The Marriage of Figaro

At a familiar opera, we were in unaccustomed seats. Well, we are unaccustomed to any seats other than those we occupy because they were empty and we beat any others who also had their eyes on them. But unaccustomed, as well, because we paid standing-ticket prices and we overlooked the orchestra. As a result, we had our eyes on the conductor. And we wished we could have had our eyes on what was happening on our side of the stage; however, we could imagine.

Shocking

1 If I was an opera correspondent, then I would have lost my job. The last contribution was posted on 6 July. The operas have been performed, but there has been no recognition on the blog. No note, no recollection. For some, the experience itself is sufficient; others want to recall the experience and catch some aspects of it (at least). Yet others move between the two responses.

2 Elektra was shocking. On the journey home I wrote 'Raw, abrasive, destructive, chaotic, avenging, harsh'. Those terms still seem to be apt. The setting, the lighting complemented each other in presenting a world in which people treated each other badly and did so in a Hobbesian environment. Life was certainly brutish, nasty, and for some, if not for all, would be short.

3 A dangerous place, a primitive one. A coward for a mother, one whose lust for a murderer has swamped her obligation to her husband and his memory. The heroic murderer - Elektra's ironic description - is one whose valiant actions all take place in bed. A mother who, with her dead husband's replacement, will imprison her own daughter 'inside a tower where [she] will not see the light of sun or moon again'. A sister also confined to the 'foul prison' a sister who longs for release, for a coupling even with a peasant, for children so that she'd 'warm them to [her] bosom on wintry nights when the hut is shaken by stormy weather'.

4 But she is held 'firmly captive' by the 'iron clamp' which is Elektra's influence, the one whose hate is tireless, is inexorable, who hate makes the rutting couple tremble. Elektra dominates. On stage throughout the opera, she exudes hatefulness. There can be no compromise. The dreadful act must be avenged, or else the wrongdoers must vanguish the avengers. Either way, it is a clash to the death.

5 And so it was. From the clash, from the deaths comes new life. '..... all of those alive have spattered blood on them and are themselves wounded, and yet all are radiant, all are embracing and rejoicing. A thousand torches are brightly burning'. Orestes and his followers have triumphed. And Elektra ... 'How could I not hear the music? It's coming from me. The thousands who are bearing torches on high, whose footsteps, who innumerable untold myriad footsteps make the earch resound with such hollow rumbling - all are waiting for me. I know it, that they are all waiting ... .

5.1 And her face .... 'I was a black cadaver in the living, but this very moment I am the fire of life and my bright flame is consuming the darkness of the world. My complexion's whiter far than the shining moon's white face'.

6 Victory. The transformation from black cadaver to the fire of life. The ecstasy. Death. Consummation. Regeneration.


Intoxicating.

1 Susannah is the most capable of the four? It was a comment during the interval of the Radio 3 transmission of The Marriage which set me thinking. Hitherto perhaps, I have focused on Figaro. I have been engaged with the struggle between the Count, secure in his wealth and lineage, and Figaro, the orphan who has no fortune other than his wits. In the production at the ROH, I was struck by what I saw as his republican costuming. As I watched Figaro's duels with the Count, perhaps I overlooked what Susannah was doing.

2 Once I began to think about her, I became aware of just how much she determines what goes on. I recalled that it is Susannah, not Figaro, who is aware that the Count wishes to bed her. At the time, remember, Figaro is occupied with measuring the bed. Of course, he rails against the Count in the memorable Si vol ballare. He is ready immediately to take on the Count. But it is Susannah who has alerted him to the danger.

2.1 Think of the goings-on in Act 2, the wonderful Act 2. Susannah, remember, keeps her head. A spectator, unknown either to the Count or to the Countess, she takes her opportunity when she is left alone. She calls Cherubino from the dressing-room, she sends him away, and she takes his place. Then, in company with the Countess, she feeds Figaro with the information he needs to strike down the Count. We focus on Figaro, of course, because he is actively combatting the Count. It is Susannah, though, who feeds Figaro and who, by her confidence, emboldens the Countess also to feed.

2.2 Remember too that it is Figaro who crumbles in Act 4. He allows himself to be so easily mislead. And what does he do? He turns to his mother. Susannah, meanwhile, who operates so effectively in the darkness. Recall the haunting Dove sono as she sings to her lover.

3 Figaro is light on his feet. Figaro, the classless man, is ready to take on the lord. It's just as well though that he has as his ally a woman who is so aware, a woman whose wits are a match for the Dark Lord who would bring her and her lover down.

One opera, two views

1 Here's the first paragraph from one review;

Well, the weather was better than expected. Sunshine, no rain, with only a gathering evening chill. As for Glyndebourne's opening production of the season: worse, much worse. Just the thought of Danielle de Niese, that magnetic Cleopatra from Giulio Cesare, singing and swaying, was enough for every ticket for the performances of Monteverdi's last opera to be snapped up. But her Poppea is no Cleopatra; she's not fun, not sexy, no creature of infinite variety. Nor is Robert Carsen's production.

2 No doubt, you can guess where that review is leading to. Yes, you're right. Now, read the first paragraph from a different review:

'Without doubt, the sexiest piece ever written,' is how director Robert Carsen described L'Incoronazione di Poppea in a recent interview. His new staging of Monteverdi's masterpiece, however, though at times explicit, could hardly be considered erotica. It is dark, detached stuff, sometimes disturbing, and often confused.

3 People, including reviewers, see different things; sometimes, they see the same things but give different weights to those different things, or aspects. ('Yes, yes, I too noticed that but I dont' think it matters much or, at any rate, that it matters as much as you think it does.') I wonder what this correspondent will see, will emphasise. The first paragraph, remember, sets the direction. Read the first paragraph and receive the thrust of the reviewer's estimation. Look again at that wicked concluding sentence in the first example.

4 And the second? The use of the opening quotation to direct the attention, in this case, perhaps, to heighten the expectation, is a common device. The issue of the sexiness of the piece having been established, the view will either be endorsed or contradicted. If the quotation has heightened the expectation of all those who saw Niese as Cleopatra or who read about her, then the contradiction will be all the more disappointing. And there is the nice distinction, one which readers can be assumed to make, between the explicit and the erotic.

5 So what will be this correspondent's first paragraph. Watch this space.

To the Island

1 Yesterday was Reunion day, the day of the Christmas Island reunion. Once again, I put on my Grapple tie along with a blazer. To the station, to the RAF Club, a place which one chum described as 'home from home'. And so it is. A place where a chap feels at home, you understand. A place where some 40 other chaps, each wearing the Grapple tie, assembled yesterday for the first of the reunions after last year's concluding one.

1.1 Yes, you have read the previous sentence correctly. Last year, the reunion was held on the fiftieth anniversary of the first successful thermo-nuclear test. There was a top table. Lord Carringdon was the guest speaker. An AVM presided, as he had done for years. Fifty years on, though, the reunion was to be the last one of that kind. Yet the small organising committee, without the AVM, organised yesterday's, less formal event.

2 As ever, the event was just a pleasure. We sat at five circular tables in the ballroom. Instead of being served at table, we lined up for a plate of curried meat and things. The conversation was as lively and as reminiscent as ever. One of the chums had visited the Island since last year's reunion: he and his wife and his daughter spent a week there. There was little to do, yet each was tired by about 2100 and slept well until they rose about 0600. A week out of life.

3 I chatted to an elderly man - we're all elderly - who was a navigator on the Canberra, piloted by our AVM as a young man, which sampled the air after the burst. He spoke about the flights, about his time on the Island. Soon after he returned to the UK, he left the RAF and joined a local police force where he remained for 30 years. Yet it was his time on the Island which remained with him. We all have clear recollections of the Island; we remember our time there as a special time. (For those who contracted cancers of one sort of other, time on the Island was bad time.)

4 In my role as the Master Blogger, I spoke about our Grapple Reunion blog. It will be our standard channel of communication. So everyone should join. To those who are hesitant about IT I offered the best of advice, namely, ask your grandson or grand-daughter.

5 And we concluded with an hour-long film (on DVD) of Grapple Zulu, a collection of tests, ground and air, which included the first successful air burst, the event which we celebrated last year. At the end of the hour, there was a round of applause. And everyone was given a copy of the DVD.

6 Look on the Court page of today's Daily Telegraph. Look for Service luncheons.

7 Maytime, springtime, Island time.

The following account was keyed at the end of the first day in Berlin. A week later, the visit to Wansee remains the event which has left the strongest impression. Those people assembled in that building to give authority to, to initiate the final solution to the Jewish question, namely, the murder of the Jews within the German empire. The meeting was of one mind. The review of the scale of the task, the allocation of responsibilities - such matters were agreed. Having done their business, the members had time for a celebratory drink and a companionable lunch. And, in due time, Adolf Eichmann compiled the comprehensive note of the meeting.

28/04/2008.
Schoenfeld airport, a quiet place. A short walk from the aircraft to the airport buildings. Passports, please. A walk just as short to the baggage carosel, already turning. There were the bags. There were our hosts. Yet another short walk to their car. We were on our way from the airport to Kopenick, a district of Berlin which I remember as the setting for the tale of The Captain of Kopenick.

Along the way, the road ran alongside a railway; beyond the railway was the other carriageway; beyond that was the cycle path. No helmets, I noticed. Woods on both sides of the road; the trees were in leaf, but there was a sense of uncultivated woods. Not quite higgledypiggley woods, but tending that way. In Kopenick, some of the buildings were old, that is, perhaps 1920s, or earlier. Others were later, perhaps post-1945, built perhaps in the early days of the GDR. And the informal decoration (otherwise known as grafitti) was evident; indeed, it was unmissable.

A well-built house, with a cellar and an attic. A garden, a patio, and an uncertain legal status. The owners, the hosts, paid a monthly rent to someone whom they have never met. Years ago, in the days of the GDR, gthe rent had been paid to a government body. The Wall came down; the GDR ceased to exist as a state; the rent was not paid for some time; there were instances of pre-GDR owners claiming and taking possession of what they said were their properties. When the present occupants were told of a claim on their property by a putative owner who, they were told, was not interested in occupation but in rent, they did not contest the claim. Instead, they paid, and have continued to pay, the rent.

Neither of the tenants, our hosts, speaks English; my companion is bi-lingual; I do not speak German. I am at ease. The conversation flows between the three; occasionally, I am mentioned, or I am told what has been said. Most of the time, as we sit, talk, and eat on the patio, I am able to sit quietly under the large sun-shade. I am excused from the claims of conversation; I can look as if I am following the conversation or I can attend to my own thoughts.

The discussion about the afternoon’s activity is resolved, eventually. When asked, through my companionable intermediary, for my preferences, I mentioned Potsdam and Wansee, the place where the infamous conference was held in January 1942, with Heinrich Heydrich in the chair. A long way, I gather; a journey from one side of Berlin to the other. Re-think. And think again. Wansee it will be. To the station. An all-day ticket on the overground railway costs about £5. Off we jolly well go.

The fifteen-minute ride from Kopenick to the interchange station in the city provides sufficient time to register the extent, the pervasiveness, of the informal decoration. No flat surface along the railway is spared. The activities of our decorators, within Southern Region, are much less extensive. Particularly eye-catching was the injunction, in the largest of capital letters, to . Comforting, I thought. Imitation, as you know, is flattering. Yet more woods, yet again the absence of cultivated land on either side of the railway. Instead, the sense again that the estate, the railway estate, calls for a general tidying-up, a general cleansing.

We achieved the simple change; the second train will take us through the centre to the south-west, to Wansee lake. Recently-constructed or recently–improved stations; stations in need of improvement; the constancy of the informal decoration. Yet more woods. And Wansee. A station that was built, perhaps, about 100 years ago, a station which, like others, could do with decoration of the formal kind.

A short bus-ride, using our railway all-day tickets, to the large house where Heydrich and the others met on 20 January 1942 to register their commitments, and that of the military and civil bodies whom they represented, to a joint endeavour to settle the Jewish question once and for all. The resources of the state were to be available in a co-ordinated way to achieve the extermination of the Jews from the Reich and from the occupied territories, particularly the Eastern territories and Russia.

The notice at the gate said that admission to the exhibition was free, but the gate was locked. The bell was pressed. We pushed the gate open. And we walked to the onetime large house which overlooked the lake and which, in 1942, was part of the SS estate. The ground-floor rooms are now given over to the documents, the translations, the explanatory texts, in German and English, to the photographs and texts which tell the story of anti-Semitism in Germany, to the consequences for the Jews of the appointment of Hitler as chancellor on 30 January 1933, to the conference, and its results.

The familiar story, the familiar events; reminders of people and events; the presentation of additional material. Some six million people were murdered. It was industrial murder. The killing-camps had to be built. The people had to be collected and sent to the camps, from those distant parts, by rail. The railway stock had to be allocated; the costs of the transportation had to be assessed and paid by one of the departments of state to the Reichsbahn. The gas chambers had to be designed; the blue-prints had to be approved, at on-site meetings, no doubt; the killing-chambers had to be installed, and tested, no doubt. The names of those who were transported had to be recorded, so that the state would know they no longer existed. A big job.

The exhibition at Wansee, in the very rooms, overlooking the lake, reminds us of this big job. The resources of the state were allocated to the elimination, the murder, of millions of people. And the silent, documentary exhibition at Wansee, including the copies of the minutes, of the notes. tells us about the meeting at which the murder, on an industrial scale, was accepted, without demur. The meeting was followed by drinks and by a pleasant meal. After all, it had been a productive meeting. Much had been achieved. There was cause for a celebratory drink.

I have been to the place where the conference was held. I can see it as I key; I have been in the rooms. And as I key I recall the advertisement in a recent Times about the killing of the Armenians by the Turks in 1915. It is the official Turkish position to deny a massacre, to deny Turkish responsibility for the undeniable deaths. The advertisement called for a world-wide recognition that the events di constitute a massacre, even a holocaust. But there is strong opposition, not just from the Turkish government, but from others who seek to confine that term to what happened in Europe from 1942 to 1944/45. The holocaust, not an holocaust.

Think well of the bull

1 The stance remains with me, that baleful stance. The feet apart, the torso, the head, the horns. Strength, power. Ready and always inclined to do what bulls do, though in this instance the bull’s needs are met by the killing of people, young and old, who are the annual tribute from Athens to Crete. An opera about a bull, an unusual opera, all the more unusual because the bull is the leading character, a character who is a natural force but is one who is self-aware, who reflects on his condition and finds it wanting. A bull who dies, a bull whose death prompts our sympathy. A remarkable opera.

2 The setting and the music also remain in the memory. The slow-moving sea, continually dipping and rising. displayed on a backdrop, was a reminder of the inexorable power of nature, and so of the Minotaur’s insatiable appetite for fresh provender. The sunlit Crete, the arrival beach for the latest of the black-sailed cargoes, was evoked. Below was the domain of the Minotaur, a corrida in which the Minotaur was master, the killing ground, an arena where, in a contest as unequal as that between a deer and a lion, the Athenians were killed, to the cheers of the underground spirits in the balcony. Powerful stuff.

2.1 Ah, the music. Undoubtedly, it was original; and it would have been easy to determine the composer. A 100 years ago, the younger Mr Strauss assaulted the Viennese sensibilities which had been accustomed to the older man's compositions and to the compositions of young Mr Mozart and his kind. An evening with Mr Birtwhistle must be something like those evenings with the younger Strauss. Discordant, tuneless are two terms which come to mind. Yet it was worthwhile to give the ears a chance, to attend to the sounds; it was worthwhile to receive them along with the sharp lighting, the set, the shrieks of the underground scavengers, the underground spirits, who were subordinate companions to the ravaging of the bull. Give the music a chance.

3 The originality is apparent. It is an opera about the familiar story of the annual delivery of Athenians to their certain, terrifying death in the underground realm of the uncaring beast, the Minotaur. A monster, we shudder, one who, in the dark, will be indifferent to the terror, to the screams of the living. A dark, underground place. Yet the bull is no mere automaton. This bull is conscious of his dark place and of his recollection of another place. We are accustomed to thinking about the living beings who will constitute the Minotaur’s food; we now think about the Minotaur’s imprisonment within the maze. He too seeks a release.

4 Of course, he has to die. The myth requires that Theseus must triumph, that Theseus must kill the beast. Yet when he does, as surely he will, it will be a step-brother who kills his step-brother, an inter-familal killing. Whilst the myth must be honoured, there is a time in the combat when Theseus seems to be vanquished. His step-brother, simultaneously magnificent beast and imprisoned human, could have been the one to strike his step-brother. Yet the myth requires that Theseus should retrieve his stabbing sword, should be able to outwit the human beast and plunge the weapon ito the beast’s chest. The beast, now victim, dies slowly, alone, in the darkness of the underground. And we are affected. We feel the death. We feel that we have been spectators not to the triumph of Theseus but to the destruction of the Minotaur. Theseus, meanwhile, escapes from the maze by following the Ariadne trail. He, alone, returns from the dead. They sail to Athens, white sails billowing.

5 And, in reflection, what remains. Ah, the bull remains. An animal, a beast, which gives it name to the opera and which is the main performer. The destructive, reflective bull. A tale which, in the re-telling, enables us to hear a voice, a roaring voice, which is otherwise never heard. The world of the above-ground and of the under-ground. The complementarity of the music (the sounds), the settings, the backdrop, the new language - all components of an opera which is about the Minotaur. 'Explain clock-wise', said the master. The acolyte did so. 'Ah', said the master, 'but explain it from the point of view of the clock'.