Sacre du Printemps

"I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it." - Igor Stravinsky

And so to the opera. I have been to see 'The Magic Flute', where thankfully the Queen of the Night's famous aria was sung beautifully. This was a new production by Opera North, which I enjoyed somewhat more than I had their previous one. All the performances were exceptional - I don't know whether it was deliberate or serendipity to cast an Irishman as Papageno, but I shall never now be able to think of him as anything else - and yet I still don't really like the opera. I have previous form in telling Mozart that he has got it all wrong and I'm going to do so again. None of it makes any sense. The masonic chaps are obviously meant to be the good guys, but they go round kidnapping and sexually molesting women and inflicting corporal punishment on each other. The Queen of the Night is meant to be the baddie, but doesn't do anything except sing and worry about her daughter, while her acolytes rescue the hero from the clutches of a monster that is about to kill him. It's most peculiar.

The plot of 'Katya Kabanova' at least makes sense, but is completely implausible whilst paradoxically at the same time being a bit too close to home for comfort. It also has an out of the ordinary operatic villain in the mother-in-law from hell, who was roundly booed at the curtain call. 

Unpleasant family members feature prominently as well in 'Gianni Scicchi'. I had seen two other productions of this in the last twelve months or so and perhaps that was why this particular one fell a bit flat. In addition there were some strange directorial decisions including the deceased - whose will is the cause of all the trouble - wandering about the stage, and climbing both walls and ropes from time to time despite being dead. 

Almost as confusing was an otherwise excellent concert staging of Marc-Antoine Charpentier's rarely performed Baroque work 'David et Jonathas'. That it wasn't acted out, together with the lack of surtitles and the fact that I have no French made it a bit of a struggle to follow what was happening. According to the programme the piece would originally have been intertwined act by act with a prose play in Latin that developed the characters and moved the plot along; maybe that would have helped, or maybe it wouldn't. What certainly wasn't of any assistance was my preconception that the Philistines were in the wrong. It seems that for this particular biblical story it's the Israelites who were being unreasonable; plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. The role of Jonathan, presumably originally written for a castrato, was played by a soprano and so opera's fine tradition of the leading lady not making it to the end alive was maintained. 

Then there was the one that got away. Whilst there is nothing to compare with a fully staged opera supported by a large orchestra I also rather like watching works being performed in a more intimate environment. I therefore travelled across Leeds in the rush hour to see Opera UpClose perform 'La bohème' at the Theatre Royal Wakefield. I got there in plenty of time, bought myself coffee and cake in the pleasant little cafe and was just thinking to myself how civilised it all was when the lights went out. The power never came back on, the show was cancelled and I had to turn round and come home again. The cake was nice though.

Last, but not least, I have been to see 'The Rite of Spring'. Despite my carefully moulded image as a man of culture I have to confess that I had never previously seen a ballet; I therefore have absolutely nothing to compare this with. I can, however, report that I enjoyed it immensely. The music was loud and powerful (if one is to contrast it with his contemporaries it was less melodic than Puccini, less dissonant than Schoenberg; I was reminded of prog rock, but I'll bet that I was the only one) and there was lots of vigorous and entertaining leaping about on the stage. I had always wondered how the narrative was explained in ballet if there weren't any words. In this case that was rendered moot because there is no story: it is simply a series of pagan mating and fertility rites. It made me wistful for this blog's erstwhile female reader, who always rather liked that sort of thing.

Ecclesiastes Chapter 1 Verse 2

"The vanity of intelligence is that the intelligent man is often more committed to 'one-upping' his opponent than being truthful. When the idea of intelligence, rather than intelligence itself, become the staple, there is no wisdom in it." - Criss Jami

So, not only has the blog gone missing for a while, but even before that the pseudo-intellectual quotient had sadly fallen away. Well today that changes. But I need to warn you that there were some attendees at the two events I am about to describe who were only there with the intention of showing off during the Q&A session; I was shocked , shocked!, to find pretentiousness involved when people met together to discuss Jean-Paul Sartre and Arnold Schoenberg.

The problem with a talk entitled 'The Existentialism of Sartre' is that even if you find yourself disagreeing with it you also partly suspect that you haven't properly understood it. And yet, the more I listened to the speaker talk about 'Being and Nothingness' the more I came to the conclusion that Sartre didn't know a great deal of mathematics. I find it rather difficult to accept that the lack of something (i.e. nothing) is meaningless unless a human consciousness is pondering its absence. Anyone disagree? What I should have done is what most of those making a point did, which is to start by stating that they hadn't read any Sartre since they were students. Call me a cynic ["You're a cynic!"], but you need to be neither a mathematician or a philosopher to realise that doesn't guarantee that they read any while at university either. I haven't read any Sartre since graduating (*) and I certainly didn't read any while I was there, unless possibly he was reviewing albums for the New Musical Express under a pseudonym. The collective brainpower of a room full of people who forty years ago had existentialism sussed, but had all managed to forget it along the way somewhere eventually came up with the question of what J-P would have made of someone's right to change gender (**). The speaker felt that he would have seen it as a case of essence before existence and therefore been against it. Someone in the audience riposted with Simone de Beauvoir's quote "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." and we were left none the wiser.

"It's bad faith to wear my clothes without asking, Jean-Paul."

I learned somewhat more at the Schoenberg, a guided performance of 'Pierrot Lunaire' which was both well planned and executed. The first half was an introduction to the composer, the intellectual milieu of Vienna in 1912, and the original poem by Giraud. There were interviews with the conductor, director and various musicians, although not oddly the singer, who was 'preparing'; who says sopranos are divas? The background to atonality was discussed and there was an interesting, though frankly irrelevant digression into serialism. Questions from the audience were almost subsumed by someone who appeared to be intent on listing every Harrison Birtwistle work he had ever seen (no me neither), but when they came ranged from "Why did sprechstimme disappear after this work was written?" to "What can the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire tell us about the UK leaving the European Union (***)?". The answers were along the lines of: it didn't actually, and quite a lot now you mention it.

Theresa May visits Brussels

The second half contained the performance, which was obviously very good in its own terms, but about which I shall only say that I am glad I went along and experienced it - my mind is duly broadened. The staging was simple and effective with the moon of the title being represented by a lantern in a way that wouldn't have been out of place in "A Midsummer Night's Dream". As to what it was about; I'm afraid that I have no idea. There seemed to be a suggestion that despite the part being specifically written for a woman, that the main character is entirely and definitively male; thereby demonstrating that there is nothing  new under the sun. I'm going to say repressed sexuality was involved - the key figure in Vienna at the time was of course Freud - and death - because she did seem to mention it a lot plus it contains episodes called 'Gallows Song' and 'Beheading' - but beyond that you are on your own. One analysis I read said that Pierrot - who may or may not be Pierrot, or a man, or indeed real - ends with no hope of redemption; which gives you some idea of how cheery it was. Schoenberg himself said that it was a mistake to try to work out what it was about, instead one should go home whistling the tunes; I shall interpret that as the famed Germanic sense of humour at work.

"You know how to whistle, don't you Arnie? You just put your lips together and blow."

*      Actually I have in fact read "The Age of Reason", but to say so rather spoils my line of argument.
**    One of two subjects in the UK at the moment that seem to be obligatory on every agenda of every meeting regardless of what is supposed to be being discussed.
***  And there's the other.