I felt very sophisticated walking around the Coliseum, listening to the oohs and aahs about the refurbishment, and the gasps about the cornucopia of Ladies' loos. I've been here already, I've seen the phantasmagoric refurb. I haven't queued for the loo.
Two intervals, therefore order two drinks. The first serving man was unable to take interval orders, so I stood waiting for ages whilst everybody else got served with fifteen bottles of wine, seven coffees, and a plate of cakes for interval two. Eventually served, the second interval drink was keyed in as a single. Not good enough, but I just want to down my first large one of the evening. Only fifteen minutes to curtain up.
I took my seat. Next to peasants. Granted, they didn't look like peasants, her with her Windsmoor labels prominently displayed. His face saying, 'I'm a self-made business man you will respect me.' However, I judge people by behaviour. Four times in the first act (forty minutes) they indulged in conversation. Oblivious to the glares of me, and three people in front. As I coldly politely wriggled past at the interval I hissed with iron in my venom, "It is customary not to talk during the performance". They, however, were not responsible for the mobile phone that went off during the introduction to Recondita Armonia.
I grabbed my drink and hot-footed it downstairs to the smoking area (St Martin's Lane...). One group of people are arguing that they will go out even though they've left their ticket in their box. When told there would be no readmission without ticket, the woman declared, "I'm with the company and I'll use the stage door". Another woman is complaining about the bar on taking glasses outside - it's the law, says the bouncer. Rubbish, she says, I was drinking my wine outside before, do I have to choose between wine and cigarette, why can't I have a cigarette and wine at the same time. Rubbish, I'm thinking, all those pubs just up the road spill out onto the street, why should different laws apply to them as to the Colisseum. Besides, when we banned street drinking in Brixton, we made it specifically not apply to yuppies spilling out from wine bars, only to the underclass.
Outside, a smoker takes a can of G&T from her bag. Hm, I thought, she gets to have her cake and eat it. I can see it now, future intervals at English National Opera being characterised by hordes of opera-loving smokers surreptitiously tippling their Tennants Super as they overspill into the periphery of Trafalgar Square.
In the second act the self-made Windsmoor peasants move along to the two empty seats on the row. And desist from speaking. I so rock! I'm probably the haughty snoot that deters peasants from going to the Opera (all power to me, then!)
In the second interval, where my 'small gin is diluted by that dread product, ice, I watch the amiable bickering of a long-married eccentric middle-aged-to-young-elderly couple. He wants to stay inside and drink, she wants to go out and smoke. They go their separate ways. Then she decides she wants to read the programme, and orders the bouncer to tell her husband (who has wandered off into the Coliseum�s bowels) to give her the programme. Husband returns chunnering that "You're no company at all." I get an inconcealable fit of the giggles and gulp my gin to make my exit to the street and nicotine bliss.
I return to my seat long before the bell and eavesdrop on the conversation of the couple behind. He's insisting on reading the programme, they decide they're going to go the Met to see Salome, because the Met doesn't discriminate against fat people - (although Salome seems sufficiently elfin-like to do the Dance of the Seven Veils).
He asks her whether it was like this last time she came. She replied that it was truly awful. She was repeatedly awakened during "The Mask of Orpheus" to the ghastly plink of dissonant strings. He says that when he makes money, he will fund a revival of the Mask of Orpheus because something so epoch-makingly bad must be worth a revival. Meanwhile she has spotted Geoffrey Howe in a box, so I quickly put my binoculars to my eye and see a grotesque caricature of a Tory grandee, with enormous stomach hanging over the parapet. She says, "He looks like a Punch Cartoon," and breaks into giggles.
And the opera - Tosca? It was lovely. Clare Rutter was divine as Tosca, and sang Vissi d'Arte soaringly sweetly. Julian Gavin was good as Cavaradossi, with a gorgeous E Lucevan le stelle and a good Recondita Armonia. Stephen Kechulius as Scarpia was brash and unlikeable. The orchestra was lush. The final scenes - the firing squad and Tosca's leap -were heartstopping.
But I still contend that, even in English, surtitles would help. I heard two separate people comment that Covent Garden uses surtitles even for operas in English.
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