Golden Girls

I'm afraid, Gentle readers, that if you were hoping for any sort of continuity, timeliness or coherence, that you have come to the wrong blog. However, I do mean to rectify my unwonted silence and to begin reviewing, at random, some of London's cultural delights as sampled by myself in the past year and a half.
One of my dear friends, Mr. G_______, works at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. This is a splendid edifice, and their opera and dance schedules are gratifyingly full of things that I am happy to see. My impecunious state, however, means that I am dependent upon discounts, which Mr. G__________ generously provides me when he is able to. This does mean that the more popular shows, like the recent Don Giovanni are usually not available to me. However, I have been very fortunate this year.

I had never hitherto considered Beethoven as a composer of operas, but when I had the chance to see Fidelio, his only opera, I was consumed with curiosity. The plot, for the most part, does not depart from the standard operatic tragedy, with the notable exception of a happy ending! Leonore, heroically loyal and devoted wife to political prisoner Florestan, disguises herself as a man, the eponymous "Fidelio", to remain close to her husband and to effect his rescue. My choir director Mr. B______, declares Fidelio to be one of the finest operas ever written and believes its music to be sublime. Wikipedia declares the principal parts to be extremely demanding. I can well believe both of these assertions and yet I did not find it to be compelling viewing. Perhaps it was the underlying sadness of the prisoners and the pathos of the deluded girl (Marzelline, the gaoler's daughter, pathetically and uselessly in love with 'Fidelio'/Leonore), but despite the happy ending, with husband reunited with heroic wife and the evil governor dragged away in chains, the opera left me cold and unsatisfied. The woman playing Marzelline, whoever she was (I am far too cheap to purchase a programme), deserves a special mention here, not only for her lovely contralto, but also for the real sense of loss and devastation that she conveys in the final scene, delicately shrinking in horror from the joyful, triumphant embrace of her one-time lover who has reclaimed her now that 'Fidelio' has proven to be a woman. As everyone around her loudly rejoices, her silent despair was the only thing that truly moved me.

The second opera I saw at the Royal Opera House this year had a similarly happy ending. What?! I thought, another happy ending? This will never do. I shall have to watch Tosca or La Boheme or Madama Butterfly to make up for this tumult of joy. This one was Puccini's lesser known "western" opera, La fanciulla del West. I do not know if opera aficianados care much about the settings of their operas, but I think the western is, in many ways, oddly unsuited to the opera genre. There was something almost inexpressibly droll about a bunch of rough, American gold miners trooping into a bar and singing paeans to their beloved barmaid, Minnie, in Italian. "MEEN-IE!" They sang, lustily, "MEEN-IE!!!" (I was irresistably reminded of Erik Rhode's inimitable Italian caricature, "Alberto Beddini" in the Rogers/Astaire flick Top Hat...a childhood favourite of mine). With difficulty, I suppressed a giggle. The unintentional hilarity continues as the noble heroine betrays some ignoble impulses as she ruthlessly casts her maid, the improbably (if hysterically) named "Wowkle" (refreshingly tactlessly and inaccurately referred to as an "Indian squaw") out into a blinding blizzard. On a mountain, miles away from any shelter. With her baby. So that Minnie can keep a romantic assignation with the outlaw she's predictably fallen in love with. Really, I couldn't entirely suppress my mirth at this pretty piece of cruelty. And Minnie so noble, too!

The third piece I saw at the ROH, was based on an opera, Manon Lescaut, and is a melancholy, beautiful ballet choreographed by Kenneth MacMillan. Manon has the distinction of being the only ballet I know of that takes place (at least in part) in the swamps of Louisiana. As a native Louisianian, I cannot help but be pleased by this, although the eponymous heroine is far from glad to be cast adrift in the murky bayous, deported from France as a woman of ill-repute. Manon was beautifully produced, with a pervasive air of decaying grandeur and faded opulence. Manon herself is an appealing waif, even if her transformation from shyly beguiling innocent to slyly seductive coquette seems somewhat abrupt and unconvincing, her allure is undeniable. The two men most involved in her torturous path towards destruction provide a study in contrasts. Noble, impecunious student Des Grieux, whose loyalty towards the doomed Manon is as pure as his passion, was depicted with passionate intensity by a large, fair dancer. Wily Lescaux, Manon's calculating, venal cousin, was portrayed with virile menace by a brooding dancer whose dark, saturnine looks served as a vividly natural foil to the angelically fair Des Grieux. Lescaux's sudden death, at the hands of Manon's previously foppish sugar-daddy, is startling, especially as the latter stands over the dying Lescaux cackling silently in a ballet-pantomime of fiendish glee. The transportation scene, with scores of frail child-women being abused and degraded by the heartless authorities, was all too real, emphasising that it doesn't take much imagination to see the painfully thin ballerinas as starving, defeated women. If the final scene, in the Louisiana bayou, is confusing to anyone who is not familiar with the story, I derived a special pleasure from remembering my own explorations, in the misty past of my youth, of the bayou. A more miserable place to expire is hard to imagine. As with operatic heroines, singing their consumptive lungs out, Manon's death is at least beautifully choreographed. What a lovely ballet.