MUSIC : Roll up, roll up for the festivals of Britain

The trees are green, the days grow long, and for a critic it means one thing: festivals - or the pursuit of life beyond the South Bank and the Barbican. 1997 promises to be a big year on the British festival circuit in that at least two of the flagship enterprises, Edinburgh and Aldeburgh, hit their half-century this summer; and as the champagne flows, it will also beg some questions about the rationale of organised festivity. Born from the ideals of post-war regeneration, what does it offer 50 years on?

The simplest answer is an opportunity to do things that wouldn't happen otherwise in terms of programming and venues. And while many festivals don't seize that opportunity as they should, one that does is the comparatively arriviste Covent Garden Festival, which has just opened its 1997 season. From unpromising beginnings as not much more than a promotional binge for local restaurants, it has grown into something truly distinctive: an imaginative mix of small-scale opera and music-theatre featuring off- repertory works with young singers in curious venues.

The only problem is that curious venues don't always meet the needs of the artists or audience. And they didn't in either of the CGF events I heard this week. The first was the Gabrieli Consort giving one of Paul McCreesh's grand reconstructions of music from the past in what might have been its original context: in this case, the coronation of a Venetian doge, Marino Grimani, in 1595. The key word here is "might", because the reconstruction is a fantasy: no record exists of exactly what was done.

But McCreesh's guess-work is as good as any in its combination of scholarship and practicality, and his chosen sequence of mass movements by the uncle/nephew team of Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, intercut with extra-liturgical items for instruments and voices, shows how closely the sacred and the secular co-existed in 16th-century performance art. McCreesh first put this spectacle together some years ago - it exists on disc - and it works well. But not so well in the banqueting hall of the New Connaught Rooms off Drury Lane: a venue which was, I suppose, "Venetian" in the gaudiness of its appalling decor, but not in its acoustic. Rich renaissance textures made to resonate through marble spaces died an instant death, and the slightest flaws in intonation were cruelly exposed.

It needed a church - like St Clement Danes where, on Wednesday, the Covent Garden Festival staged a production of Handel's Ariodante. Good, small-scale Handel has become a fixture of this festival, and this comes from something called the Early Opera Company: a young, lean ensemble doing things simply but stylishly and, in this case, rather well.

The production could be more imaginative, but it's well-designed and lit. A tenacious young conductor, Christian Curnyn, keeps the energy-level high and marshals the small but strong orchestral forces into vigorous attack. And the singers - some of them not long out of college - include hugely promising voices: struggling, perhaps, with the emotional range of their roles but technically secure. Christine Rice's soft, deep- coloured Polinesso (a Jean Rigby soundalike), Jeni Bern's creamily beautiful Dalinda, Amanda Boyd's bright Ginevra, and Louise Mott's manful rising to the coloratura challenge of the title role were all impressive; and the more so because this long (four-hour) opera is a far from easy ride for anyone involved. Handel wrote it at a time when his fortunes were flagging under assault from a rival company that was stealing his audience, his artists and, worst of all, his castrati - the crowd-pullers of 18th- century opera seria. For Ariodante he could only muster one of these exotic creatures, and had to lay on other attractions to fill the house. Hence the peculiarly tough, display-oriented vocal writing. And hence the copious amounts of ballet music at the end of each act, written to show off a famous lady dancer whose services he had managed to secure.

The ballet music proved the only real failing of this production in that the stage director, Sarah Alexander, didn't know what to do with it and opted for nothing. The music played, the action froze. It was an abdication of responsibility. And on that subject, it said little for the Festival's sense of responsibility to its audience that it even thought of staging a four-hour opera in a church with hard pew seating, no refreshment for the intervals, and no loos. Artistic excellence is all very well, but when your back breaks and your bowels are full it isn't everything.

The more patrician Bath Festival doesn't make that sort of mistake. It positively coddles its clientele; and I'm glad to see it's also providing more stimulating programmes now than a few years ago, when the whole enterprise seemed ready to subside into a populist mire of Tchaikovsky nights and face-painting. The 1997 season, loosely organised around the theme of Resurrection (but without the obvious symphony) has been thoughtfully put together, with some stunning young artists from abroad (including the Norwegian violin and piano duo whom I admired so much in last year's Bergen Festival, Henning Kraggerud and Helge Kjekshus), a strong contemporary music element, and an enticing series of chamber concerts built around the pianist Imogen Cooper as artist-in- residence.

Last Sunday night I heard her all-Schubert recital at the Bath Assembly Rooms and was entranced, as ever, by the depth of feeling in her playing, even if it does tend to approach lighter works like Schubert's Moments Musicaux with an intensity that enlarges the music beyond its natural dimensions. Her playing isn't effortless: you sense the work that makes it happen. But you also sense the thought behind the work, and the power of an outstanding musical imagination which in this concert made something special of the two Schubert sonatas D784 and D850. My only carp (again) would be the venue. Bath's Assembly Rooms are handsome architecture but a booming, woolly space for music.

The Hilliard Ensemble fared better with Bath Abbey for a tribute to the French-Flemish polyphonist Ockeghem, who died 500 years ago in 1497. Done with the Hilliard's standard off-the-shoulder virtuosity, and 20th-century items to lighten the load of Renaissance counterpoint, it left a pleasing sense of repertory done in the right place by the right people.

I wish I could say the same for the Royal Opera's Kat'a Kabanova revival which comes with interesting new singers but the same splashy, West End production values and the same conductor, Bernard Haitink - who, for all the substance of his reading, doesn't deliver the astringent sonorities or rhythmic bite that tell you this is Janacek.

The new singers are led by a Slovakian soprano, Eva Jenis, who is cold of voice but touching in manner, with just the right balance of fragility and passion for the title role. There's also a strong German mezzo, Nadja Michael, as Varvara; and some beautifuly fresh, focused singing from the young British tenor Timothy Robinson as Kudrjas. But as before, the performances are overwhelmed by Trevor Nunn's production, which does its damnedest to turn an intimate piece into an epic musical. Maria Bjornson's frozen maelstrom set - Van Gogh in three dimensions - makes an impressive symbol of the emotional turbulence that drives the action, but it's too big and smothering. And so are Nunn's grand gestures: his collapsing cross, and real live horses. We all know why he does it: short of Pavarotti or Domingo, nothing galvanises an audience like the prospect of four legs with a will of their own and an uncontrollable bladder. But is showbiz-logic appropriate to a finely wrought piece like Kat'a? I don't think so.

'Kat'a Kabanova': ROH, WC2 (0171 304 4000), Mon, Wed & Fri. Elena Prokina replaces Eva Jenis on Wed & Fri.