Playing it; straight; Philip Gates is warned not to expect bombast

IT'S lunchtime in the Cardiff headquarters of Welsh National Opera and Richard Armstrong, the music director of Scottish Opera, can't wait to start munching his way through a pasta salad. Armstrong is a man noted for his musical creativity, but it seems food is also very dear to his heart.

"I was music director here for a number of years and one of the best things Brian McMaster [now Edinburgh Festival director] and I achieved was getting up this building for Welsh National Opera, and getting a restaurant with good food," he says, between satisfied mouthfuls.

It's easy to see why Armstrong needs plenty of sustenance at the moment, as he is in the middle of a particularly heavy schedule. He is conducting in Cardiff Singer of the World - a competition involving 25 singers, with five singers performing each night for five nights. This in turn comes just a few days after a Scottish Opera trip to Porto, where the company gave two performances of James MacMillan's Ines de Castro, with a Wagner concert featuring Anna Evans sandwiched in between. According to Armstrong, it went down a storm.

"It was a thrilling time. Ines is based on a 14th century Portuguese story which is one of the first things kids are taught in schools. It was a massive operation, but as Porto is the European City of Culture they got the money to take us there. James MacMillan was also present to see his piece tested on home ground, if you like. There were terrific audiences - they just went bananas."

Once the Singer of the World is over, Armstrong will continue preparation for the highlight of Scottish Opera's year - the continuation of its Ring Cycle with Die Walkre, to be performed at the Edinburgh International Festival in August.

"I have already done some individual work with most of the singers over the past six months and have spent a few days with them. I will start proper detailed musical preparation next week and then stage rehearsals in two weeks' time. It's thrillingly close."

Expectation is high that Scottish Opera will deliver something as successful as last year's Das Rheingold, but Armstrong - who is enormously experienced in Ring performances having done four Ring cycles with Welsh National Opera as well as the whole Ring in 1986 - knows Die Walkre will be a fresh start.

"It digs in right from the first note. With Rheingold it is all exposition, nothing gets overdeveloped. But with Walkre there is real development, especially in the sheer scale of Act Two. That development in the narrative is where huge dilemmas are thrown up and it can be difficult to get across. It's also where Wotan goes through the whole story of Rheingold, so it takes a lot of skill to pull it off."

Walkre is also the opera where the striding Ride Of The Valkyries first appears. But don't expect a grandiose performance from Armstrong.

"I cannot stand brassy, bombastic Wagner. I was a repetiteur for Sir George Solti [who recorded the whole Ring with the Vienna Philharmonic] and it is not now a style of performance of the music that appeals to me - but it at least had amazing singers."

For Armstrong, there is evidence at Wagner's Bayreuth Theatre that the composer too was not a fan of booming brass. "The orchestral pit is concealed and goes down so the strings are on one level and the lower strings below etc etc so that the brass are right at the bottom. They are so far down that no matter how loud they play they cannot drown the strings. If they completely cover the strings, that to me doesn't give a real orchestral climax."

Armstrong's enthusiasm for the Ring knows no bounds. It's a different matter when it comes to the saga of Scottish Opera itself. So will the Ring be seen as the pinnacle of his career with Scottish Opera?

"I think it will be because it is such a big project and it takes so much time to build it up and to perform it. And of course it is 30 years since Scottish Opera did its only Ring cycle in Glasgow. But the Ring is major repertory and it shouldn't really be seen as exceptional to perform it."

When touching on whether Scottish Opera will still be able to complete this cycle - a previous one was shelved in 1993 - the question of finance is still a sore point for Armstrong.

"You aren't going to see any more financial scandals. That is in the past and I'm pleased it is over. It was very complex and I don't want to go over it, all the frustration of recent years. I have often felt the superb work we have been doing has been drowned out by the noise of financial probity. The headlines should be the work and I hope we can start to make this much more the focus."

Despite the difficult times, Armstrong still has great faith in the company. "I really believe Scotland has a very fine opera company. But in my eight to nine years I have already worked with three general directors, a change of chairman and a change of board. This has very major implications. I have felt I have had to carry the can. It has been a very stressful period and I hope that it is over now. I have got a new board and an excellent chief executive."

But the big question is whether Scottish Opera is allowed to move forward. Armstrong believes it now can. "In relation to the money, the Scottish Executive has given a clear indication that it wants to support Scottish Opera. I hope now there can be a climate where the country values what Scottish Opera does. We are not just for the Central Belt. We go all over the country. We have not sung loudly about that. In education there has been a phenomenal amount of work."

And what about the political critics? "I think it is grotesque that the arts is used as a political hot potato. The arts are a very important part of education in its widest sense. Opera suffers from being a relatively expensive art form.

"The sad thing is we are still not able to perform as much as we need to and should. There is a massive demand for our performances. We are not able to give enough performances to balance the budgets and are not able to do enough new work. If you stop doing new work, you risk stagnation."

Having said that, Scottish Opera will be performing a new work by Sally Beamish next year, Opera Monster - based on aspects of Mary Shelley. And it is Armstrong's resilience with Scottish Opera, as well as his performances of Ines de Castro and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies's The Doctor Of Myddfai which resulted in him being awarded the UK Conductor of the Year award by the Royal Philharmonic Music Society in 1997.

Recognition indeed. Here's hoping that Scottish Opera's Ring can also put the company in the headlines for all the right reasons.

Die Walkre will be performed at the Edinburgh International Festival on August 23, 26, 29 and September 1 mini profile Richard Armstrong was born in Leicester and was organ scholar at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, before joining the music staff of the Royal Opera House in 1966. He moved to Welsh National Opera, where he was music director from 1973 to 1986. He's been awarded the Janacek Medal and UK Conductor of the Year 1997. He became music director of Scottish Opera in 1993.

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