Word: edinburghers
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...famed Edinburgh Festival was bottom-heavy with big-name performers -the Royal Philharmonic and Boston Symphony orchestras, the Hamburg State Opera and Sadler's Wells Ballet-as well as big-name composers-Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, Mozart. But hidden in a corner of the old city, not officially part of the festival, was a tiny, six-member U.S. troupe putting on three tiny U.S. operas in the Y.W.C.A.'s Gartshore Hall (capacity: 165). The troupe: Manhattan's After Dinner Opera Co., out to show Europe what could be done on a shoestring...
Last January, when Edinburgh's new Director Robert Ponsonby invited the After Dinner group to come, the company scoffed. It would cost a cool $20,000, even cutting corners, they estimated, and who had that kind of money for small-scale, modern opera? Then a fat check arrived from one admirer, and the company eagerly plunged into commercialism to raise the rest. Singers Jeanne Beauvais, Norman Myrvik, Francis Barnard and Musical Director Lucille Burnham gave all the concerts they could. Stage Manager Beth Leibowitz made and sold ceramics, while Company Manager Richard Flusser hopefully entered a TV quiz show...
...Y.W.C.A. auditorium assigned them in Edinburgh proved frustrating: it had no dressing rooms, a poor piano, and the lighting system did not fit American plugs. Nevertheless, opening night last week saw an eager audience. On the program: three examples of a relatively new and typically American type of musical theater-the small, intimate, mostly humorous opera. First came Gertrude Stem's In a Garden, with music by Manhattan's Meyer Kupferman, a Steinishly childlike spoof on royalty that was the success of the evening. ("Redolent, that's the word for the music," approved one Edinburgh matron...
Conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Edinburgh Festival, Britain's terrible-tempered Conductor Sir Thomas Beecham paused between downbeats to take a swipe at his Scottish host. The Edinburgh Festival and others like it are "bunk." said Sir Thomas. "They are for the purpose of attracting trade for the town. What that has to do with music I don't know...
This week the orchestra plays at the Edinburgh Festival, then moves toward Soviet territory for concerts in Czechoslovakia and Russia...