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!)
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