1 The day's programme began well with lunch in Fortnum & Mason. We took our seats opposite one and other at the long, refrectory tables. We chatted, undisturbed by the neighbouring conversations, selected, and continued to chat and to eat. Two hours passed companionably. By the time we left, the tables had been laid for tea, and the first of the places had been taken.
2 To Hatchards, to Hatchards, to browse and to browse, and even to buy. So many possibilities. So many books to add to those already on the shelves, each waiting its turn to be read. Rather like a harem where each of the women, bought or donated, wait on the Great Man's pleasure. From the books on offer, two were selected. The Thirty-Nine Steps will be given to a grandson. If he likes it, then there could be more from the same pen. A book of its time, I wonder how the young man will take to it. The Adventures of Don Quixote will be by the bed, there to be read a chapter at a time. The exemplary picaresque novel?
3 Simon Russell Beale spoke Milton's lines in corresponding exemplary fashion. Claire Tomalin spoke about the poet, whilst her colleague gave voice to them. Forty-five minutes of pleasure, listening to both. The pleasure of the lines being delivered remains with me. So does Milton and Shakespeare, for the former was born just a few years before the death of the latter. The overlap. The connexion across the centuries. I also registered that Milton secured a European reputation as a poet. And the creation of the heroic Satan, the angel who was thrown out of heaven as the result of a cosmic struggle and who sought a revenge by interfering with the divine order of the Garden.
4 And what of Onegin? He had flown from Germany to take the part. We agreed that the first Act had failed to engage. Tatiana, the dreamer, the vulnerable, the young woman who declares her love in a message to the new man. The new man who was so distant, who was insensitive to the young woman's feeling. The return of the love-letter, the advice to be more discreet. How unfeeling. And we were left without feeling for the exchanges.
4.1 Things were livelier in the second Act. The name-day, Lensky's distress as Onegin flirts with Olga. The quarrel, the challenge, the setting for the duel. Yet, whilst things were livelier, there remained the feeling, as we left, that the opera might be weak, that the failure to engage was not just the result of the particular performers. Before the evening, the opera had been amongst the preferred Glynbebourne ones. After the performance, the ranking for Glyndebourne has to be re-thought.
5 But what a high-cultural day, a tribute to London and to the companionable, shared tastes. Such a day gains from company. Of course it does. There is someone with whom to exchange the thoughts. And it's only when I speak that I know what I think. True?
Monday, 31 March 2008
Saturday, 8 March 2008
No, it's not
1 Insofar as we thought at all, we guessed that it would not be La Fille du Regiment, nor would it be Don Pasquale. Still, we could expect a few tunes. After all, the opera had been composed by Donizetti. Now we know. Now that we've seen the opera, now that we've thought about it, now that your correspondent has spent read some of the reviews (on the web), I'm (we're) ready to say what was going on. A dark opera.
2 Yes, indeed. Ravenswood castle was an inhospitable place. There were no comforts there for a young woman. We sensed that straightaway as we took in the setting, the empty rooms, the windows (and the sense of constantly being seen), the men's (especially her brother's) concern for power and fortune. Money, and power, were the drivers. The exercise of a brother's power over his sister was to drive her into a marriage entirely of convenience. It had already driven her, it was clear, to comply with the brother's incestuous directions. As we watched the games, the first scene, in which Lucia lay, in white, upon a bed whilst her brother sat, in grey broadcloth, at a business desk, made sense. The castle was a place in which humanity and care, with the exception of the young woman's companion, had no place. It was no place for a fragile young woman, perhaps no place for any young woman.
3 If there was a breath of fresh air, if there was a person of natural good-will, then it must be the dispossessed owner of the castle, the man from the heather, as it were, Edgardo. He, in leather coat and kilt, be-sworded, was able to love the young woman, to express that love, and to be rewarded with hers. Alas, a man, even a man from the heather, with natural good-will, has to do what a man has to do. He must go about public business and leave the young woman (to the mis-handling of the others).
4 Those others continue the imprisonment. In concert, they sunder the link between the lovers. The young woman, in ritual white, is brought to the culminating submission of a marriage with the man, who seems aimably indifferent to the woman, before the audience, grey and indifferent too. She signs the marriage contract. Her sentence is life.
5 There was no surprise when the leather-coated, kilted, still sworded lover enters through a window. Bravura, bravado, sword against pistol. The man from the heather, and men such as he, must fail before the new men, the members of the dominant commercial class (who have done well out of the change of monarchs and who will remain in power for years, and years).
6 There has been a sense of the Gothic throughout the opera. The lighting, the Wolf's Tower, the sense of awful things in remote castles, madness in those castles. Now we come to the Grand Guignol. The young woman returns from the marriage bed in a bloodied white gown. Her husband is dead in the bed, killed by the young woman. She is mad. The man who loves her kills himself.
7 Such was our night at the opera. Ah, had we known what to expect, we should have been more receptive. Still, we know now, and we will be ready for a later production. In the meantime, we have also been reminded of the benefits of a review immediately after a performance. We have been reminded not just to ask 'Now, what was all that about?' but to treat the question seriously and to undertake the process of developing an answer.
2 Yes, indeed. Ravenswood castle was an inhospitable place. There were no comforts there for a young woman. We sensed that straightaway as we took in the setting, the empty rooms, the windows (and the sense of constantly being seen), the men's (especially her brother's) concern for power and fortune. Money, and power, were the drivers. The exercise of a brother's power over his sister was to drive her into a marriage entirely of convenience. It had already driven her, it was clear, to comply with the brother's incestuous directions. As we watched the games, the first scene, in which Lucia lay, in white, upon a bed whilst her brother sat, in grey broadcloth, at a business desk, made sense. The castle was a place in which humanity and care, with the exception of the young woman's companion, had no place. It was no place for a fragile young woman, perhaps no place for any young woman.
3 If there was a breath of fresh air, if there was a person of natural good-will, then it must be the dispossessed owner of the castle, the man from the heather, as it were, Edgardo. He, in leather coat and kilt, be-sworded, was able to love the young woman, to express that love, and to be rewarded with hers. Alas, a man, even a man from the heather, with natural good-will, has to do what a man has to do. He must go about public business and leave the young woman (to the mis-handling of the others).
4 Those others continue the imprisonment. In concert, they sunder the link between the lovers. The young woman, in ritual white, is brought to the culminating submission of a marriage with the man, who seems aimably indifferent to the woman, before the audience, grey and indifferent too. She signs the marriage contract. Her sentence is life.
5 There was no surprise when the leather-coated, kilted, still sworded lover enters through a window. Bravura, bravado, sword against pistol. The man from the heather, and men such as he, must fail before the new men, the members of the dominant commercial class (who have done well out of the change of monarchs and who will remain in power for years, and years).
6 There has been a sense of the Gothic throughout the opera. The lighting, the Wolf's Tower, the sense of awful things in remote castles, madness in those castles. Now we come to the Grand Guignol. The young woman returns from the marriage bed in a bloodied white gown. Her husband is dead in the bed, killed by the young woman. She is mad. The man who loves her kills himself.
7 Such was our night at the opera. Ah, had we known what to expect, we should have been more receptive. Still, we know now, and we will be ready for a later production. In the meantime, we have also been reminded of the benefits of a review immediately after a performance. We have been reminded not just to ask 'Now, what was all that about?' but to treat the question seriously and to undertake the process of developing an answer.
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