Missy Mazzoli’s The Galloping Cure Explores Opioid Addiction at Edinburgh International Festival

Edinburgh’s festival week

The Edinburgh International Festival’s opera The Galloping Cure, by composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek, is described as a “devastating allegory about the horror of opioid addiction” and is at the festival until Aug 12 before transferring internationally. The Telegraph frames the plot around a doctor, Theresa Hart (Daniela Mack), and the arrival of Lucky Mack (Justin Austin), whose carousel offers “miraculous relief and dangerous exuberance,” while Scottish Opera performs the music-drama under conductor Stuart Stratford.

At the same festival, The Edinburgh Reporter says the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO) continues a residency playing Duke Ellington’s music, and notes that tomorrow the Orchestra under Winton Marsalis will perform with pianist Yuja Wang. The Edinburgh Reporter adds that Yuja Wang will join the orchestra for newly commissioned orchestral arrangements of jazz piano solos including Erroll Garner’s “Autumn Leaves,” Dave Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo à la Turk,” and Thelonious Monk’s “Monk’s Mood.”

Reporting for this sectionThe TelegraphThe Edinburgh Reporter

Fringe comedy and stunts

The New York Times reports that the 79th Edinburgh Festival Fringe is in full swing across the Scottish city’s Old Town, with “live owls and street performers” alongside bagpipe players.

The New York Times says the Fringe kicked off on Friday and runs through Aug. 31, featuring over 4,000 shows including stand-up and sketch comedy.

The Guardian’s review of Olivier Rannou’s family-friendly spaghetti western describes a one-man performance at Church Hill theatre in Edinburgh until 11 August, where the lone ranger is “marooned in a desert landscape with a water bottle full of sand.”

In the same Guardian piece, Émilie Rougier’s electronic compositions accompany Rannou’s mime and clowning, and the show is staged with lighting design by Alan Floc’h and Alexandre Musset evoking “a relentlessly glaring desert sun or eerie night.”

Reporting for this sectionThe New York TimesThe Guardian

Humanitarian mission and themes

Democracy Now! says it is broadcasting from Scotland at the Edinburgh International Festival, and it features the acclaimed Scottish violinist Nicola Benedetti, who became the first woman and first Scottish artist to become director of the festival in 2022. Benedetti tells Amy Goodman that “the humanitarian mission that is woven into all of its origin rhetoric” is what is “quite unusual about the Edinburgh International Festival,” and she describes the festival as presenting “these things alongside each other.”

Democracy Now! also quotes Benedetti saying this year’s festival focuses on the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, and she says “We’re not celebrating only dark or dazzling.” In the same interview, Benedetti adds that the festival’s theme is named “All Rise,” and she says the festival has “the largest number ever in our festival’s history, a 79-year history, of American artists on our stage this year.”

Reporting for this sectionDemocracy Now!