So another Festival is over.
It was my 46th and I particularly enjoyed the wonderful Queen's Hall and Usher Hall concerts. The opera was yet again a major disappointment. As one critic said, "Edinburgh can no longer claim to be a festival of international repute as far as opera is concerned."
Jonathan Mills attempted to tweak our noses in Scotland by reminding us how British we are by opening and closing the Festival with English choral works, which were frankly underwhelming. I recall better days in 1978, when the Festival opened with what is now acknowledged to be the greatest ever recording of the Verdi Requiem with Claudio Abbado conducting and Jesse Norman, Margaret Price, Jose Carreras and Ruggero Raimondi singing. It seems very unlikely the current Festival director Jonathan Mills would have put this on, if you look at his opening concerts.
Mr Mills departs in 2014, the year of the referendum. He has displayed little interest in Scottish culture and music. I have a novel suggestion: let us have a Scottish director of the Festival, which is meant to showcase Scottish culture as well as be open to international influences.
Hugh Kerr,
23 Braehead Avenue,
Edinburgh.
On Wednesday, August 29, the opening day of the Paralympic Games, I was very disappointed to find the inclusion which the games are trying to encourage was somewhat lacking in our capital city. I wanted to visit the Van Gogh To Kandinsky exhibition at the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh but was unable to do so because the lift which I, a wheelchair user, needed was out of order.
Sandra Rowlands,
100 Curling Crescent,
Glasgow.
Catriona Stewart is unhappy about her recent cinema visits – expensive tickets and food, leaked sound from neighbouring screens and "crabbit staff" ("When the lights go down the imbeciles come out", The Herald, September 1).
Time for her to get along to a real cinema: the former Cosmo, now the Glasgow Film Theatre, or GFT. Here she will not have to contend with the nauseating, sickly odours from overpriced popcorn and hot dogs either in the foyer or during the screening of films. Welcoming staff, comfortable affordable seats and a very limited screen time devoted to advertisements. The cinema experience there will still be familiar to those such as myself who well remember the antics of Jacques Tati in Monsieur Hulot's Holiday.
I have no recollection of anyone having to be carried from the cinema due to lack of nourishment at that time.
Malcolm Allan,
2 Tofthill Gardens,
Bishopbriggs.
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