Villazon on Verdi

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Someone at the BBC had me in mind when they commissioned this programme (earlier this evening on BBC4). An hour of Rolando Villazon talking with passionate simplicity about Verdi. As he talked, he interviewed equally passionate conductors and singers about what it is that Verdi gives us that works so well. Verdi cared more about moving his audience than about impressing them. He used not just the notes but the pitch, the timbre of the voice or the musical instruments to convey the emotion in the words. More than anything he wanted us to feel what the characters are feeling. (I may possibly have added some of my own views to this summary). We got to hear excerpts from a select quartet of operas and rehearsal sequences with Rolando.

From the hour that I sat right up against the stage and watched the tension of opera singers in the wings as they prepared to walk on, the sweat and the physical effort they threw into producing both small and great sounds, their exhaustion as they reached the end of the opera, I was hooked. I have followed and sought out many singers, especially those whose repertoire centred on Verdi, and Rolando epitomises all the qualities I love best. He climbs right inside the character, he sacrifices perfection for authenticity, the result is very moving and has an edge because giving everything is a little dangerous. Most of all he brings Verdi to life in the way, I am sure, Verdi would have wished.

Talking to a worm

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I have a feeling that talking to a worm is a sign of serious derangement, but that’s what I found myself doing this afternoon. The garden is dust dry and the bugs have arrived. I have to go on daily lily beetle patrols and blackfly inspections. The maples, now in their glorious new growth are under constant attack. I love every leaf, though, so I willingly spend time squishing the wretched beasts.

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One Good Turn

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Kate Atkinson’s One Good Turn (A Jolly Murder Mystery), has been sitting deep in my bedside pile for more than a year (possibly two). It is, as it claims, a jolly murder mystery, with what, for the individual characters, feels like unlikely co-incidence after co-incidence, but is for the reader a slowly building chaos, the result of the lifestyle and criminal choices of one man. There are hilarious scenes, a sense of real life and events (Russian brides, cheap labour, fringe comedy, theatre and circuses in Edinburgh, novelists as real people). One of the funniest moments is when an intellectually challenged heavy finds himself in the same place as most of the people he’d like to kill and is spoilt for choice. The last line is brilliant and yet fitting.

A jolly good read!

The Secret Life of Bees

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I finished the Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd a few days ago. This atmosphere was so warm you could almost bath in it, yet not saccharine or without dark events. I was happy to linger on the page and spend time with the characters. Although I wanted the story to reach a satisfactory conclusion that seemed less important than spending time with the people and places. I really enjoyed the directness of Lily’s thinking and speaking, she felt like a kid I would like to meet. That doesn’t happen to me very often.  It was good to read a different take on the black/white relationship from the usual ones. The antagonism was there but outside the stories of the main characters. I also found it startling to think that although the background to this story feels like ancient history, it all happened during my lifetime. Although there have been massive changes in the relationships between ethnic groups, we clearly still have a long way to go.

In our discussion group the story provoked a great deal of reminiscence about badgers, hedgehogs, etc. The bees play such a central part in the story that they made us all think about our connections with local wildlife, though I admit that I found this concentration on the backcloth rather than the story a little disconcerting.

Yet more Verdi

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Don Carlo at the Royal Opera House, and it turned out to be the first night of the run so there was a buzz in the audience and we spotted several musical bigwigs during the intervals. The contrasts between this and the six-man Ballo in the pub on Thursday were mind-bending, though my personal enjoyment of both was high (and I preferred the seating in the pub).

Don Carlo is just about my favourite opera, and we must have seen this particular production at least three times. The music is magical and with Pappano at the helm I could have shut my eyes and been in bliss the whole evening. On stage, the opening didn’t quite grab me – Kauffman as Don Carlo, in spite of his admirable voice and acting ability doesn’t move me in the way both Villazon and Alagna have in this production, he and Hateros (as Elizabetta) were passionate, anxious and tentative in a modern way – and not enough to set up the drama, which needs vulnerability and individuals caught up and made helpless by bigger events (i.e. classical tragedy). EG was enthralled by the Cloister scene – as were the rest of the audience and I thought Kwiecień as Posa was in stunning voice and perfect for the part and they gave us a ringing duet. In the garden scene there was a new singer, Uria-Monzon, in the part of Princess Eboli, pretty, but her voice was uneven.

If anyone has read this far they will notice that I have sat though Acts I and II without becoming absorbed by the music – this may be my fault for being too tired or overdoing the opera this week. And yet, as the opera progressed and Furlanetto as Philip took the stage I did become involved and lose myself.  By the time of King Philip’s great nighttime lament that his wife never loved him, I was hooked. This was hauntingly sad and as good as I have ever heard it. Eboli’s aria to her beauty was much more secure than the veil song. Posa’s death and the final scene with Don Carlo and Elizabetta in the monastery were musically superb.

Three great operas in a week in a cinema, a pub and a grand opera house, with enthusiastic audiences of all ages. Tickets at the pub were £23 each [this is a correction]. Who says opera is dead or only for the rich?

Ballo at The King’s Head

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Our second Verdi opera this week. This was Verdi with a gigantic twist that still conveyed the musical emotions in Verdi’s score. The cast of six from OperaUpClose performed in the tiny back-of-the-pub King’s Head Theatre (Islington, London) with a piano accompaniment. If I was awarding bouquets for the evening the first would go to the pianist  (not even named in the programme), who kept the score rolling with tremendous flair and warmth. I did not miss the orchestra and there were many times when the piano seemed the perfect accompaniment.

The twist: For those who think of Ballo in Maschera as set in the 18th Century either in the Swedish court or alternatively in colonial Boston (America), it comes as a shock to find that ‘Ballo’ is a modern-day Ikea-style store with Riccardo as manager and Amelia as a checkout operator. The new libretto is hilarious in the first act, yet still within the original story line (a successful and popular – in his own eyes – Riccardo, with a camp sycophantic PA, Oscar, a dour jobs-worth assistant Renato and a disgruntled store cleaner, Tom).

Ulrica, when she appears, is the Customer Complaints Manager making the best of a poorly paid job, well below her degree-level capacity, by doing fortune-telling on the side. Those of us who knew the opera well were laughing at the cleverness of the plot adaptation, Amy and others, new to the opera, were laughing because they recognised the bind she was describing. Amy felt the opera dealt with real modern issues.

Act 2 had Amelia waiting in the freezing car park of the Ballo store to buy drugs. Her aria about her life, her dilemma and her hopelessness was genuinely moving. Riccardo turned up, now serious and confused, to declare his (rather abbreviated) passion. Renato appeared to save Riccardo from Tom, who is on his way to kill him. Tom (who deals drugs to boost his income) appears and cruelly taunts Renato for trysting with his own wife in a car park. The plot events from this point and through Act 3 are close to the original and achieve that satisfying flip of turning comedy into tragedy.

I haven’t mentioned the singing. In a venue this small, the operatic voice is twice as exciting, but also very in-your-face. It is also, with only a piano to back it up, very exposed. The evening we attended (Thursday), the voices that were most positively beautiful and assured were Tom and Ulrica (bass and mezzo). I am not a musician and it may be that the lower voices fare best in such circumstances. The others varied with great moments and the odd squeak. It was fun to have a male soprano in the trouser role and his acting was sheer delight as he echoed every movement Riccardo made and reacted brilliantly to both events and characters. All the acting was good and this enormously enhanced the singing and brought great intensity in the ensemble sections.

I really love to hear the voices only an arm’s length away and felt privileged that these singers should perform for us (at minimal pay) in this pocket-sized venue. Overall verdict from both old timers and new comers – the adaptation really worked, the music that mattered was there, a great experience, fun, moving and something to repeat.

FTD (Fronto-Temporal Dementia)

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My friend, Toni, has just started a new blog at http://myhusbandhasftd.wordpress.com this is about life with her husband who has the misfortune to suffer from the early onset dementia known at Fronto-Temporal Dementia or FTD. He is now severely affected by the disease and she is writing to share the ups and downs of their day-to-day life with others in the same position and for the benefit of professionals in the field. She is also telling, in instalments, the story of the years leading up to his present state. As Toni believes it is of paramount importance to protect the ‘rights’ of vulnerable people, in the main story she refers to him as ‘Mr’ – a fun name used by her family.

This is a brave and generous enterprise and I wish her luck.

Mulch at dawn

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At 7.30 this morning there was a hammering on the door. A man with crane truck and bags of mulch had arrived. In my dressing gown and bed-socks (on a frosty morning) I stood on the front path directing operations as he lowered a great bag onto the front lawn. At this point we discovered that there was a misunderstanding about the order – he had been about to deliver three assorted bags – and he had to lift the bag up again. Luckily he had the correct one of loam which he dropped, and I spent the rest of the day distributing loam, creating a bank of earth. It looks quite shallow here but there is a drop of about 3 feet.

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I was still planting as the sun was setting, more tomorrow, but it is beginning to shape up. At this point a car drew up and the man from the mulch company delivered the two small bags of bark that should have been on the lorry that morning – amazing service.

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I am in maple heaven as they all slowly come into leaf. Though yesterday I found blackfly on the barely emerging leaves of a big purple maple (Trompenburg). This seems tough on the maple as the leaves are so tender that it is difficult to remove the bugs without harming the leaves.

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Verdi week

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Last night the first, Nabucco, (delayed) live from the Royal Opera House in our local cinema. Only the third time I have seen it. This casting was terrific, with Liudmyla Monastyrska almost stealing the show with her chillingly acted, beautifully sung Abigaile. Her voice is built for the biggest Verdi soprano roles, I gather her Aida and Lady Macbeth were a knockout and she can act. I can’t wait to see her live. The only reason she didn’t walk off with the audience entirely was that Domingo was singing Nabucco.

I fell for Domingo way back when he took a production of Ballo and just turned it around by making ‘Amelia’ (Katia Ricciarelli) fall in love with him on stage as we listened and watched. I would have accepted him whispering the role of Nabucco, but he gave it everything, passionate, touching, strong and weak, in the third act there was a long sustained note held as the orchestra died away – there was not a quaver in his voice as he held it. EG said he had his heart in his mouth worrying about him remembering lines or sustaining quite so heavy a new role at his age, but I think such an old dog has enough know-how to cover any dicey moments.

The other lead voices were all beautifully balanced, and although I might have indented for a slighter Fenena, her voice and acting fitted the role perfectly. Perhaps the greatest feature of this production was the direction of the chorus. With all the cameras on them, there was never a moment when their concentration faltered. They were in role from start to finish. Va Pensiero was simply, yet passionately handled and the soft fade at the end was the sweetest I have ever heard. It was impossible to detect when the sound ceased.

I fear I could go on at even greater length, it must have worked more magic on me than I anticipated.

paths and puddings

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We are now joined up. The path to the front door is walkable and complete apart from those pesky shaped sections, which a kind neighbour says ‘his builder’ might be able to help with. I could not see how else to cut them as I have neither the strength, not the tools or skills to make these shapes. I left them with this builder yesterday, when we were out. This morning I woke up to find a bag with the bricks cut to my marks by the path.

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Thanks to this kindness, we were able to spend a happy hour at the nearby nursery gardens choosing some shrubs to fill the hole – or rather what will be the new bank.

I don’t plan to talk about food or cooking, but I think I surpassed myself on the pudding disaster front on Thursday. Our kind guests, after naming my effort ‘Calamity Pudding’, nobly ate it. It was a microwave dark treacle sponge that spilled over the basin and glued itself to the plate on top and then refused to turn out, so had to be served with a tea towel camouflage round the basin. It didn’t taste too bad at all.