For the first time in its history, the Edinburgh International Festival will this summer spend more than £10 million on its most spectacular programme for years. An inspiring bill was announced yesterday, with particularly strong theatre and classical music programmes, as Jonathan Mills, the festival director, reaped a huge dividend from the London Olympics.
Some of the most high-profile productions are linked directly to London 2012 and the Cultural Olympiad. These include versions of Macbeth and The Rape of Lucrece, produced under the auspices of the World Shakepeare Festival, and all three of the international theatre productions at Ingliston, a new drama hub sponsored by London 2012 Festival. Speed of Light, a dazzling show on Arthur’s Seat, is one of only four projects funded by the Legacy Trust UK, another offshoot of the Olympics.
Mr Mills was formerly the director of the Melbourne Festival, during the Sydney Olympics, an experience which made him alert to a chance to build both the festival audience and funding, during the Games. “Jonathan understood the opportunity long before I was appointed,” said Ruth Mackenzie, director of the London 2012 Festival, who has been in post for two years. “He was head and shoulders above cultural leaders throughout the UK. Others saw a threat; he saw an opportunity.”
Festival finances are complex. In recent years, ticket sales have accounted for roughly half the festival’s income, at about £4.5 million. In 2012, it will receive about £4.3 million in total grant aid from Edinburgh Council and Creative Scotland, and a share of the £3 million Expo Fund, established by the Scottish Government to assist 11 festivals in the city. Private and commercial sponsorship has also risen by 15 per cent this year, with one individual, Harold Mitchell, an Australian businessman, sponsoring the Mariinsky Ballet production of Profokiev’s Cinderella.
This largesse has allowed Mr Mills to take a daring artistic gamble, creating a new theatre hub eight miles from Edinburgh, at the Lowland Hall, Ingliston, better known as the setting for the Royal Highland Show.
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This August, instead of prize Highland cows, this vast hangar will host three productions, a brutal modern staging of Macbeth from Poland; a bizarre and witty Swiss-made sequel to My Fair Lady; and the French play of a silent movie, centred on a Jules Verne adventure.
While this enormous venue offered exciting artistic possibilities , it was not overblown, insisted Mr Mills. “Although it’s massive as an undertaking, it’s not extravagant,” he said. “It’s rough and ready, there is a real sense of entering a vast theatre laboratory and seeing fantastic, edgy, exciting work.”
The musical line-up includes Valery Gergiev conducting soloists such as Nicola Benedetti and Denis Matsuev and the London Symphony Orchestra, in the complete Szymanowski and Brahms symphonies at the Usher Hall, as well as concerts by the Cleveland Orchestra, the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, the London Philharmonic and European Union Youth Orchestra, among many others. The 50th anniversary of Scottish Opera is celebrated with a Scottish premiere of James MacMillan’s Clemency, alongside three new operas, which have combined talents of composers and authors.
“This is a festival to lift the spirits, to allow your imagination to take flight, to encourage you to so,” said Mr Mills. “We have attempted to embed our values and reconnect with them in a very profound way, right back to the first Edinburgh festival in 1947.”
Don’t miss: five hot tickets
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A Mass of Life The opening concert is Delius’s glorious choral celebration of mankind’s spirit. Performed by the RSNO under Sir Andrew Davies. August 10, Usher Hall.
Gulliver’s Travels performed by Radu Stanca National Theatre of Sibiu, Romania. Director Silviu Purcarete returns to Edinburgh for the first time since his triumphant Faust. From August 17, King’s Theatre.
The Rape of Lucrece RSC. A terrible tale of lust, rape and politics, performed by Camille O’Sullivan. From August 22, Royal Lyceum Theatre.
Hora marks Batsheva Dance Company’s return to the festival, with a thrilling production, choreographed by Ohad Naharin, to a sound track that blends Wagner and Debussy with the Star Wars soundtrack. From August 30, Playhouse.
The Makropulos Case A row over a contested will becomes an operatic meditation on everlasting life, in Janacek’s most haunting piece, performed by Opera North. From August 11, Festival Theatre
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Three into one does go for giant theatre hub
The cavernous Lowland Hall at the Royal Highland Centre is to be used as a theatre hub for the Edinburgh International Festival.
The 4,200sq m venue has been used by the festival before — for Peter Stein’s 1993 production of Julius Caesar, and three years ago it staged a memorable Faust — but festival organisers are charting new territory this year as they host three productions side by side within the same building.
The sheer scale of the venue makes almost anything possible, said John Robb, festival head of technical services, as if the extraordinary design of the interlocking stage sets was simplicity itself.
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The first unit to be constructed will be the central stage, where Ariane Mnouchkine will direct Les Naufragés du Fol Espoir (Aurores). Set in a dance hall on the eve of the First World War, the action revolves around a young, idealistic director who is making a silent film of a Jules Verne adventure. The upshot, said Jonathan Mills, the festival director, was a performance which “mixes D. W. Griffith with Cecil B. DeMille”.
This initial part of the structure will take ten days to build — but after a week, work on the second stage will begin. This is the box that will house Meine faire Dame — ein Sprachlabor (My Fair Lady — A Speech Laboratory), created by Theater Basel as a bizarre sequel to Pygmalion.
Two weeks into the build process, the third, monumental, house-high set will be constructed for 2008: Macbeth, Grzegorz Jarzyna’s brutal modern take on Shakespeare. It had been one of the most challenging parts of the design, said Mr Robb, requiring extraordinary attention to detail to ensure that the public seating allowed views into every part of the set.