General description

Under the direction of new Artistic Director Jonathan Mills, Edinburgh International Festival 07 celebrates Early Music with a landmark series of concerts, recitals and opera by some of the genre’s leading musicians. Some of the highlights include, major figures in the Early Music scene such as Jordi Savall, Rinaldo Alessandrini, Mark Padmore, Chiara Banchini, Andreas Scholl, Claudio Cavina, Paul Hillier, Konrad Junghänel and The Tallis Scholars appear, many making their EIF debuts. And a new string of concerts in the atmospheric surroundings of Greyfriars Kirk that trace the development of European vocal music through the middle ages and the renaissance.

Jonathan Mills, Artistic Director of Edinburgh International Festival, said
400 years ago Claudio Monteverdi wrote L’Orfeo an opera which continues to inspire composers, writers, theatre directors and artists. I want to celebrate Monteverdi’s remarkable achievement throughout the 2007 Edinburgh International Festival. The centre piece of our tribute to Monteverdi’s abiding genius is Gilbert Deflo’s and Jordi Savall’s beautiful, arcadian production of L’Orfeo. The heartbeat doesn’t stop there. The ideas of mythology, poetry, drama and music that Monteverdi introduced and championed through his
favola in musica can be found in our dance and theatre programmes as well as in our concert halls and recitals. Artists as diverse as New York choreographer Trisha Brown and theatre director Barrie Kosky show how Monteverdi continues to be relevant today. I hope that this wide ranging approach will inspire those that love his music to explore further and that those who are new to it will immerse themselves in the work of some of the greatest artists of all time.