ON play ELP

 "No wise man ever wished to be younger." - Jonathan Swift

My incapacities have been fairly selective: I can't drive or do anything that requires close up focussing plus I fall over if I'm not careful, but other than that I can get about OK. And so I have been able to partake of some of the cultural activities opening up, albeit to be immediately closed back down again. Firstly, there was a recital by a baroque violinist. In fact, now I think about it, that was the day I got carted off to hospital, although it would be most unfair to blame her.

Once I had got myself together again it was the turn of what is now known as the Leeds Playhouse, which has been having a festival of performances for works with not many performers. First up was Poulenc's short opera for single soprano, 'La Voix Humaine'. I've seen this a couple of times before and I still wonder a bit what it's meant to represent. Is she really living through what we see or is it the condensed reminiscences of an unhappy period in her life on which she is looking back? I believe that Cocteau's play, on which this based, was more explicit, especially about the ending, but I've never seen it so that doesn't really help.

I'm also a bit ambivalent about the second piece, Beckett's 'Krapp's Last Tape', which likewise dates from the end of the 1950s. Krapp is a sad, shabby, bald man in his sixties who sits all alone at home on his birthday looking back on his life and wondering how it had ended in loneliness and failure. So, no parallels with your bloggist there then, except perhaps for needing to cut down on the bananas. I think it was about getting old and realising that being young was better, but frankly am open to alternative suggestions if you have them. 

Lastly, but not least, I saw the brass and percussion sections of the Orchestra of Opera North perform a programme of works which might have been - but wasn't - labelled as a tribute to Emerson, Lake and Palmer. They opened with Copeland's 'Fanfare for the Common Man' and closed with a selection from Mussorgsky's 'Pictures from an Exhibition'. It was like reliving my youth, except without all the aggravation of health, ambition and hair. I enjoyed it immensely, but shall not be rushing off to buy a copy of 'Brain Salad Surgery'.

Il Dittico

And so to the opera. I have mentioned before my love of verismo and so I painfully rose from my sickbed (aka the rather swish reclining chair in my living room) to go and see a double bill of one act Puccini operas: Il tabarro and Suor Angelica.

I'd seen the former about a decade or so ago when, and I acknowledge that this is of no interest to anyone else, I sat directly behind Germaine Greer in the audience. Verismo is perhaps easier to recognise than to define, but this is definitely the stuff. The plot should serve as a warning to anyone contemplating dabbling in anything extra-marital. Things really do not end well for the man sleeping with the married woman; although as some small compensation he gets some top tunes to sing while he's still with us. In fact life seems pretty miserable for everyone involved, but that's opera for you.

The latter work I had never seen, and it frankly wasn't any more cheerful. It isn't the bleakest opera about nuns; should you really want to be depressed then check out Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites. Forzano's libretto doesn't seem very sympathetic to the Roman Catholic church; the Christianity portrayed here is all about guilt and punishment; forgiveness of sins and redemption don't get much of a look in. However, musically it was excellent. The standout was Anne Sophie Duprels in the title role, a lovely voice and a more than passable backside. If that sounds unnecessary then you need to believe me that it wasn't anything like as gratuitous as the directorial decision to tell her to get her kit off in the first place. Many operas - Il tabarro for example - are rather erotically charged, and yet in all the dozens of Opera North productions that I've seen over the years everyone has always kept their clothes on. Quite why they decided that a piece set in a convent, with an all female cast and concerning a mother's grief at losing a child would benefit from nudity is not entirely clear. Rupert Christiansen, in his Telegraph review, describes that bit as 'rather naff' and he's not wrong.

Poulenc

I have decided that I don't much care for Poulenc as an opera composer. I saw La Voix Humaine last night and didn't enjoy it any more than I had the previous time that Opera North did it. I thought that this staging was better and I had no complaints about Lesley Garrett's performance although I believe that some reviews have been decidedly lukewarm. I think it's more about Poulenc's choice of subject. Even by the standards of the genre he seems to have a rather unhealthy obsession with women's death. Have you ever seen The Carmelites? Grim.

For younger readers, this is a telephone

Dido and Aeneas was much better. The staging carried through some visual themes from the Poulenc (mostly women in negligees, but also green dressing gowns and red dresses) but, let's face it, the music is better and you get the singing of the chorus. It seemed to me (and feel free to correct me if I've got it wrong) that the sorceress and the witches (augmented by some dancers) were meant to be Dido's own subconscious. Thankfully they kept largely out of the way while she lamented and it all ended badly as a good opera should.

Dido is seated on the left

There is a very slight wargaming connection today. Aeneas was fleeing the Trojan War and is referred to by the libretto as a sailor. I'm afraid that's it.