Some thoughts on EIF 2024
Kate Calder
Edinburgh International Festival 2024: Some thoughts
Our editor Hugh Kerr summed up the overwhelming reaction to the 2024 Festival – Nicola Benedetti has done us proud with another exciting programme. It’s been carried out on a budget which the major European festivals think is impossible, but for many people living in Edinburgh it’s still the highlight of the year. And long may that continue.
While preparing this article, I found the Embargoed Media Release from the EIF’s March launch and reflect ruefully on the launch’s prescient headline ‘EIF 2024 Brings Audiences and Artists Closer together than Ever Before’ – as I recover from a post-festival bout of Covid. So hopefully anything disagreeable that I say may be put down to fevered ramblings…
Five operas, all pretty much sold out, were the icing on the cake for many. ‘Cosi fan Tutte’ played by the SCO under Maxim Emelyanychev with outstanding soloists was a musical experience par excellence – and in a year of debate about directors, an interesting dramatic experience too. ‘Carmen’ and ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ were popular with audiences, but the surprise for me was ‘Oedipus Rex’ at the Royal Scottish Museum, where the Scottish Opera Orchestra and the well-trained community chorus from Glasgow and Edinburgh, mingled with the audience before and during the performance, singing and playing in a way which defied the odd acoustic, and getting the most unlikely people up to dance.
That chorus and other choral performances, introducing us to new and little-known international works, were my festival Highlights. The National Youth Choir of Scotland’s Musical Director, Christopher Bell, joked that his singers had given him a hard time about the complicated music he’d made them sing this year. It was certainly worth it. NYCOS were the driving force in the Opening Concert, Golijov’ s ‘Pasion Segun San Marcos’. Singing in various languages, in musical styles from classical to Latin American to jazz alongside adults who’d known the work for many years, they were truly amazing. They matched this in the last week’s ‘Fire in my Mouth’, Julia Wolfe’s homage to the young women workers killed in a New York factory fire in 1911. This UK premiere was the first time the work had been sung entirely by a youth choir, and the gestures, movements, costumes and props added to the mix in the last couple of days, made this an immersive experience for those in the stalls, as two processions of doomed young women moved up the aisles.
I saw the Edinburgh Festival Chorus twice, excelling as we’ve come to expect in traditional repertoire, the Verdi Requiem, and even more remarkably in Grechaninov’s 1911 ‘Holy Week’, a little-known masterpiece from over a century ago. Based on Russian Orthodox music, the unaccompanied thirteen-part work, of thrilling polyphony and chants, was a spectacular feat of learning by the choir, with a characterful performance brought to life by director, James Grossmith. Finally two Queen’s Hall concerts, the Schola Cantorum from Venezuela, educated as part of the Sistema practice of music education wowed the audience with contemporary choral music from Latin America and elsewhere, and last Saturday a 12-strong choir of young opera singers gave a top-notch performance of Rossini’s fairly unsolemn Petite Messe.
I could end there – but, like Nicola Benedetti and I imagine all of you reading this, I believe it’s important that as wide an audience as possible should have the chance to hear this music. All of these choral concerts had significant gaps in the audience, while the two Queen’s Hall concerts played to around 60% capacity. Why?
Brian Bannatyne-Scott in his review of the Festival identified marketing issues as a cause for concern. I’d agree with that and also throw into the mix continuing problems with dynamic pricing. The EIF Programme came out in March, and at some point in the months before that the phrases were put in place which appeared on each’s show’s descriptor in the physical and online programme. This is the same situation facing any orchestra, theatre or opera house when announcing its programme for the whole season. However every organisation knows that there will be changes in personnel, music played and even presentation style between the original announcement and the event. The EIF media/publicity department seems much less flexible than it needs to be in updating the information it provides for audiences. For example it was unclear that the Schola Cantorum was not a school for young singers, but adult singers, who had graduated from the Sistema process. I’d guess most of the Usher Hall audience took a while to appreciate that all the young singers in the opening concert came from NCOS and the adult singers were Venezuelan. I would also guarantee that many of those who bought tickets for the Schola Cantorum at the Queen’s Hall thought they were seeing a youth choir.
There was a similar mis-step in the pre-publicity for the last Queen’s Hall concert, ’Exploring Rossini’. Acknowledged in the launch publicity as an opportunity for “young professional singers, chosen by international audition” to work with Thomas Quasthoff (later changed to James Baillieu) on Rossini’s ‘Petite Messe’, those involved were described as “gifted students” in the general programme, online and in the freesheet. Recognising the name of Catriona Hewitson, who’s been working with Scottish Opera for three years now, I looked up the other singers, and unsurprisingly found that they were all early career opera singers from different parts of the world, some already under contract to opera houses. These well-trained fabulous singers gave us a great performance of Rossini, but there were no biographies, one was misnamed in the printed programme and the EIF did not have photographs ready for their 48 hour review deadline. I’ve headed this with one from the EIF’s Facebook page, still telling us these were students Again a very happy audience, but only 60% seats sold.
Possibly the worst example of mismarketing was the publicity and presentation of the Festival Chorus’s ‘Holy Week’. For some reason, this third representation of the events of Christ’s Passion, with links to Golijov’s Pasion and Bach’s ‘Matthew Passion’ was not assigned a full concert slot in the Usher Hall. Instead it played as a ‘bean bag’ concert at 10 pm, with listeners encouraged to “lose yourself in the hypnotic sound.” There’s very little online about this work, and James Grossmith, the chorus director knows more than most people. An essay of introduction by him would have helped appreciation enormously, especially as the freesheet did not contain accurate details of the work as sung. Only 400-500 people saw this wonderful concert because it was a bean-bag concert at 10pm with poor prepublicity. Those who were there, learned little about the music they were hearing. Such are the consequences of sticking with a concept and a slogan that might have to made sense after 10 minutes brainstorming in February. It would seem important that a tighter grip on programme descriptors needs to kept by those who actually know about the music being played – facts are required as well as adjectives! Someone senior from the Music Department should be at every concert, arranging notices and/or announcements about late changes in programmes or personnel.
Moving to pricing. One good thing about the beanbag concerts (I’m not sure there’s more than one) is the single pricing policy, which also applied to ‘Oedipus Rex’ and the three drama productions in the Studio. Also welcome, especially in the Usher Hall was the larger number of Upper Circle tickets at the lowest price for each concert – a price which is guaranteed not to change. Otherwise flexible ticketing kicked in with most events. What happened this year was that Usher Hall top prices started around £80, the 2023 top price level, the Festival Theatre ‘Carmen’ top price was £149 and ‘Figaro’s about £125. There were some rather confusing multi-buy offers. Usher Hall tickets peaked at over £100, Carmen tickets at £175, with other prices going up proportionately even more. In June I asked my statistician partner about the algorithm which caused all prices except the lowest to bunch up towards the top price. He opined (I paraphrase) that it wasn’t a good algorithm. Nicola Benedetti, given the task of explaining the flexible pricing policy in a Scotsman interview with Brian Ferguson just after the Festival launch, promised that ”at every juncture we can interfere with (the algorithm) to make it as fair as possible.” Some prices did go down, with £15 and £20 Usher Hall Stalls seats and many tickets at Queen’s Hall concert under £20 for concerts which hadn’t sold well.
Astonishingly no publicity was given to these price reductions! With a substantial email list, the EIF could easily have publicised these bargains. Members used to be offered some tickets at reduced prices in July – that’s now been abandoned. What do we make of this? As has been said before, flexible pricing does not affect those willing to buy tickets early. But not everyone is in this position – two friends who regularly attend some EIF events looked at the operas in June and decided against going because of high prices; another friend who bought a last minute ticket for ‘Fire in my Mouth’ was surprised there were still some left. Flexible pricing has brought confusion (there were eventually more than a dozen price points for some events) and a sense of exclusion to many people who used to be regular attenders . I would say from my own experience of attending London venues, as well as those in Scotland, is that two things inspire loyalty: seeing fabulous events and realising that this can be done at a reasonable cost. Of course the EIF is keen to get the business of those who can afford to pay £175 to see ‘Carmen’ and have a great time and come back next year. But it must not forget the others! As Brian and I have pointed out, there were seats available for excellent concerts – why were no efforts made to sell them?
It seems unlikely that flexible pricing has increased the EIF’s takings. Slipped out in late July was the 2023 Report and Financial Statement. See Annual Reports | Edinburgh International Festival (eif.co.uk) It appears that last year’s ticket sales, though making up a higher percentage of income than in 2022, were off-set by higher expenditure on media and ticketing. As you’ll see this is a complicated document which provides a lot of information, but obfuscates, in received marketing fashion, things we might want to know. For example both in 2023 and this year, we’re told that 125,000 tickets were “issued.” Also in both years over 30, 000 free tickets were given out. Were these part of the 125,000 or not? Where do the concessionary tickets fit in? Nicola Benedetti said, “We are not a profit-making concern, the sole reason for flexible pricing is so that we can provide concessions to those who need them most.” This concept does not stand up to much scrutiny – it seems unlikely that the ‘surplus’ from flexible ticket sales goes into the pot marked ‘Concessionary Tickets!’ Just as governments have to stop comparing national finances with household budgets, so arts organisation have to be grown up about reporting their income. Everyone with an interest in the arts knows that public grants have to go up, but meanwhile it’s important that the EIF don’t lose their audience through this silly pricing system. Selling 51 tickets at £80 will make more money than selling 100 at £40, but why deny access to those who could have sat in the other 49 seats? Keeping ticket prices stable and selling a number of events for a single price with, hopefully a clear announcement that flexible pricing is being abandoned, is unlikely to lose the EIF money, and will restore confidence to its audience members old and new.
