Edinburgh International Festival


The Edinburgh International Festival is an annual festival of performing arts in Edinburgh, Scotland, over three weeks in August. By invitation from the Festival Director, the International Festival brings top class performers of music, theatre, opera and dance from around the world to perform. The festival also hosts a series of visual art exhibitions, talks and workshops.

History

The idea of a Festival with a remit to "provide a platform for the flowering of the human spirit" and enrich the cultural life of Scotland, Britain and Europe took form in the wake of the Second World War. The idea of creating an international festival within the UK was first conceived by Rudolf Bing, the General Manager of Glyndebourne Opera Festival, the arts patron Lady Rosebery, theatre director Sir Tyrone Guthrie, and Audrey Mildmay during a wartime tour of a small-scale Glyndebourne production of The Beggar's Opera.
Rudolf Bing conceived of the festival to heal the wounds of war through the languages of the arts. This is its principal raison d’être. It was first financed by Lord Roseberry with the £10,000 winnings of his horse Ocean Swell that won the only two major horse-races run in wartime including the Jockey Gold Cup in 1944. This sum was matched by Edinburgh Town Council and then some money in turn was matched by the Arts Council of Great Britain formed by Lord Keynes at war's end. Bing also co-founded the Festival with Henry Harvey Wood, Head of the British Council in Scotland, Sidney Newman, Reid Professor of Music at Edinburgh University, and a group of civic leaders from the City of Edinburgh, in particular Sir John Falconer.
Bing had looked at several English cities before shifting his focus to Scotland and settling on Edinburgh, a city he had visited and admired in 1939. In particular, Edinburgh's castle reminded him of Salzburg where he had been the festival director before the war. Harvey Wood described the meeting at which the idea was hatched:
The Edinburgh International Festival of Music and Drama was first discussed over a lunch table in a restaurant in Hanover Square, London, towards the end of 1944. Rudolf Bing, convinced that musical and operatic festivals on anything like the pre-war scale were unlikely to be held in any of the shattered and impoverished centres for many years to come, was anxious to consider and investigate the possibility of staging such a Festival somewhere in the United Kingdom in the summer of 1946. He was convinced and he convinced my colleagues and myself that such an enterprise, successfully conducted, might at this moment of European time, be of more than temporary significance and might establish in Britain a centre of world resort for lovers of music, drama, opera, ballet and the graphic arts.

Certain preconditions were obviously required of such a centre. It should be a town of reasonable size, capable of absorbing and entertaining anything between 50,000 and 150,000 visitors over a period of three weeks to a month. It should, like Salzburg, have considerable scenic and picturesque appeal and it should be set in a country likely to be attractive to tourists and foreign visitors. It should have sufficient number of theatres, concert halls and open spaces for the adequate staging of a programme of an ambitious and varied character. Above all it should be a city likely to embrace the opportunity and willing to make the festival a major preoccupation not only in the City Chambers but in the heart and home of every citizen, however modest. Greatly daring but not without confidence I recommended Edinburgh as the centre and promised to make preliminary investigations.

Wood approached Falconer, who enthusiastically welcomed the initiative on behalf of the city. As it was too late to finalise arrangements for 1946, plans were made for the following year. The first International Festival took place between 22 August and 11 September 1947. The Festival has since taken place every August.
The first Festival concentrated mainly on classical music, a highlight being concerts given by the Vienna Philharmonic, reunited with their erstwhile conductor Bruno Walter, who had left Europe after the Nazi occupation of his homeland. The Festival's first dramatic success came in the following year when an adaptation of Sir David Lyndsay's The Thrie Estaites was performed to great acclaim for the first time since 1552 in the Assembly Hall on the Mound. The British Army's desire to showcase itself during the Festival period led to the independent staging of the first Edinburgh Military Tattoo, featuring displays of piping and dancing, in 1950. This annual event has come to be regarded as an integral part of the official festival, though it continues to be organised separately.

Today

In 1999, the Festival opened a new central box office and information centre in The Hub, a converted church on Castlehill, directly below Edinburgh Castle. Originally built as the Tollbooth Church to house the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, its tall Gothic spire is the highest point in central Edinburgh and a landmark visible for miles around.
The Edinburgh International Festival was brought forward to coincide with the Fringe in 2015.
All Edinburgh festivals were cancelled in 2020 due to the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic

Festival venues

The principal venues of the Festival are:
About ten other festivals are held in Edinburgh at about the same time as the International Festival. Collectively, the entire group is referred to as the Edinburgh Festival. Most notable of these is the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which started as an offshoot of the International Festival and has since grown to be the world's largest arts festival. The Edinburgh International Film Festival also began in August 1947 with a programme of documentary films. In the 1990s this festival moved into June. The 1966 Writers' Festival begun by John Calder, Richard Demarco, Jim Haynes, founders of the Paperback Bookshop and Traverse Theatre, eventually led to the Edinburgh International Book Festival also staged in August. The result is festivals with more than 2,500 performances and events per day in Edinburgh in August, many times bigger than the next biggest arts festivals anywhere in the world, in a major city where uniquely for a month culture is said to be bigger than shopping.

World premieres

The following works received their world premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival:
Date of premiereWorkCreator/composerPresented/performed by
28/08/2003There Where She Loved
Rush		Christopher WheeldonSan Francisco Ballet
13/08/2010CaledoniaAlistair BeatonNational Theatre of Scotland
02/09/2010QuimerasPaco PeñaPaco Peña Flamenco Dance Company
26/08/2011Kings 2 EndsJorma EloScottish Ballet
22/08/2012Since it was the day of Preparation...Sir James MacMillanWilliam Conway, Brindley Sherratt, Hebrides Ensemble, Synergy Vocals
27/08/2013Festival CityTod MachoverRoyal Scottish National Orchestra, Peter Oundjian
12/08/2016Hommage à KurtágMark SimpsonMark Simpson, Antoine Tamestit, Pierre-Laurent Aimard
16/08/2016Anything That Gives Off LightJessica Almasy, Davey Anderson, Rachel Chavkin, Brian Ferguson, Sandy GriersonThe TEAM, National Theatre of Scotland
27/08/2016Swans KissingRolf WallinDanish String Quartet
04/08/2017Meet Me at DawnZinnie HarrisTraverse Theatre Company
04/08/2017FlightOliver Emanuel based on the novel Hinterland by Caroline BrothersVox Motus
08/08/2017The Divide Parts 1 & 2Alan AyckbournThe Old Vic
17/08/2018CorrespondencesPeder Barratt-DueEivind Ringstad, David Meier
03/08/2019The CrucibleHelen Pickett, Peter SalemScottish Ballet
07/08/2019Total Immediate Collective Imminent Terrestrial SalvationTim CrouchNational Theatre of Scotland
10/08/2019Quickening Sir James MacMillanThe King's Singers, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Edinburgh Festival Chorus, RSNO Junior Chorus, Ed Gardner
14/08/2019Red Dust RoadTanika Gupta based on the book by Jackie KayNational Theatre of Scotland, HOME
17/08/2019Symphony No. 5 "Le grand Inconnu"Sir James MacMillanScottish Chamber Orchestra, The Sixteen, Genesis Sixteen, Harry Christophers