Skip to main content

Off we go

So the gravel was fine, but I did get a bit arsey about some clippings that a gardener had forgotten to clear up after a bit of topiary work; un-raked gravel is one thing but gravel peppered with bright green yew is quite another. I coped - just - with that, as well as with the jolly gravel observations of several wags. I asked for that of course.

The first night, as my previous blog suggested, is something to be endured rather than enjoyed. Everybody is naturally on (h)edge (bloody yew) but the show went well and the reaction was good so a glass or two of Edradour, Scotland's finest, were taken. Tonight, Fanciulla plays to the first full "normal" audience of the season and on a warmish Friday night, with Puccini's glorious music we should get the full magical effect of OHP in flight.

Il barbiere di Siviglia had its dress rehearsal last night and enjoyed a really terrific reaction so hopes are high that the 9,000 odd patrons booked in to see it will have a whale of a time. Neil Irish has done a hell of a job with the set - it might be the biggest we have ever seen at OHP actually - but stage crew are full of (admiring) hatred for him and have effigies scattered throughout the backstage area that they can kick or stab with pins as they walk past. One is trussed up in gaffer tape so it can't fight back.  The production is particularly poignant for us because its director, Ollie Platt, and conductor Matt Waldren came through the Christine Collins Young Artist programme; she would have been in raptures at their achievements.

On other more important matters, today is the 70th anniversary of the D Day landings. For several reasons I have become especially interested in WWll in recent years and find all commemorations of it deeply moving. OHP does a lot of work at Royal Hospital, Chelsea, and the old soldiers there are a remarkable bunch for whom humility is a key attribute (natural for them but instinctively adopted by those of us who encounter them).  I will end this blog with the words of an old soldier, speaking to the BBC yesterday. Its matter-of-factness strengthens the gravity of the events he describes and whilst I may joke about the aesthetics of a theatre, the relevance of his words to all of us is not lost on me in the least.

"We charged up the beach, cut down the wires and everything else to get through the fences and headed up towards the radar station," he said. 

"We had a wee scuffle here and a scuffle there and then took over the radar station. Anybody that didn't want to come along got shot."

When it was suggested he made it sound easy, he answered: "It was".


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gelb and The Met

Having posted a piece that was kind to critics and thus risking opprobrium from all quarters, I suppose I ought to be wary of writing a piece that is sympathetic to the current opera demon, Peter Gelb.  Let us be clear, I don't know what the detailed financial situation at the Met is, I don't know how its budgets are split and allocated, I don't know how much they spend on sets and productions. I just read selective figures used negatively and that is always something we should be wary of.  What Gelb and the Met are going through is probably entirely unique in the opera world given the scale of economics involved and the accusations of mismanagement that are being thrown around are hard to reconcile with some of the realities; it is certainly true, for example, that Gelb has taken the Met's turnover from $222 million to over $300 million in eight years which doesn't immediately suggest mismanagement, but that is as glib and superficial an analysis as anything else I...
9 comments
Read more

Journalists: keep it simple!

An open letter to Eva Wiseman Dear Eva I read your recent piece on the Guardian website ("Is there anything worse than a man who cries") with mounting horror. I also noted the nearly 3,000 outraged comments below it and, I have to say, you brought it all upon yourself. I have no sympathy, but I am happy to help you by explaining where you went wrong. The most important thing to note - and Eva, this will stand you in good stead hitherto should you hold it in mind - this is 2015. Why is that relevant? Well, this isn't 1928, for example, when a book like "A Handbook on Hanging" by Charles Duff could be published and people "get it". And you're no Henry Root, love, let me tell you. And can you imagine what the world would say now if Clive James's line about that Chinese president "whose name sounds like a ricochet in a canyon" was published on Twitter? There would be bedlam. You can't possibly hope to get away with writing a piece t...
8 comments
Read more

Sometimes, facts really don't matter to people

Since the Brexit vote, and especially since the recent Autumn statement, there has been something familiar nagging at me; the remarkable refusal of Brexiters to accept or acknowledge the facts set out by the government and in the OBR's forecasts. It reminds me of something, a feeling I have had before. I know that the expression post-truth annoys a lot of people, but it is a thing, it really exists. People, for whatever reason can knowingly refuse to accept bare facts when it suits them. It isn't a new phenomenon at all. I am bound to say, moreover, that I have tended to experience it in a malign sense, when the things people want to believe are unconscionable or driven by prejudice of one kind or another. Last night I remembered where it was that I had last seen the phenomenon and it was an experience that left me astonished at the time, but which also provoked in me a genuine disgust for my fellow citizens. I am afraid it is an unpleasant parallel scenario, but it was pro...
5 comments
Read more