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Contemporary Review, Nov, 1993 by Laurence Green

Edinburgh in August is a city in festive mood where shoppers and tourists mingle with clowns, musicians and jugglers and where the sound of bagpipes rises over the daily hustle and bustle, for it is the month when the world's leading arts festival takes place.

The 1993 festival proved a resounding success although a fire which damaged the Playhouse Theatre just before the start put in jeopardy one of the highlights. Director Brian McMaster, now in his second term, quickly found an alternative venue - the Meadowbank Stadium - and the event went ahead playing to capacity audiences. Happily sponsorship was up this year at 805,000 [pounds] and although no identifiable themes were apparent, the programme provided a rich and varied combination of music, dance, drama and photography, with events ranging from the recreation of a lost art form - Scottish Variety Theatre in its heyday - to a production by the Hebbel Theater Berlin of Gertrude Stein's 1938 retelling of the Faust legend Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights, with the lightbulb the central metaphor for the human assumption of god-like powers.

The most eagerly awaited event was a rare production by Scottish Opera of I Due Foscari at the King's Theatre which opened the festival's Verdi season. This passionate early work based on Lord Byron's tragic poem, The Two Foscari, set in Venice, is a murderous tale of revenge and hatred, perpetuated through generations. The opera opens in the Doge's Palace, where the Council of Ten (Venice's ruling body) are meeting secretly in judgement on Jacopo Foscari, son of the Doge. Having been exiled after a false accusation of murder, Jacopo has returned illegally to see his family and native city. Now he has been arrested, but is determined to prove his innocence. He is brought from prison and taken to the Council for trial. Jacopo's wife, Lucrezia, tries in vain to seek an audience with the Doge and plead for mercy. Her distress is acute, and when her friend, Pisana, reveals the Council's decision that Jacopo has been condemned to exile once more. her distress turns to fury.

The Doge has set aside his love for his son and acted, not as a father, but as a judge. The Council, confirming the correctness of judgement, leave the Doge alone and despairing. Lucrezia finds him and pleads Jacopo's case once more: the Doge is convinced but, powerless to act, breaks down. In prison Jacopo is growing gradually more delirious: first he thinks he sees the ghost of another of the Council's victims, then fails to recognise his wife when she enters. His delirium turns to anger and a furious condemnation of those who are tearing him from his family. He and Lucrezia find comfort only in their love for one another. The Doge enters; his own death is near and he wants to say farewell to his son. Lucrezia echoes Jacopo's call for vengeance. Loredano, a member of the Council of Ten who has sworn to revenge himself on the Foscari family, then breaks into the prison and drags Jacopo away to face the Council's judgement.

A harrowing exposure of injustice, envy and loss, the story which deals with the theme of public duty and private grief, is well brought out under Howard Davies's confident direction and a sterling performance by Bolshoi soprano Katerina Kudriavchenko as Lucrezia. On the evening I attended, Frederick Burchinal was suffering from a throat infection and mimed the role of Francesco Foscari, the octogenarian Doge, but the role was sung magnificently from the wings by Phillip Joll. The role of Jacopo was sung by the Chinese tenor, Deng. The production, strikingly framed in Ashley Martin-Davis's Venetian piazza set, had some unusual touches - chairs rising for no discernible reason out of trap doors, and coat-hangers floating upwards. However the biggest triumph must go to Richard Armstrong, making his first appearance as musical director of the company. His conducting gave eloquent expression to Verdi's enrapturing score.

By contrast the Orquestra de Cambra Teatre Lliure at the Usher Hall was a disappointment. This notable orchestra from Spain performed three popular works by Falla including El corregidor y la molinera, the original form of one of the most famous of 20th century ballets, The Three Cornered Hat, and El Amor Brujo which, with its famous ritual fire dance, is rooted in the deepest Gypsy-Arab tradition. But I found that the orchestra, under Josep Pons, failed to breathe life and vitality into this work.

The most provocative event was undoubtedly Peter Sellars's stark production of Aeschylus's classic drama, The Persians, at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, here updated as a Gulf War parable. The simple plot concerns the defeat of the Persian fleet by the Greeks at Salamis. Aeschylus depicts it drastically and unsparingly from the point of view of the defeated, or those destroyed by war. Equally the play is a piece of contemporary reportage. The ethical aspect concerns the responsibility of the next generation, which always has to accept the inheritance of its fathers, whether in angry alienation or in a faithful fulfilment of its duty. By drawing parallels between Aeschylus's text and the experience of the Gulf War, which shimmered across the world's TV screens as sanitised video games, the adaptor, Robert Auletta, endeavours to sharpen the relationship to present day wars and underlines the fatal connections of violence in the microstructure of the family and the macrostructure of the state. But by relating the story specifically to the Iraqi conflict, Auletta takes a gamble which does not pay off, for Saddam Hussein is a vilified figure, receiving little sympathy from any quarter, while the Americans are, for the most part, shown as the aggressor, with Xerxes (Saddam) clearly identifying ~the most arrogant nation in the world' as the US. The fearsome detail in which American firepower is described amidst the horrendous carnage - sirens wailing, cluster bombs exploding and women and children dying - only serves to ram home the political message and blast the audience into submission. Performed by only six actors, utilising masks and microphones, on an entirely blank stage, the production has a haunting musical score by Hamza El Din and evokes strong images of the brutality of war. Nevertheless this seemed to me a misguided venture.