YEAR after year it is the summer blockbuster of the performing arts world. So the overture of the Edinburgh International Festival has hit just the right note.
Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic – one of the planet’s in-form and must-see conductors and orchestras – will play soundtracks from the movies we all love at Tynecastle Park.
Unable to tour with his other great band, Simon Bolivar from his native but troubled Venezuela, Dudamel comes fresh to Edinburgh from a triumphant outdoor performance of Gustav Mahler’s Resurrection at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.
He will take the same symphony indoors to the Usher Halls on Saturday, but his Edinburgh residency kicks off tomorrow night in front of a crowd of 15,000 at the home of Hearts with 90 minutes of music from Star Wars, Harry Potter and ET aimed at all the family.
Securing Dudamel shows the EIF, in its 73rd year, still has what it takes to lure the big acts even as Edinburgh is mobbed with the Fringe and all the other festivals.
Festival director Fergus Linehan, said: “The eve of Edinburgh’s festival season is a very special time. The world’s great orchestras rehearse in school halls and churches, tents pop up in every square, the Tattoo rehearsals blast out into the night sky and flats and hotel rooms fill up with performers who are both at the very top of their career and those who are taking their tentative first steps.
“The artists are the real heroes of our festivals. So to the pipers, the dancers, the actors, the poets, the playwrights, the novelists, the painters, the sculptors, the directors, the choreographers, the acrobats, the comedians, the designers, the conductors, the singers and the players – thank you for making Edinburgh the only place I ever want to be in August.”
The festival programme very much puts the “I” in the International, into the EIF.
A total of 2,800 artists are arriving from 41 countries, including Australia, Nigeria, Canada, Belgium, China, Mali, Holland, South Africa, France, Germany and India as well as 800 artists from Scotland.
The programme features 155 events, with 293 performances, attracting audiences from 80 countries to see the world’s greatest performing arts festival.
Aside from the LA Phil, highlights include Peter Gynt, a raucous new work starring Scotland’s rising star James McArdle co-produced with the National Theatre of Great Britain; and Sydney Theatre Company’s first visit to Edinburgh with the multi award-winning staging of Kate Grenville’s novel The Secret River, which takes an unflinching look at Australia’s dark history.
Two of Berlin’s opera houses return to Edinburgh: Komische Oper Berlin with Tchaikovsky’s best-loved opera Eugene Onegin, created by the company’s Director Barrie Kosky, and Scottish conductor Donald Runnicles leads the orchestra and chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin in a concert version of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut.
Leonard Bernstein’s revelatory West Side Story brings together a young and diverse cast of singers from America and Scotland, including members of the National Youth Choir of Scotland and a hand-picked selection of students from music schools in Chicago, Baltimore and New York.
In a work of unimaginable scale and artistry, Sir Andrew Davis and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra reunite with an international cast of soloists to conclude the festival’s four-year Ring cycle with Gotterdammerung.
Scottish Ballet celebrates its 50th anniversary with a world premiere of
The Crucible based on the Arthur Miller play and with a new version of Stravinsky’s Rite Of Spring.
All of Scotland’s national companies contribute to 2019’s programme, including the National Theatre of Scotland with Jackie Kay’s Red Dust Road and the European premiere of Missy Mazzoli’s Breaking the Waves by Scottish Opera, based on the Lars von Trier film.
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