Elites and Commons

There are some elites I'd like to join (or have it thought that I am already a member), there are others to which I am indifferent, and there are some from which I recoil. Alas, the elites I'd like to join pay me no heed. No longer can I think of opening the batting for England, scoring a century, and acknowledging the applause with just the slightest lifts of my bat. Neither, I fear, will I be invited to write leaders for The Times.

Instead I must be content with the comforts which are delivered by knowing that it is good to one-eyed when all around don't even have one. Cultivez votre jardin is just a regional way of saying choose your group. Within th group know more than others or perhaps know as much as one or perhaps two, so that the two or three of you can constitute the elite.

And the rest? Why, they are the commons. If an elite is to exist it must have as a necessary adjunct a commonality. The one supposes the other. If there is to be an elite of writers there must be those for whom the challenge of writing is hard to meet. If there is to be an elite which is drawn from all those who bake apple tarts then there must be a group who, for all their efforts, bake less-then-tasty ones.

And so to Glyndebourne (and anywhere else, for that matter). Search for the elite and in so doing find the commons as well. For the moment, suppose that the commons were all those who were not there. (Yes, yes, I know it won't run: there were some not there who would have liked to have been there and there were others, not there also, who would not have liked to attend La Cenerentola but who have attended or will attend other productions.) Look around then at the elite, that is, the people who were there.

An elite, the pick of some bunch or other? It's hard to think so. After all, luck in a ballot will produce a couple or really cheap tickets. The old black suit by itself is hardly the badge of any elite which is worth a second's consideration. There must be some other attribute which marks out those who were there as members of an elite which you or I would wish to join.

So what about the extent to which those at Glyndebourne were knowledgeable about opera. Pass. I have no idea. Of course, I can report the conversations of those in whose company I have attended. But those companies may not be representative. Thus said, by the way, it may be that as much attention has been paid to the food as was paid to the opera.

I can imagine one route into membership of an admirable elite. Ahead of the production of Tristan und Isolde, the candidate listens to th opera, act by act, with the libretto in hand. Music and text - both are studied. (In my case, it would be easier to attend to the text; as a result, I might be confined to associate membership of the elite group.) Than, at Glyndebourne, ahead of the first act, the candidate listens to the overture and talks about it and the first act as a whole. In the long interval, the candidate reviews and then listens to the long exchange between the two lovers. Meanwhile, there might be time for a little food.
A hard route into membership of a worthwhile elite. Take heart, though. There is an alternative. Cultivez votre jardin.

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