Are You One With Landru?

Funny how life sometimes imitates Star Trek.

There’s a classic 1st season original Star Trek episode – The Return of the Archons.  Long story short – a planet locked in war turns their fate over to the philosopher Landru.  He builds a machine to manage the planet which rules for 6,000 years.  The inhabitants are kept in a quasi-zombie state, and they stalk around asking “are you of the Body?  Are you one with Landru?” At least they do until the Red Hour, when  at the striking of a gong someone screams “FESTIVAL!!!”  and the whole planet dissolves into an orgy of physical and sexual aggression, only to revert to their near zombie status an hour later.   The Enterprise crew promptly ignores the Prime Directive and liberates the planet.  The Red Hour would be Edinburgh in August.  The population of this city triples during the time of the two major festivals here, and let me tell you traffic is a real &*@#%.

But only here could you have a day like I had Thursday.  First thing I went over to the Festival Theatre to check out our temporary digs.  From the outside it’s a modern hall.  From the stage it’s a classic early 20th Century theatre.  This makes me nervous because what usually happens in this situation is that there’s an older run down hall that gets a major revamping.  Some ridiculously expensive plan is drawn up to completely renovate the place.  The only problem is that it costs way too much money, so they start paring things down.  Can’t disappoint the patrons, so the foyer gets a complete make-over.  Can’t have it looking bad inside, so the hall gets completely renovated.  Money starts running out.  We’ll do a few things to make the stage OK, but forget about modern set moving machinery.  The dressing rooms?  Who cares?

Sure enough the foyer is magnificent, the hall is beautiful, the stage is closer to rudimentary, and the “Conductor’s Suite” looks like it was designed in the early Alcatraz style, complete with concrete block walls, prison bed and a bathroom/shower that immediately makes one nervous about dropping the soap.  Won’t be spending a lot of time there.  Since the first rehearsal of the day is in the mid-afternoon I make a break for it and hit the bus.

1 Hour later I found myself in the little town of Rosslin where the famous Rosslyn Chapel resides.  If you are a fan of history, architecture, and/or the Knights Templar, to go to Edinburgh and not see Rosslyn Chapel would be a travesty of near biblical proportions.  This astounding building was built in the mid-15th Century by Sir William St. Clair and he went all out with it.  The carvings at Rosslyn are amongst the most amazing stone work found in the world, replete with angels, devils, dragons, musical instruments, and the famous Green Man.  It has recently seen a surge in interest due to the fact that it was used in that ridiculous dreck known as “The da Vinci Code.”

The chapel carvings are a source of great mystery.  The St. Clair’s had strong connections with the Knights Templar which is reflected throughout the stonework.  Some of the meanings of these carvings is lost to time and some present great mystery.  Clearly carved over a south window is a group of maize, while aloe vera shows up elsewhere in the chapel.  What’s the big deal, you may ask?  Well, keep in mind that maize and aloe vera are indigenous to the Western Hemisphere, but they appear in the carvings of a mid-15th Century chapel in Scotland several decades before Columbus supposedly “discovered” America.  This leads to all sorts of questions about the veracity of the stories of the Knights Templar journeying to the Americas in the 14th Century, along with various conspiracy theories about the location of The Holy Grail, The Arc of the Covenant, and the body of Jimmy Hoffa.  Whatever your proclivities there, Rosslyn Chapel should be on everyone’s no miss list.

Back to the Festival Theatre for the afternoon tech/piano rehearsal.  One of the major problems with taking an opera on tour is adapting to different stages.  Did I mention that the Festival Theatre’s stage is somewhat rudimentary?  The scrims and curtains are all manipulated by hand! Quaint, but definitely something that needs to be rehearsed.  The 3 hour rehearsal is taken up by making sure everyone knows that getting in the way of the set here could lead to a long and intimate discourse concerning the efficacy of the U.K. health system.  We all got out of there alive, and I took our pianist on a short tour of downtown Edinburgh.

Back, again, to the Festival Theatre for the evening rehearsal.  Now the orchestra is in place and we really must check acoustics and balances.  The pit here is much larger than the pit in Lyon, and the orchestra is thrust farther into the hall.  It’s a good acoustic but some changes in how we play must be made.  The new acoustic also makes certain co-ordination things quite different than in Lyon.  It’s a looooong 4 hours, and at the end we’re all exhausted.

It’s 11:30.  I need a beer.  Probably two.  Heading back to our digs on the south campus of the University I pop into a little pub I have previously found called The Reverie, just in time to catch the last set of a band in for the Fringe from Sydney called The Crooked Fiddle Band.  These kids were having WAY too much fun.  Bass, guitar, drums and violin, with a post-apocalyptic hoedown folk style with nods to jazz, King Crimson, multi-meters, and outright hilarity, I think they’re a band to watch.  I cornered the violinist, Jess Randall, and found out she studied at the music school in Sydney.  Not much of a surprise to me, because just watching here I could tell she had excellent classical training.  You don’t pick up a bow arm like that fiddling in the streets.

All in all an amazing day in Edinburgh.  Tonight, that being Friday, is our dress rehearsal.  Tomorrow, that being Saturday, we open up the Edinburgh Arts Festival 2010!  Wheeeeee!