The wild, unpredictable badlands of the Edinburgh Fringe, spiritual home of jugglers and leafleteers, is no place for a by-the-book classical musician. Poke more than a hint of a black tie and a violin case outside Usher Hall and you risk being set upon by a pack of ravening comedians quicker than you can say “international festival”.
But hiding out on the Fringe are pockets of classical musicians convinced that if you want to get audiences into concert halls such as the Usher, and festivals such as Edinburgh’s, you’ve got to put a bit more into your presentation than just turning up ten minutes before the gig with a clean shirt and the correct instrument.
Seeking out quality classical music on the Fringe is a task fraught with obstacles, not least when the term “classically trained musician” is frequently a euphemism for “had a piano lesson, once”. Not so with Ali McGregor, principal soprano with Opera Australia and the brains behind Opera Burlesque at the Spiegeltent in George Square, which whips off the operatic genre’s sedate outer clothing — literally.
“I got the idea from Jonathan Miller,” says McGregor, who sang Polly Peachum in Miller’s 1999 production of The Beggar’s Opera at the historic Wiltons Music Hall in East London. “He told me that female chorus singers from Covent Garden used to strip to their corsets after productions, jump in a cab to Wiltons and perform arias for the vaudeville public. I love the idea of opera being taken out of a grand opera house and brought ‘to the people’.”
When the Spiegeltent pitched up next door to Melbourne opera house during a production of Massenet’s Manon a few years ago, “it seemed too good an opportunity to miss. There we were in these gorgeous 18th-century bling outfits, so after the show each night I and three others stripped and crept over to the Spiegeltent in our flouncy drawers for a 15-minute slot. The props department even gave me a giant shell to burst out of.
“It’s not about parodying the music, it’s a beautiful art form. We just play with the presentation to highlight what composers did and bring out its rawness.” Classical opera with a little added sauce.
Dido’s Lament is sung straight, for example, after a “really quite dirty” cabaret song. “People who would never go to opera often realise that they like it. Audiences are smart enough to get opera in its true form. It’s why great operas survived.”
The big finale is an operatic version of AC/DC’s TNT, complete with Wagnerian horned helmets. “I didn’t need to change the key or anything, which just goes to show you how operatic Bon Scott was,” says McGregor sagely.
For “serious” musicians on the Fringe, humour is arguably a far more effective way to “talk to the people” than having Alan Titchmarsh present the Proms, say. Take the award-winning Graffiti Classics, a quartet of — yes — “classically trained musicians” who resolutely fail to assume the traditional seated position at any point in their hour-long show at the Pleasance Dome, blistering through popular classics with some pretty nifty footwork.
“We definitely want to stop young children thinking classical music is stuffy because of the way it’s produced,” says Alice Pratley, violinist, of the group that developed after a particularly popular summer’s busking in Covent Garden. “Anyway, working with three-year-olds provides a very good basis for dealing with an audience of p***ed adults on the Fringe.”
Would such music comedy acts want to end up in the Usher Hall? And would it do any good? The self-confessed “infantile” trio Pluck, currently playing the Pleasance Courtyard (five nights only!), would say no. And then giggle a lot and possibly make a rude noise on the viola. Also born of busking and billed as “Mozart meets the Marx Brothers”, Pluck tell me that “the stupider we were, the more they laughed”.
At the extreme and more tenuous end of the classical Fringe is the Spaghetti Western Orchestra, a five-man percussion group made up of the now prerequisite classically trained musicians who create “authentic” and hilarious performances of Ennio Morricone film classics, more usually performed by a full string orchestra. “Unfortunately as an orchestral percussionist you spend most of your time listening to great music and counting bars before coming in, with great skill and presence of mind, for that one crucial triangle beat,” explains the Australian David Hewitt, a former percussionist with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Being in the Spaghetti Western Orchestra is the equivalent of playing “lead fiddle, for once”.
In their quest for “the perfect sound”, the SWO have employed instruments from timpani to plastic bags and coat hangers. They have even been known to don crash helmets and “fall” dramatically on the floor. “It’s actually quite dangerous, you know. That helmet wasn’t for laughs,” adds Hewitt, himself an expert exponent of the soprano saw (household, 24in, safety goggles required).
But while all these musicians are keen to communicate the joy of classical music in a more unbuttoned fashion, they are surprisingly unwilling to take their form of entertainment to more highbrow audiences. At Opera Burlesque, McGregor admits that her ideal scenario would be to perform in an opera on the main festival stage, then nip over, much as she did in Melbourne, to the intimate Spiegeltent for a bit of corset-loosening burlesque. “If we can package classical music in a slightly different way it gives me hope, because we can bring opera to people without losing its integrity or making it all Andrew Lloyd Webber,” she says. “Then people will go and hunt it out for themselves.”
And if this is not a sentiment worthy of an international festival, then what is?
Graffiti Classics, Pleasance Dome, to Aug 28; Ali McGregor’s Opera Burlesque, The Spiegel Garden, Aug 21 and 28; the Spaghetti Western Orchestra, Assembly @ George St, to Aug 27; Pluck, Pleasance Courtyard, Aug 23-27 (0131-226 0000)
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Check out our Edinburgh podcasts at www.timesonline.co.uk/edinburgh This week Jason Byrne joins the Goodies. And on Saturday, we hand over the studio to the award-winning comic Stewart Lee.
