Festival Music
HMS Pinafore
Usher Hall
Keith Bruce
Four stars
Listening to one of the brass bands performing outdoors across Edinburgh as part of the International Festival’s Fanfare outreach project on a glorious Sunday afternoon was perhaps the perfect preparation for an early evening concert performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s early hit comic operetta. If ticket sales for its original run in 1878 were affected by a heat wave that kept Londoners out of the theatres, the weather was no deterrent to the capacity house in Edinburgh.
Tim Brooke-Taylor supplied the punning narration and a few period details – mostly of the wit of W S Gilbert – to link the songs, and Richard Egarr’s crisp approach to Sullivan’s score was rewarded by some fine playing and singing by the Orchestra of Scottish Opera and the chorus. In G&S the chorus are exactly that, commenting on the action, and often have some of the funniest lines even – especially – when they are repetitions, and the three dozen singers were as articulate as they were musical.
That could also be said for the front line, a cast of British singers perfectly matched to their roles, the size difference between Hilary Summers as Little Buttercup, in an appropriately-coloured dress, and Andrew Foster-Williams as Captain Corcoran adding to the humour. Her glorious dark alto was part of a lovely range of voices, with Elizabeth Watts supplying the soaring top notes as Josephine and Toby Spence a very playful, light-toned but powerful Ralph Rackstraw.
Gilbert’s satirical swipe at Whitehall with Sir John Porter, the desk-bound First Lord of the Admiralty, still rings as true today, as Brooke-Taylor observed, and John Mark Ainsley gave the character all the pomposity his epaulettes deserved.
Sponsored by Capital Document Solutions
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here