Starstruck & Unsophisticated at the Opera

As you may know, gentle readers, I do rather love a bit of opera. Singing it, listening to it, watching it, trying to understand the complicated "swapped at birth"/"disguise" story lines and so on.  Imagine my excitement on receiving a coveted ticket to Tosca at the Royal Opera House (from a friend who basically lurks, submerged except for his nostrils, on the ROH box office website all the time waiting to pounce on unbelievably cheap tickets to amazing shows - read his blog, he may give away his secret!) 

I was lucky as a child to experience musicals, plays, ballet, dance, concerts and so on of wide and varied standards.  School productions, local shows (including a panto which turned out unexpectedly to be so "blue" my parents told me it had finished at the interval), musicals on the big stage in Manchester, London and once, thrillingly, on Broadway.  I saw Welsh National Opera's "The Marriage Of Figaro" - my first live opera and still my favourite opera. All of these were important, special, stand-out occasions to me, the memories of which are clear and cherished.

As a family we always watched any music competition that was televised, and other signal landmark events: carols from Kings at Christmas, Last Night of the Proms.  I grew up to a mixed "shuffle" soundtrack from which various things stand out in my sepia tinted aural memory: Benny Goodman (dad plays clarinet), The Beatles, Abba, The Carpenters as well as Mozart, Weber, Beethoven, Fred Astaire's back catalogue, and so on and so on.  (Not so much Rock or Funk, but hey).  So for me music has always been part of our daily life but also part of our treats, celebrations, once-in-a-lifetimes.

My point is this: Has this made me take any of it for granted? De-mystified any of it, made it a bit everyday? Simply: No.

Tosca was simply amazing.  Bryn Terfel was astonishing - compelling, sinister, menacing, totally authoritative even to his last gasp as a murder victim.  Angela Georghiu's "big diva moment" - her second act Aria as she pleads for her lover's life - (and which one assumes she has performed many times more often than the role complete, being a crowd pleasing concert favorite) was captivating and yielded "mid-action" applause (interestingly, as I dimly perceive, clapping at the "wrong" time is a hazard for the unwary - in fact one dauntless clapper was audibly shushed by more right thinking operagoers during act one, although the audience was not at all inhibited about showing their approval at the end of the act - roaring - or during the curtain calls - foot stamping, shouting, whooping).

Antonio Pappano's conducting, (of which, given our "restricted view" eyrie we had a bird's eye view) was unknowably and yet in some way palpably the dynamo of unstoppable energy keeping the whole thing moving relentlessly and powerfully forward.  The (incidentally extremely beautiful) Jonas Kaufmann was seemingly faultless in every way, his movements, gesture, let alone his awe-inspiring "is he still holding that unbelievable note" singing. As for Puccini - I think I have found a new love.  (Don't worry Mozart, you'll always be my first).  I think that's probably a whole other blog post though. 

Walking into ROH for Tosca I felt a level of excitement roughly equivalent to that which would be unleashed if we were to tell our daughter that we were taking her to Disneyland (we are not - Mr Life After Law feels he simply needs longer to brace himself quite apart from remortgage the house to pay for it!).

Quite apart from the sneaking "oh wow it is ACTUALLY Bryn and Angela - "Bryngela?? -" feeling I was simply overcome by the whole thing.  Opera is exciting.  Opera is fun and magical and moving and allows you to transcend yourself.  And I had this fabulous experience for £9.40 per ticket.

Opera is, above all, AFFORDABLE and accessible - everything has subtitles.  And in my view, opera is irreplaceable.  (If I had my time again I wish I'd run away to try my luck and abilities as an opera singer.  You know what I did instead.)

So when will the junior branch of the team be exposed to opera? Well, they hear it round the house a lot as you can imagine ("Mummy, (weary sigh from 7 going on 25) must you sing so LOUD?").  And if you allow the work of Messrs Gilbert & Sullivan as at the very least light operetta, then they are both well used to the genre.

I can't wait til their first time at a big opera house.  They have so far loved village hall panto, English National Ballet, The Gruffalo, G&S and so on with equal relish.  And I hope I am giving them some memories to match those for which I am so grateful to my own parents!

(May I also add, that I now fully understand why my parents would occasionally bring their own gin and tonic - taking small people to the theatre is ultimately rewarding yet fairly exhausting!)

What's in a Name? Or at least in a diagnosis......

"Autistic Spectrum Disorder" or "Autism" or "ASD" (doesn't everything have an acronym nowadays?)

What would you say if you received that as a diagnosis for your child? (After having a few initial goes asking questions like "what is it?"  which might be your natural response, and fair enough )

I think that people attempting to answer the question above are divided into two camps:

Firstly, and broadly, those who do not care for or know quite well a child with any special education needs.  They are sympathetic, imagining distress, grief, shock, anxiety, anger.  And those things are probably all present to a greater or lesser degree - but what surprises this first category is the following emotion that I and Mr Life After Law (aka The Man Of The House) felt at the crucial consultation (with a panel of four autism experts who had spent hours carrying out and repeating official assessments and weighing endless reports and feedback from an even bigger pool of relevant people):

Relief.  


So far out of all my friends relations and acquaintances the only ones who really resonate with the relief of the diagnosis are those who also live with it (my not-at-all-sweepingly-generalised second category).  This is not to ignore the amazing love and support of all the friends and relations who empathise deeply and sincerely with our position.  It's just that I don't think you really understand in your bones why there is a sense of relief unless you have been through it.

I haven't met many parents of children with ASD who have had that diagnosis fall like a bolt out of the blue.  On the contrary, many have spent months or years, even, getting to the point where the experts agree on a diagnosis.  Some have had to fight against all kinds of discouragement, criticism and lack of resources to get the appropriate assessments carried out, and to arrive at a conclusion.

And so, certainly for us, there was at the meeting at which we officially were pronounced "autistic" an overwhelming sense of relief.  We are not imagining it.  We are not inadequate parents.  Our child is not "difficult" or "defiant".  We are not hopeless or helpless.  We are not being weak in finding things challenging. We can make a difference. We can open up opportunities and there are lots of ways forward now.

I haven't blogged for a while - and you may now understand why.  We've been thinking about other stuff.  And I will undoubtedly talk about the trials and triumphs of Life After Law in relation to ASD.  It will be apparent that my decision to quit my career in law is related to the additional needs of our family.

But we have two children, not one - and we are a family unit of complex unique individuals.  Some of us really like to watch WWII war films for the 60th time, some of us think that everything can be improved by the addition of pink glitter, some of us will only eat one brand of baked beans, one of us (and I'm pretty sure it is me) really likes to listen to people sing about dying and/or love in a foreign language. While disguised as a boy/servant/swapped at birth. Preferably in a massive frock. And wig.

So I will continue to blog about Life After Law and "giving it all up" (stares nobly into middle distance) and parenting.  And blogging about ASD will be part of that, but it isn't the whole story, not by a long shot.  And I look forward to sharing snapshots of the next few chapters with you.