
The vocal delights continue with a number of concerts featuring important singers. Ahead of her return to Covent Garden in Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos next year, American soprano Deborah Voigt sings the same composer's final scene from Salome as part of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra's two-day visit with Michael Tilson Thomas (which also includes music by Tchaikovsky, Copland, Mahler and Prokofiev, 29-30 August). Soprano Christine Brewer makes two appearances: in a recital of Lieder by Britten, Strauss and Berg (28 August) and, more intriguingly, in a concert celebrating Poulenc's music that includes highlights from his opera Dialogues of the Carmelites (1 September).
Countertenor Andreas Scholl sings Vivaldi's Stabat Mater on 24 August, while Ian Bostridge, Katherine Fuge and Matthew Rose join Sir Roger Norrington for Hadyn's Creation on 20 August. Toby Spence sings Berlioz's Les nuits d'été as part of a two-day visit by Thomas Adès and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe (13-14 August), while other highlights include selections from all eight books of Monteverdi's madrigals (11-17 August), a series of concerts celebrating early vocal music (20 August-1 September), and a concert of duets with soprano Kate Royal and mezzo Christine Rice (who we recently interviewed, click here).
The best of the orchestral concerts promise to be those given by Mariss Jansons with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra on 27 and 28 August; the attractive programming includes Sibelius' Symphony No 2 and Shostakovich's Symphony No 5. On 21 August, Markus Stenz brings the Gürzenich Orchestra for a concert that includes Richard Strauss' Till Eulenspiegel (which was originally written for this orchestra) and Neeme Järvi conducts the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in works by Sibelius, de Falla and Elgar (11 August).
Other concerts of interest include a recital by the insightful Alfred Brendel on 15 August, another by Dame Evelyn Glennie on 18 August, and an interesting programme given by viola player Yuri Bashmet on 24 August.
In all, there must be a hundred reasons to head over the border for this year's festival; why not give it a try?