nineveh_uk

(1) This is a rather charming little Wimseyfic vignette, a missing scene set directly after the end of Strong Poison: Aftershock, Mary and Peter (there should be more fic with Mary in).

(2) Every morning at the mine you could see him arrive... My father is prone to sing the first verse of this. If only he could remember more of it - or the internet had existed in my younger years.


(3) Not so random, a short and lovely extract from The Merry Widow.

I have never seen the film Reign of Fire, long may such a state of affairs continue, but I remember Jonathan Ross’s summary of it as “The London Underground with dragons” (which is what it is), and subsequent riff on the theme that adding the phrase “with dragons” can make almost anything sound cooler. This is largely correct. The only things not made better by imagining them with dragons are those that already have dragons, which are largely dreadful unless they are, or are inspired by, Anglo-Saxon poetry.

Then there’s that other phrase, the one reached for by directors who want to be cool in a more ‘gritty’ way. About a month ago, I went Kidlington Amateur Opera Society’s production of The Merry Widow** (which did not involve dragons).* Humming the tunes, I naturally then turned to YouTube to see if there were any complete versions on it, which there are. I clicked on one that looked as if it was not made in the era of orange hair, and did the “move the cursor forward a random amount to see what it is like” thing. I was slightly surprised to discover when “what it was like” was a bloke on stage looking surprisingly like David Mitchell*** in the “Are we the baddies?” sketch.

Yes, someone has made The Merry Widow with Nazis.

It had to happen eventually. There’s Lehar, Hitler’s favourite composer. A libretto that contains rather a lot of cynical references to the Fatherland. Opera’s general liking for dramatic costumes and a bit of updating. It’s still kind of bizarre. The Merry Widow is not darkly political stuff. It’s fluff. Glorious fluff, but basically fluff. Who looks at it and thinks it needs political realism of any sort, let alone updating to occupied Paris c. 1944?

Actually, I can see exactly how it happened:

Company member 1: What shall we do next? Our finances are looking a bit rough, so let’s make sure we get a good audience. Something popular with the old folk, small cast, good tunes. Not too complicated scenery.

Company member 2: How about Die Lustige Witwe.

Other company members: Groan! Too staid! Too conventional! Too Viennese!

Company member 2: No, wait! We can make it exciting. You know how the characters are always going on about the Fatherland?

Other company members: Ye-es?

Company member 2: We set it in the Third Reich! Think of Danilo’s first aria. What if he’s a disenchanted SS officer, the black uniforms will look great on stage. Zeta’s a French collaborator. Hanna’s a film star, like that woman in Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter. Oh! And Rossillon can be in the Resistance and Valencienne a secret sympathiser****. It can’t fail!

Other company members: I suppose we could give it a go…

In the event it worked pretty well, though as it was in German and my copy of the libretto omits some of the dialogue, I wasn’t always able to identify where changes had been made to the text (or I could identify a change, but not exactly what it meant). It’s certainly an awful lot better than the hideous San Francisco Opera production I saw on a library DVD, which was so arch you, could drive a chariot through it. Some of the interest for me lay in the choices made by a German company in terms of representing Nazi characters and insignia on stage. So the uniforms have the SS rune and the death’s head cap badge, but the swastikas are modified, and the salute is done with the arm position as usual, but the fingers open as in a Vulcan salute. But not being a German viewer I don’t have the nuances of why particular choices are made (I know there are legal issues, but I get the impression that these are also not straightforward in all contexts). I expect my next dose of The Merry Widow, a Metropolitan Opera cinema broadcast, to be rather different.

To finish on a random note, when I went to The Girl of the Golden West with antisoppist last month, I remarked that it had got me thinking about what replies various opera characters would get from agony aunts. It strikes me now that Danilo would be the perfect match for Captain Awkward, since he actually does need the message “Use your words”.

*It was surprisingly good. I hadn’t gone with high expectations for the singing, because I’m not an idiot, and so it was adequate. What greatly exceeded my expectations was that they had a director who could direct and a musical director who whipped a 24 piece orchestra on apace and in tune, as a result of which it went at a good clip, played the comedy well, and was thoroughly entertaining.

**Not that I would be surprised by TMW with dragons, given opera production concepts.

***He really does. It is quite hard to watch light opera when all the way through you are thinking that the male lead looks like a slightly thinner version of a British comedian.

****Valencienne actually offers the singer and director a surprising amount of space for characterisation choice. Opera North implied she was a former grisette who really did want to keep to her side of the marriage deal out of loyalty.

The bright side of the queues for the women’s toilets at the theatre is the opportunity to hear what fellow members of the audience think of the performance. Following Julius Caesar, I bring you the Loo Report on two recent productions.

Othello

Let me begin by saying that given the time it took to clear the circle at the intervals and the end of the performance, I never want to be in the Circle in the National’s Olivier theatre in the event of a fire. Having finally made it to the toilets I met the inevitable queue, this time including a group of 4/5 American college students:

A: That Iago! What an asshole!
B: I know! I just wanted to shout “Fucker!”

They certainly spoke for me! Delayed review is delayed, indicating only my invariable dislike of writing reviews of plays. I never feel I can really convey why/how something worked for me – of course, I don’t actually have to, but there you go. Anyway, this was Adrian Lester as Othello and Rory Kinnear as Iago, and it was fantastic. It was modern dress and military and it was striking how much this laid the emphasis on Iago. I came away thinking, ‘No-one ever describes it as a play about class,’ which of course it is. Or rather, its treatment of race, for which it is best known, cannot be divorced from its treatment of class and also sex. I spent most of the train journey home shaking my head at my having never opened a Marxist reading of the thing**. Anyway, Lester was strong, but Kinnear was terrific. I also gained a new appreciation for Emilia, the importance of her character for the plot, and the depth of characterization she’s given; helped, I think, by being played by a younger actress than she often is, and having her as a female soldier, so getting away from the Generic Shakespearean Nurse.

Tosca

This was Welsh National Opera at the New Theatre in Oxford, which isn’t new and has the usual problem of theatres its age: terrible water pressure at the top of the building. On this occasion I disagreed with the queue critics, or at least the one (woman in her 60s) who thought that Act I Scarpia wasn’t evil enough. She wasn’t alone in that – the Guardian reviewer thought the same – but personally, though I enjoy a black trenchcoat as much as the next opera fan, I like a little variety in my Scarpias***. The production had picked up on a lot of the political plot, and if you’re going to emphasize Cavaradossi as revolutionary, I think it helps to consider his enemy as an explicitly political opponent and not simply Satan incarnate. Besides, it turns out the sheer amount of sleaze you can achieve by putting a smoking jacket on the floor and considering whether to add a cushion is pretty impressive.

It was a fairly classic production (hurray for C18 clothing as a change from Edwardian fascist), but had some good bits of business and fresh – to me - ideas. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen the fact that Cavaradossi has been painting the Marchesa Attavanti (and thus advertising to all and sundry that she’s been there a lot lately) presented as political crisis. There he is, assuming that she’s a young woman with a juicy secret and taking advantage of it to paint her, and then he’s told the truth and has an awful moment of realising that ‘It was a sister’s love! And oh hell, I’ve just told everyone what’s going on and given away the revolution!’ I also liked the bit in Act II when the Napoleonic victory is announced and Cavaradossi celebrates, and the production has to decide what everyone else is doing while the tenor gets to digress with some high notes and why don’t the baddies just shut him up? In this case, the announcement’s made, Cav jubilates, and Scarpia and henchmen get out a map and start considering what this actually means, which actually puts everyone’s actions into context. Credit also goes to the translator/dramatist of the surtitles, which were not merely non-embarrassing (quite an effort for Tosca), but really good.

So well-sung, decently acted (Scarpia was best, he usually is) some good ideas, and a good band, which is what I want from Tosca, seeing as it has, in the central hour, some of what, as far as I am concerned, is the best music and drama in opera. If Figaro is up there alone on an aethereal pinnacle, the Te Deum**** to the end of Act II is definitely on the first earthly plane.

*A few moments later, another woman in the group, discussing Desdemona:

C: But she makes it, right?
D: No! She [lost in sound of flushing]

** I cannot reconcile myself to Cassio. Also, sod ‘motiveless malignancy’.

*** Up to a point. The Opera North version with Scarpia as an Inspector Frost-like character in a grubby mac and eating pizza was a fantastic one-off, but let’s face it, audiences usually expect a certain amount of sex appeal in their Scarpias.

****The piece I would most like to sing were I an opera singer, and the reason baritones are better than tenors. It’s also the one good bit of Quantum of Solace.

The non-piratical bit first. Does chanting “I am not getting a cold, I am not getting a cold” either:

(a) Promote mind over matter and ensure it doesn’t happen?
(b) Make it appear, like Bloody Mary?

I went to see the D’Oyly Carte/Scottish Opera Pirates of Penzance last night, having picked up a leaflet at lunchtime to see that Steven Page* was playing the Pirate King and thus moved from undecided to decided. The reviews had suggested it was a bit solid at times, and I definitely felt the initial tempos needed to be picked up a bit, but it perked up pretty swiftly. I’ve never actually seen Pirates before, though I’ve sung it. Mabel struck me as something of a proto-Madeleine Bassett, and the biggest laugh of the night came with “Because with all their faults, we love our House of Peers”.** Certainly the pirates’ notorious kindness to orphans puts them some rungs up the ladder of decency compared to the present lot.

I recently heard a recording of the Merry Widow overture on Classic FM that made it sound quite G&S-ish. Hearing G&S played by professionals was a reminder as to how far even the G&S-ish bits of Lehar are above G&S.

*Not the one formerly of Barenaked Ladies. This one was a definitive Sweeney Todd with Opera North when I was at university.

** I see a Brideshead Revisited crossover in which “Marquis’ Son Unused to Wine” Sebastian Flyte, instead of being got off by his family is convicted, sent down from Oxford, flees London and falls in with some pirates. He ends up a much happier man.

Taking the usual missed connection at Birmingham New Street as read, we can move swiftly on to the good bits of the weekend, and specifically the reason I was in Leeds for the first place, Opera North's production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel. Which was brilliant. We were disappointed on arrival to learn that John Woodvine* would not be performing, assumed a lurgy, and then discovered on Sunday from the paper that in fact he had collapsed during the performance (though fortunately in the wings) on Friday night, cue "Is there a doctor in the house?", and the performance was called off. He's now in a stable condition it hospital. But my Dad recovered from the disappointment, especially as we were sitting in the stalls for once. Leg-room!

There's probably an argument that the difference between operetta and musical is that the former is written either before 1900 or not in English. Certainly the music of Carousel at least matches Lehar, and the whole experience is a great deal more enjoyable, and indeed profound, than The Magic Flute**. I've never heard a full recording, nor seen the film, but there were only two numbers I didn't recognise and I've been singing all of them for the past two days. The performances were uniformally excellent, the Opera North chorus and the Northern Philharmonia did their usual sterling stuff, and the dancers - let's just say I usually see the words "ballet" in an opera/musical and yawn, but the Louise's ballet section was enormously theatrical, helped I think by the young dancer's looking a realistic mid-teens. Though I'm glad that we didn't get the original hour and a half version, which - obviously - never made it to performance, even in 1945. It's on in Leeds for the rest of the week, then going to Salford, then the Barbican in London. Strongly recommended.

*I want to call him John Woodville, which is quite a different mental image.

**Admittedly Muppet Babies is probably more profound than The Magic Flute.

Term has hit like a sledgehammer, and grey-faced figures hurry around the building with the look of people attempting to surf a tidal wave. The vain hope is “if I can get this done, next week will be better”. But what I’ve got to do is not uninteresting, and I’m managing to get out of bed and in into town in reasonable time in the morning, which helps a lot. As does the fact that the regular Autumn deluges have not yet hit Oxfordshire.

After two weekends away, I’m glad that the next one will be at home. This weekend was spent in Yorkshire, and very enjoyable, but also busy. I saw a couple of exhibitions at the Mercer Gallery in Harrogate, a building that feels as if Georgette Heyer characters ought to be walking round it, including the Vale of York Hoard and prints inspired by it.

Saturday evening was The Queen of Spades courtesy of Opera North. Enjoyable, but the two leads were hampered by costumes that did not suit them, and in one case by a chest infection. Josephine Barstow giving ’em all what for at 70-plus, though. I know one can hardly complain about the plot in opera, but really – what do Liza and Hermann see in one another, and what has Hermann got that Prince Yeletsky hasn’t? I found myself ficcishly rationalising it by deciding that the ostensibly perfect prince must be one of those men who on closer female acquaintance have an indefinable odour of creepiness, so that Liza was willing to marry anyone to get away from him. I'd like to see a really Gothic production.

The Nanowrimo season approaches, and so the season of picowrimo. I have decided that my aim is not to be ambitious and start anything new or original; rather, I am going to put my back into a serious effort to finish the Great Wimsey/Potterverse mpreg crossover. It is about time. Not least because the longer I think about it, the more unwieldy it becomes. New plot strands: doez not want.

The good news is that I’ve managed to get the Maxim’s theme out of my head. The bad news is that my head is now stuffed full of Lippen Schweigen.* I did manage not to hum too loudly at work.

Yes, I went to see Opera North’s new production of The Merry Widow at the weekend. It was great, marred only by a mysterious smell of garlic mushrooms wafting through the upper circle. I had a brief qualm as it opened, having been lulled by a CD into not quite realizing how far the show is “Gilbert and Sullivan Do Ruritania”. The plot, the court, the silly clothes**, the tendency to break into random folkdance, and the overwhelming sense of it all being a bit old-fashioned, even with a new – and very good – translation by Kit Hesketh-Harvey***. Fortunately (and I say this as someone who gets a great deal of enjoyment out of G&S), Lehár is a magnificent tunesmith. Almost every moment is hummable, and those that aren’t are so because they are too complicated, at least for me to pick up on a first run. The whole thing was well-staged, well sung, and well danced.

The plot is – well, this is opera. There are operas that exquisitely marry music, lyrics, and plot, and then there’s the other 95%. ( For those of you not familiar with the story )