A New Experience

One evening a very long time ago, I climbed flight after flight of stairs to the very top of the auditorium, passed the entrance to the amphitheatre and then climbed on up to the balcony also known as ‘The Gods’. I and my two roommates were at the opera to see ‘The Magic Flute’ at Covent Garden. (Yes, you didn’t misread that, it was two roommates, as in those days, 1980, it was two or three to a room and only mature students were allocated a single room in the large, women-only student house where we lived.)

The two memories I have of that evening over 40 years ago were, firstly, the wonderful singing by Kiri Te Kanawa as Pamina and, secondly, the exhaustion of the sit/standing arrangement and straining to see the performers from the very, very back. So, why, oh why did I find myself at the Royal Opera House on Monday morning in ‘The Gods’ again? It was the triumph of considered, thought-out optimism over ever-fading, vague-ish memories.

Programme for The Magic Flute not from ‘The Gods’ visit of April 1980, but from another occasion in July 1989.

In the past, when I lived in London, I used to belong to the Friends of Covent Garden and, interestingly, I notice from a 1989 programme, basic membership back then was £25 a year. Needless to say that has gone up over the intervening decades and it is now £115 for an annual membership, but if you are able to attend the daytime rehearsals I think it’s worth it.

Advertising for new members. 1989

Attending dress rehearsals is one of the benefits of belonging to the Friends along with priority booking. Now I am semi-retired I can finally attend a daytime rehearsal in London. It is something I’ve always wanted to do. However, when I bought my ticket for the dress rehearsal of ‘The Barber of Seville’ only restricted view seats in the upper slips were still available.

And, what of my new experience? I think I’d say it was a mixed bag. The dress rehearsal was musically and theatrically wonderful. The younger vocalists, Aigul Akhmetshina (Rosina) and Andrzej Filończyk (Figaro), gave it their all and sang all the flashy fireworks so beloved by Rossini with no marking to save their voices. The mighty-voiced Bryn Terfel offered the most charming and amusing performance of Don Basilio with the expected superb singing. The other more mature members of the cast gave good performances, but I felt they were perhaps holding back vocally just a little with their eye on this evening’s Opening Night.

Information boards in the foyer provided performance details for the dress rehearsal. 2023

And, the downside? If I found it physically draining as a young student to be up in ‘The Gods’, then as an oldie it was always going to be challenging. My knees, neck and back did not appreciate the two and three quarter hours running time despite stretching my legs with a walk down to the Paul Hamlyn Hall during the 25 minute interval.

Left, the view from The Gods, opera glasses would have been useful. Right, zoomed in on the orchestra pit.

The lessons I’ve learnt from this new experience are, firstly, it is definitely worth being a member of the Friends if you live in the London area or can make a day trip to the capital. Secondly, if you find it difficult sitting at awkward angles to watch productions, then it is essential to note the day and the time booking for rehearsals goes live and login before all the front-facing, comfortable seats are sold out.

To go for traditional or not?

No Boxing Day visit to a traditional pantomime for my daughter and I, but a trip to a play at the theatre. Opera and ballet sadly out of our price range, West End musicals not my thing, but a good, wordy, political drama ‘Best of Enemies’ – perfect. And, for my daughter? Well, as an avid watcher of ‘Homeland’ seeing David Harewood on stage together with Zachary Quinto (Spock!!!!) it was almost too much.

‘Best of Enemies’ at the Noel Coward Theatre, London.

‘Best of Enemies’ is a play by James Graham that focusses on a pivotal moment for the relationship between TV news and political discourse. In 1968 the American TV company ABC was trailing its competitors, NBC and CBS, with its audience numbers, particularly during the coverage of the political parties’ national conventions. A fall in audiences meant less advertising revenue and the TV executives needed a new offer to compete. The men at ABC came up with the idea for a series of debates between two people, one from either side of the political divide.

During the first part of the play we see how both William F. Buckley (David Harewood), from the Republican side of US politics and Gore Vidal (Zachary Quinto), from the Democratic side were approached and engaged to discuss the political issues of the day in a series of live debates. The play truly gets into its stride as it presents how, over the course of these live debates, the tone of the discussions descended and as the debates became shouting matches so the TV audience numbers rose. And, we, in the theatre, witness the beginnings of the sensationalised political discourse we have today.

Two protagonists on stage before the play commences.

The performances by the main characters were both electric and engaging. The production was slick and energetic weaving original news footage from significant events of 1968 with realtime video close-ups of Harewood and Quinto as they verbally sparred on stage.

I am just about old enough to remember 1968. I remember the news of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Bobby Kennedy that so shocked my parents. However, although later as an adult I knew of Gore Vidal, I’d never heard of William F. Buckley or the 1968 debates. And, as for my daughter, she had even less knowledge of the historical period aside from the music and the fashions of the era.

The ABC TV studio control room in the background.

Did we need to know much about the protagonists of the play, or about the American politics of the era, or even about the wider political climate of 1968? Probably not. The play gripped its present-day diverse audience and there were even moments of amusement and laughter despite the serious subject matter. And, at the end of the evening, as the audience left the theatre, I caught snippets of sober conversations recognising the significance of the 1968 debates and our current, ‘politics as spectacle’ so beloved by the likes of Trump, Johnson and others.

‘Best of Enemies’ is well worth a ticket and is playing at the Noel Coward Theatre, St Martin’s Lane, London until 18 February 2023. 

Boat Trip on Sailing Barge Victor – eventually

“You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.”

No – we are not standing gazing across from West Egg to East Egg, but sailing down the River Orwell in Suffolk on board the Sailing Barge Victor. I just saw that green light and immediately thought of Gatsby. What an old romantic!

The ships wheel, Sailing Barge Victor.

This special trip had been booked by my daughter for midsummer 2020, but we all know what was happening last June and, in due course, like so many events that excursion was postponed.

Waiting in the drizzle for departure.

You may remember that last year June was warm, dry and summery, but this year it has been just a bit more on the wet side. We climbed on board and whilst waiting to set off, I started taking some photos and noticed it had already begun to drizzle.

Patiently standing by ready to secure the barge in the lock.

Once Victor had cast off it was round the marina to the old lock. As we waited for the lock to empty to the level of the river the persistent drizzle turned to rain proper. It was lucky my camera is fine in less than optimal conditions (it has a sealed, weatherproof body apparently) as we got soaked remaining on deck determined to make the most of the experience.

Leaving the lock, conflab between the Master and mate and one of two life boats on board.

Fortunately, it was only a shortish downpour and by the time the barge chugged under the Orwell Bridge the rain had stopped. There was a gentle breeze and the Master decided it was time to cut the engine and hoist the sails.

Sailing down the River Orwell under full sail.

The sudden peace and quiet was delightful as the huge main sail filled with the breeze and the barge gently sailed down the river. This was the first time I’ve been on a boat under wind power and it was enchanting.

Caught between moments ducking underneath the gently swinging foresail.

Of course, sailing is slower than being engine-powered, but why be in a hurry. I think humans, particularly in so-called advanced societies, have lost something that’s restorative that comes with ‘slow’. In our relentless need for speed, continual clock watching and chasing our tails much is missed.

Lights in the night as Victor passes ships docked at the Port of Ipswich.

With the climate crisis making its presence felt more and more perhaps we need to rethink this speed thing and generally take life at a gentler pace and burn less fossil fuel.

Nighttime on the dockside.

Our barge trip was an evening affair and despite being just past midsummer, it was dark by the time we returned to Ipswich. And, what a treat to approach the Old Customs House from the water lit up in all its glory.

I couldn’t resist concocting this photomontage melding my nighttime photo with the embroidered version depicting the Wherry Quay of the nineteenth century as seen as part of the Ipswich Charter Hangings.

Finally, if you were wondering what Victor looks like under sail, here’s a couple of photographs I took from another boat as Victor sailed past us on a very windy day in August 2018.

Sailing Barge Victor with top sail hoisted (too windy for the main sail though).

Twenty Years on from the 1972 Tutankhamun Exhibition and finally I visit Egypt.

Even before my parents took my sister and I to the British Museum to see the 1972 Tutankahmun Exhibition I had already fallen under the spell of Ancient Egypt.

I still have my original collection of newspaper articles, souvenir extracts and a history magazine stuck in a scrapbook accompanied by an average 10 year old’s random commentary and drawings.

What on earth could ‘odds’ be? I can’t think in those days at 10 years old I’d have read about canopic jars because if I had I would have added a suitable birds-head lid to the pot and gleefully labelled it ‘Pots like this held intestines’ .

Incidentally, I can see now, as the front cover has come unglued, that this scrapbook had originally been used for a school project imaginatively called ‘Normans’. All trace of school Normans has gone and my obsession for all and anything Ancient Egyptian (a topic not covered at my village school) has instead filled the pages and still does, sort of, 50 years on.

Of course during the run up to the 1972 ‘blockbuster’ exhibition, although that term wasn’t used back then, there was plenty of press coverage. Serious articles in the Sunday broadsheets and specialist magazines were printed as well as the ubiquitous souvenir pull-out.

A special 35 page magazine cost 25p now available used/vintage ie secondhand for £4.39 and the Evening Standard Souvenir ‘Tutankhamun’ dated Saturday, May 6th 1972.

The 1972 exhibition consisted of fifty prize objects from Tutankhamun’s reign as the boy-king of Egypt (BC1361 to 1352). The artefacts had been lent by the Egyptian Government and made this the biggest Tutankhamun exhibition outside Egypt. Fifty objects to mark the 50 years since 1922 when the English archaeologist, Howard Carter, had discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb with the inner chamber still intact and undisturbed by grave robbers.

My inaccurate drawings of Ancient Egyptian symbols and a newspaper page showing how once again in a similar way to 1922 fashion jumped on the ‘Tut’ bandwagon.

Apparently the British Museum estimated that between 800 – 1000 per hour would pass through the turnstile with adults paying 50p and children 25p entrance fees. (So that cost my father £1.50!) I didn’t know at the time, but have read since, that the exhibition ran from 30th March to 30th September 1972, opening Mondays 3 pm to 9 pm, Tuesdays to Saturday 10 am to 9 pm and Sundays 2 pm to 6 pm with any profits going to Unesco’s fund to save the ancient temples of Philae from the waters of the Aswan Dam. (As a side note it’s interesting that the BM was open until 9 pm. I had thought evening opening was a 21st century innovation.)

Yours truly out during the evening whilst in Aswan. Sadly, though we didn’t take the helicopter tour (nowadays more usually a hot air balloon) to Abu Simbel to see the relocated temples saved from the dam waters.

Returning to the ‘treasures’ in my scrapbook I found an envelope with a special edition stamp which was also issued to mark the 50 year anniversary of the original 1922 discovery. (My goodness a stamp for 3p!)

UK stamp issued in 1972 marking the 50 year anniversary of the discovery in 1922 of the burial chamber of the boy-king Tuthankhamun.

Today turning the foxed pages and unfolding the fading newspaper pages all stuck in with the now yellowing and stick-less sellotape has reminded me just how keen I had been. You’d have thought I might have gone on to be an historian or even an archaeologist, but at 14 years old school history hit the Industrial Revolution and from being nearly top of the class I dropped to the very bottom in a year.

I personally don’t remember seeing much of this dramatic make-up in our village, but I do remember in later years, during Sixth Form, attending a fancy dress party and going as Cleopatra when really I should have gone as a true Ancient Eygptian, Nefertiti.

It was another 25 years before I seriously returned to history when I enrolled at UEA to study Art History. Of course you never really forget your childhood passions and eventually 20 years after seeing the 1972 Tutankhamun Exhibition I did, finally get to visit Egypt. We saw the Pyramids, the Sphinx, took the slow night train down to Aswan and travelled back to Cairo after stopping off at Luxor and the Valley of Kings. I still remember visiting the Cairo Museum strolling straight up to the cabinet displaying the gold death mask of Tutankhamun with no other tourists in the room. It was a pole opposite experience to my attempt to see the mask back in 1972 at the BM. After queuing for a couple of hours, I had struggled in the crush of adults and after the briefest of glimpses of the iconic mask been swept on through the exhibition to the next object.

Yours truly again this time at the bottom of a pyramid in Giza (left) and (right) beneath the columns of the Great Hypostyle Hall within the Karnak temple complex, Luxor. (1992)

Of course, since 1972 attending blockbuster, popular exhibitions has changed with the introduction of limited numbers and timed entrances. Then along came Covid and we now have greatly reduced numbers, strictly timed tickets, hand gel stations and one-way systems along with mask wearing. Last week when I made my first post-Covid lockdown visit to the Ipswich Museum it was so quiet the staff outnumbered the visitors.

The Vulture, Egyptian symbol for divine power and hieroglyph for the letter ‘A’ with the sound ‘ah’. And, I have no idea why I used wool and glue to make a record of hieroglyphs for my scrapbook, but this was the only example which was instantly recognisable.

It was the night before the Covid Christmas

Twenty-twenty, what can you say? Goodbye and good riddance I suggest.

On the topic of watershed years I have found some photos from the last century when all we were concerned about was the possibility of the Y2K bug wiping out technology as we knew it.

A worried angel circa 1997

First I dug out a couple of grainy prints of one of my daughter’s contributions to school nativities. Then to my surprise I found another Christmas photo from a now forgotten Boxing Day trip to an Old Time Music Hall evening in Norwich. The event organisers had suggested the audience might like to attend in ‘Good Old Days’ attire. We had a go donning long skirts and velvet chokers. I seem to remember we were in the noticeable minority.

‘Say cheese’! My late mother, daughter et moi.

On that note and with smiles all round, I’d like to wish everybody the Season’s Greetings and a very, very Healthy New Year.

Perhaps time for a new production

There is an age-old question how do you present a masterful work of art created in the nineteenth century to a contemporary audience. Grand opera, like much of Shakespeare, is often concerned with universal themes of the human condition. Stories of tragic love, betrayal, and death are presented for our entertainment. Verdi’s famous opera Rigoletto is one such example.

For a Christmas treat my father and I recently went to see Rigoletto at the Royal Opera House. This is the David McVicar production first staged in 2001. The staging admirably sets the mood. It is simple, dark and foreboding with much in gloom. Perhaps it is a bit too dark, as I would like to have had brighter pools of lights for the solos and duets so we could actually see the singers’ faces.

David McVicar’s production is a no holes barred, most deliberately sleazy, with a capital ‘S’, production. Yes, Rigoletto, from the Victor Hugo play, shocked its original nineteenth-century audiences in Italy to the point where it was banned. However, for a twenty-first-century audience we are fine with a probing light illuminating the depravity of absolute power that is displayed by the medieval Duke of Mantua as he exploits his subjects in a virtually lawless manner. We are not, as the nineteenth-century folk were, troubled that their social order would be disturbed by this politically provocative opera.

Nevertheless, this 2001 production is problematic today as far as contemporary gender politics is concerned. As Verdi scored, there are no ‘singing’ parts for the female members of the chorus. In opera terms that means all the women of the chorus are simply littering the stage as objects. In this case to be used and abused, they have no voice, therefore no agency. Despite no collective female singing, there are four solo female parts. These characters appear to stand for the virginal (Rigoletto’s daughter Gilda), the whore (Maddalena), the old nurse/matron (Gilda’s nurse) and the aristocratic lady (Countess Ceprano). I suppose standard females rolls reflecting the nineteenth-century commonly held view of the place of women in society. This is despite the fact the record shows many women worked in factories as well as working as servants, or on the land or in trade. And, working women were also evident during the medieval period in which Rigoletto and indeed this production has been set.

So what can Rigoletto offer its 21st audiences? Verdi wrote it in the music, it is the psychology of humankind; those flesh and blood traits that cross the centuries and with which a modern audience can identify.

Attempting any tweaking sanitization of Verdi’s Rigoletto would be utterly pointless and the wonderful music has so much to convey not least the loving relationship between a father and his cherished daughter as well as all that bravura, dramatic evil. However, in this particular production subtlety is absent. Of course, nobody would want to dismiss a work of art because it reflects the mores of a different time, but I think this nineteenth-century piece could have been given a more reflective interpretation.  Surely, it is time the ROH invited a new director to tackle this magnificent tragic opera with a fresh, more nuanced production.

One very positive aside, was the discovery (well, for me) of a new voice, the young bass Andrea Mastroni, most certainly one to follow in the future.

 

A few of my favourite things (brightening a dull February)

I know it’s known as the short month, but sometimes February simply feels too long. I often find it more gloomy than the dark days of November. Perhaps it’s the closeness of the much anticipated spring compared to the everyday reality of more grey, depressing drizzle. So I thought I’d consider some uplifting, diversions and a culinary treat!

Blue flowers – no fresh ones in the garden yet, but these saved and dried from last year.

Photos – capturing the delicate winter light at the waterfront,

or, that brief moment of low February sun at home.

Cake. Making a naughty, but nice treat. . . .  and naturally eating it!

Memories. A moment of sentimental recollection on finding long forgotten toys during an otherwise fruitless search of all those boxes in the attic.

 

Christmas 2016 – UK posting dates

It’s the first day of December and we can now ‘officially’ mention Christmas! Round my way we’ve already had an increase of delivery vans and hardworking folk dropping off parcels well into the evening darkness. Each year the Royal Mail issues its last posting dates. You don’t want a special Christmas gift to turn up in January!

But, of course, things don’t always run as smoothly as hoped for and just to be on the safe side my dates are not quite so last minute.

In the last three years I have found the Special Delivery service very good and only once has a silk scarf, boxed and packaged, temporarily taken a detour to the wrong sorting office. With the full tracking information I saw it arrive in Scotland at a sorting office on the wrong side of the loch. What was probably a 15 minute trip across the water was a 30 mile trek by road and another day added to the delivery time. A worrying time for both me and my customer, but a successful delivery in the end.

 

Werther – a heart-wrenching encounter

Last week I accompanied my father to see ‘Werther’ at Covent Garden. There’s nothing quite like an evening of intense operatic drama with a suitably tragic ending to provide catharsis during unsettled times.

Programme illustration ‘Werther and Lotte’ an anonymous woodcut based on an illustration to Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774) by Hermann Kaulbach (1846-1909)

Massenet’s ‘Werther’ is based on the 18th-century classic of German literature ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’ by Goethe. The tale was published in 1774 and rapidly became popular across Europe as a book of cultural significance.  It is the story of a young man who lives by his ideals and kills himself for love.

Massenet’s operatic version, sung in French, first premiered over 100 years later in 1892. Notably, in the production I saw last week in London, Werther was the Italian tenor Vittorio Grigòlo, Charlotte was the American mezzo soprano Joyce DiDonato, Albert was the Serbian baritone David Bižić and Sophie the American soprano Heather Engebretson. The performance was conducted by the Royal Opera’s Music Director the British-Italian Antonio Pappano. Other members of the cast were from Holland, Switzerland, Ukraine and Australia. The international buzz continued across the audience. I heard Spanish, Italian and American voices and I was sat next to a German couple who spoke brilliant English. It was a positive microcosm – no pathetic threats here of sending people back!

An international cast takes a bow.

The music was superb and the orchestra was in fine, truly dynamic form as it played to the masterly conducting and interpretation of Antonio Pappano. I’m no expert on French late-nineteenth-century opera, but I found this production riveting, gleefully wallowing in the emotional agitation with the musical tension escalating as the drama intensified. The acting of both DiDonato and Grigòlo was engrossing as they sang with fire and passion. It is a while since I’ve seen a live performance with the tingle factor, but the desperate, hopeless pain of Act 3 sent shivers down my spine more than once. Their singing was not perfection, but who’s complaining when it was so expressive and heart-wrenching. Frequently there’s something lacking in ‘perfect/multiple take’ studio recordings compared to experiencing the vibrancy of live performances.

Backstage at the ROH – the Act 4 attic room photographed by David Bizic who played Albert in the production.

And, as for the production, quite brilliant. The staging and lighting matched the progressively darkening mood of the opera moving from a brilliant blue summer, to a gloomy interior to a black winter night with falling snow. Act 4 was visually thrilling too as the distant attic room (shown above) slowly moved from the depths of the stage to the very front, mystically gliding towards us within a night of falling snow as the orchestra played ‘The Night before Christmas’.

At the end of this harrowing tragedy the two stars looked emotionally drained, but fortunately were revived by the rapturous applause they received.

Werther and Charlotte receive their rapturous applause.

And, finally the conductor left the orchestra pit and came on stage. Bravo, bravo.

Antonio Pappano joins his singers.

Did I mention I loved this?
I wish I could go again.

Season’s Greetings

With lots of twinkle!

Revival of ‘The Ruling Class’ – bitingly funny

Last week my daughter, half Scottish, and I went to see James McAvoy’s latest West End theatre performance in ‘The Ruling Class’. I read in the programme that Mr McAvoy had appeared in ‘Breathing Corpses’ at the Royal Court in March 2005, but my daughter was still in primary school and so we missed seeing this ‘exciting young talent’ (that’s a quote from the time by the theatre critic of The Independent). However, since then we have been lucky enough to see him star in ‘Three Days of Rain’ (2009) and then terrify us as ‘MacBeth’ (2013). And now, we have enjoyed watching him lead a strong cast through the revival of the 1968 satirical play ‘The Ruling Class’ by Peter Barnes.

Superb ensemble headed by James McAvoy taking their bows at the end of ‘The Ruling Class’.
Directed by Jamie Lloyd.

The play has not been given a 21st-century updating, but deliberately offers us the looks and, more importantly, the voices of the 1960s, all strangled received pronunciation (aka the Queen’s English or BBC English). Although I’m not old enough to remember the class politics of the late 1960s, I did recognise and understand the overall context and its resonance for a 2015 audience. As a piece essentially poking fun at the British class system I wondered what many of the younger, overseas visitors made of the play. I was sat between my daughter (21) and a lady who I think had seen the original 1968 production. I think the older lady and I enjoyed the whole experience considerably more than my daughter.

Electrifying – Forbes Masson and James McAvoy.
‘The Ruling Class’ publicity photograph by Johan Persson.

James McAvoy’s performance as Jack, the 14th Earl of Gurney, grabs the audience round the neck and shakes it this way and that as he energetically channels his immense charisma into this larger than life character. The play is funny, the humour dark and vicious, and McAvoy appears to relish playing such an unstable, fluid character. It is no wonder he has been nominated for a Best Actor Olivier Award. Almost equalling McAvoy’s mesmerising performance is another Scot, Forbes Masson, who was both versatile and brilliant in the various parts he played. Indeed, the whole talented cast made for a highly entertaining evening particularly if you enjoy a dose of black humour. The play is on until April 11, 2015 at Trafalgar Studios.

And, finally, if you would like a straight from the horse’s mouth comment on the current controversy about elitism in theatre – have a look at this two minute video filmed at the opening night.