Siegfried/Scottish Opera, Festival Theatre, Edinburgh<br></br>Chamber Orchestra of Europe/Andras Schiff, Usher Hall, Edinburgh<br></br>When She Died, Channel 4

Wagner? I can't get enough...

For all the glamour and clamour of visiting artists, Scottish Opera's annual unveiling of the latest segment of their Ring Cycle has become the most celebrated jewel in the Edinburgh International Festival's coruscating crown. Support for the home team? No. It's a genuine buzz. Scottish Opera's Ring is proving as addictive, affecting, attractive and absorbing as ER.

Is that a disgruntled rustling I hear? Has the fire in your Bayreuth Souvenir Funeral Pyre gone out? Are you perhaps offended by the analogy? Don't be. Wagner's Ring was not conceived as a precious commodity for the educated elite but a 14-hour blockbuster that would grip and excite and provoke and move. It was, in short, designed to keep people coming back for more. And so it is with Scottish Opera – now at the third part of Wagner's four-opera cycle, Siegfried – where, through a combination of highly disciplined musical performance, strong visual imagery, measured timing and thorough characterisation, director Tim Albery and conductor Richard Armstrong have proved that even in these fast-track quick-fix smart-ass times it's possible to keep an audience riveted through a four-hour drama about giants and dwarfs.

Although Scottish Opera's orchestra lack a rich sonority, their focus is admirable. The string figures are tight throughout each leitmotif, the brass impressively rounded, the woodwind finely coloured. The casting is equally complementary to Armstrong's clear, persuasive, unsentimental account, with Alasdair Elliott a quick-witted, sympathetic Mime – matched well by Peter Sidhom's growling Alberich – and Graham Sanders a robust, sincere Siegfried. Sanders is not yet in full command of his voice – which currently falters before blurting to each fiery climax – but he's young and, in parka, gangsta jeans and shambling teenage pimp-roll, inhabits Siegfried's naive character convincingly.

As Brünnhilde, Elizabeth Byrne's touchingly awkward tomboy persona again works well. But for vocal beauty this production belongs to Gillian Keith's fresh-voiced Woodbird and Helene Ranada's complex, chocolately Erda. No matter that the goddess of earth and wisdom answers the door in her nightie; Ranada conveys beautifully the depressed exhaustion of a single, effectively bereaved, mother talking to her ex. And that is what she is here, against the fortressed yuppie bunkers and subterranean ghettos of Hildegard Bechtler's bold designs, just as Matthew Best's subtle Wotan is a grimly pragmatic, messed-up patriarch who sees his powerbase ineluctably eroding. If the helmets and breastplates hierarchy of traditional stagings has been lost to hypernaturalism – Fafner the dragon being the only fantastick on stage – Albery has done his audience a great favour by revealing the individuals behind the symbolism.

At the Usher Hall the previous evening, Andras Schiff and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe (COE) gave the second of two very quirky programmes: Bach's Orchestral Suites in B minor and D, Janacek's grumpy Capriccio for left-hand, flute and assorted brass, and Schumann's Piano Concerto. Having heard both Argerich and Andnes play this work with extreme tenderness, I wasn't expecting to enjoy Schiff's abrupt idiosyncrasies and propulsive tempi but the combination of orchestra and soloist was a match made in heaven – relocating what Liszt called "the concerto without a soloist" in the equitable frame of chamber music and revealing a turbulent, desperate joy in the tumbling energy of Schumann's delicate, anxious themes.

That the COE is a wonderful orchestra scarcely needs restating. Unless, that is, you happened to be passing by during the B Minor Suite, when you might have had difficulty hearing them over Schiff's piano. I can just about see that Bach's keyboard concertos might withstand a similarly revisionist approach without turning into gobbledygook but the Orchestral Suites do not. Instead of adding percussive impetus and harmonic illumination in the manner of a harpsichordist, Schiff played along as though it were baroque karaoke; even - during the Badinerie – playing in unison with the first violins. Without the piano it was a fine account, blessed with the rich, caramelised tone of Jaime Martin's supple flute. With the piano it was as misguided and pointless an exercise as daubing red lipstick on the Mona Lisa's smile. And so, preferring to cherish the memory of the Schumann, I left before the D major Suite, wondering when someone would have the nerve to tell Schiff that Bach Suites plus piano simply do not work. I'm not holding my breath. Schiff enjoys such uncritical acclaim in Edinburgh that he'd probably be able to persuade the festival that Purcell's Golden Sonata would be much the better for piano accompaniment. (Why not Andras! Anything you say.) Of course, it wouldn't. It'd sound much the worse. As my grandmother always said, just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Which maxim could equally be applied to When She Died; Jonathan Dove's fatuous made-for-TV opera on public reactions (which is to say the reactions of a kinky banker, a clinically-depressed infertile woman, a philosophical tramp, and an alliteratively-named, salt of the earth working-class couple in their late middle-age) to the death of Princess Diana. As one who was not particularly upset by Diana's death – I didn't know her – I was not at all offended by the idea of this commission. I was however extremely offended by the actuality of it, which was not only devoid of emotional analysis or musical originality (think Glass meets Pheloung) but extremely patronising (to working-class mourners and the homeless) and, in its cynical usage of infertile Annie's suicide as a punchline, unforgivably irresponsible. Was a body-count of one not enough? I'm moving to Tunbridge Wells.

a.picard@independent.co.uk