Word on the wet streets of Edinburgh was that the first week of the 75th international festival – founded after the second world war to heal and unite through culture – was slow, with numbers down at main venues. By last weekend, for whatever fickle reasons, it had burst into life. The Usher Hall was full, the foyers buzzing before the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra’s concert performance of Richard Strauss’s Salome, with its British chief conductor Edward Gardner.
Their account of Britten’s Peter Grimes five years ago was unforgettable. Now, with a star cast led by two Swedish sopranos – Malin Byström in the title role of the biblical dancing girl and Katarina Dalayman as her manipulative and screechy mother, Herodias – hopes were high. (These two, both excellent, will reprise their roles at the Royal Opera House in London next month. More on their interpretations then.) In the German tenor Gerhard Siegel, the cast had the finest of Herods, the most slithery and reptilian and repulsive and feckless, sung with conniving subtlety (sorry Gerhard, nothing personal). Johan Reuter’s Jokanaan, Bror Magnus Tødenes’s Narraboth and Hanna Hipp’s Page each added lustre.
