The Red Hour

The Red Hour has struck, and the 2010 Edinburgh International Arts Festival is open!!! Time to lick my wounds.

It has happened.  Porgy has taken over Edinburgh.  Not without a fight, though.

Friday was an interesting day.  I had lunch with Serge Dorny, the head of Opera Lyon.  Serge is a mover/shaker/candlestick maker who has had his fingers in the music business for years.  He started off turning around the LPO in the ’90s, a job of near biblical proportions.  None-the-less, he was successful, and then he moved on to Lyon.  I’d tell you about all the secrets we discussed but then I’d have to kill you.

The General Dress Rehearsal was Friday night.  There’s an old adage which says a bad dress rehearsal leads to a good concert.  For some reason we thought we’d put it to the test.  The rehearsal was frustrating to me in the extreme.  I don’t know whether it was the different acoustic, or the “familiarity breeds contempt” thing, or whether Venus was suddenly in the 4th house, but it went from bad to “fer Godsakes what are we doing?”  The problem was people weren’t paying attention to me.  Or, to be honest, the problem was people weren’t paying attention to the conductor!  So I had a fit.  It wasn’t quite a full-on conniption fit, but it was a fit.

In opera, with everything that’s going on, you just have to pay attention to that central figure.  For better or worse, the conductor is the final arbiter of all things.  If the conductor doesn’t know what he’s doing it essentially doesn’t matter what the quality of the rest of the cast is.  It’s not going to be a good performance.  If the conductor is good and the cast doesn’t pay attention, same result.  If the conductor is good and the cast pays attention then you have a chance of pulling something off.  Friday’s rehearsal left me wondering if we were going to fall flat on our faces at the most important summer arts festival in the world.

Some little bird had told me days ago that on Saturday I would need to do something else, something non-Porgy related.  I booked a ticket for a performance by the Gentlemen of Leisure for that afternoon.  Their show – An Hour of Too Much Culture – was quite entertaining, and managed to incorporate references to Peter Gabriel, Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, and a rap version of A Tale of Two Cities.  Perfect way to take the mind off of opera.

Saturday night, and I show up at the Festival Theatre with my iPod cranking Parliament Funkadelic – Like in Oakland, 1975.  This was important.  I needed some inspiration, and hearing that grand collection of lunatics put everything on the one! was just the thing to get me in the mood. (If you ain’t gonna get it on, then take your dead ass home!!! huh!!!!!!!)

Once we got started I could feel the difference immediately.  The cast was locked onto me, and because of that we put in one of our best performances of Porgy over the last 2 years.  Very satisfying, and one the audience seemed to enjoy very much.  Our next two performances are Monday and Tuesday, and our competition are a bunch of mucks from Cleveland (that last sentence written by a Buffalo boy, mind you).  Don’t know if they’re sold out, but we are.

My best news is that my family lands in Edinburgh in a couple short hours.  After the festival we’re going to spend three days at Loch Ness.  We’re going to kick our boys outside and tell them not to come back until they’ve caught The Monster!  Here we come, Nessie!

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