From around the world: Edinburgh.(International)(Opera Review)

The big news at this year's Edinburgh International Festival was two full cycles of Scottish Opera's new-ish production of Wagner's Ring (completed in 2002), .along with the fact that all eight performances were sold out before the rest of the Festival's tickets even went on sale. Even the Fringe Festival got into the Ring act, with a not-so-funny Complete Ring of the Nibelungs (Abridged) by a two-person troupe called the Reduced Wagner Company. Where is Anna Russell when you need her? Even leaving the Ring aside, there were many other vocal and opera offerings--all concert versions to be sure--to tempt those not completely satiated with three weeks of chamber music such as Beethoven's complete string quartets, or concerts such as all of Brahms's symphonies and piano concertos conducted by Charles Mackerras, to mention only a couple of the offerings.

By the last week of the Festival (Aug. 25-30), the Fringe was fizzling out (it officially ended about a week earlier than the International Festival, after selling well over a million tickets), but there was still time to catch the semi-engaging Reduced Wagner and a thoroughly rewarding production of Jason Robert Brown's Songs for a New World. Thomas Quasthoff and Andras Schiff offered a recital of lieder by Schubert and Wolf, "along with an introspective Vier Ernste Gesange, in the over-large Usher Hall, while Simon Keenlyside and Malcom Martineau were heard at the friendlier-sized Queens Hall in a straightforward, rewarding Winterreise. Back in Usher Hall, Christine Brewer offered a beautifully conceived performance of Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder, accompanied by the Bamberg Symphony under ...