I didn't like this. I mean, I really didn't like it. I sat there for half an hour and looked at my watch and only five minutes had passed. After another hour I checked again; we were just ten minutes in. I decided to leave at the interval. But that was a long time away. Another 35 minutes.
I wanted to wee, even though I had been only ten minutes or so before the curtain. I told myself - you sat through 2½ hours of the Dutchman, including constantly dripping water, and that wasn't a problem. Just focus on the music. No. Can't do that. Focus on the action. No. Can't do that.
You've paid forty-odd quid for this ticket. Front row of the stalls. And it's short. 6.30 curtain. 7.15 interval. 8.40 finish. Michael-I-was-at-Primary-School-with* has a small part, but large enough to warrant a proper inclusion in the cast list. No one from your Primary School has ever achieved so much in opera (or any branch of entertainment, to my knowledge).
I decided that my time is worth more than my money. I could have sat there, bored out of my scull, and written a more insightful piece about why it was pants (technical term). But I thought, why bother?
I have read several reviews. Almost all of them focused on the spectacle. Not a lot to be said about the music. Apparently it was a comedy. The only laughs were at someone drawing attention to the fat stomach of a bloke with a fat stomach. Laugh! I barely started.
Apparently, the highlight was a giant figure on stage, which was the constant throughout the show. An enormous great big human figure with eyes that moved and a face that seemed almost alive. Well, I say 'almost', but you know, CGI is pretty old hat. It's a brilliant way of doing special effects, but, you know, an artistic creation is a fail when it's solely about special effects.
I have no complaints about the technical quality of the singing or orchestral playing.
But, and here is a big but. I simply didn't like the music. I got a horrific reminder of why I totally hated 'contemporary music' for very many years. (And, actually, if it dates from when I was still at Primary School, it seriously isn't contemporary).
I am conscious that if I dismiss it as a load of pretentious wank I will attract brickbats from the achingly trendy type of person who believes that the only valid music is 'contemporary' music ie music that has developed out of developments in the classical genre and is typified by absence of melody, atonality, general screeching and a great deal of noise. Note, I am a big percussion fan and enjoy very much the percussion writing of composers as diverse as Britten (died after I was born) and Reich (still active; I have almost met him).
Coupled with a surrealist story and the hammiest acting since I went to that theatre above a pub in Parsons Green, randomly selected from Time Out as horizon-widening, in 199-something, it really wasn't for me.
I refuse to take sides in the argument about pretentious wanky modern art. To some extent I fully acknowledge that because I am an amateur, I lack the knowledge and experience to appreciate the profundity of the artist. I also acknowledge that art is not synonymous with entertainment, although they overlap.
I do not consider instant accessibility to be the sine qua non of art, although I would argue that Great Art is both accessible at a superficial level and abounds in a wealth of deeper meanings that reward application and reflection (qv Don Carlo). If art fails to communicate with or alienates the non-professional/non-expert, its purpose is limited.
Hundreds of people have been to see this current run of Le Grand Macabre and enjoyed it. Some enjoyed it because they are free-thinking intellectuals who know that the only relevant music is that which doesn't contain pretty tunes and, preferably, dates from post WWII and even better post-1975. But many enjoyed it for its own sake.
I have pretty broad tastes in music. In the past year I have attended and enjoyed works by composers ranging from Henry Purcell to John Adams, and including Handel, Verdi, Wagner, Puccini, Alfano, & Britten. I am a big fan of a lot of 80s commercial pop music, and have an abiding love of several singer-song writers currently active. I have a lot of political and musical issues with Rap but every couple of years I find a Rap track that speaks to me and demonstrates that it can be an art form, that greatness can manifest through rap. Although I would identify my favourite pop genre as being folk-inspired (kd lang, Billy Bragg, Nanci Griffith, Leonard Cohen, Kathryn Williams), I also I have an abiding passion for punk/new-wave and Goth rock (Sisters of Mercy, Mission etc). Of course, none of this makes me an expert, but I do think I am a reasonably well-informed amateur.
But being a well-informed amateur or even a well-schooled expert does not mean that one's tastes and opinions are 'the truth'. Because someone else's taste or opinion is directly contradictory and is equally valid for them. I don't think that popularity is in itself a measure of greatness, but I do think that enduring popularity across several generations, amongst people of widely varying expertise is an important test - Beethoven's 9th being the standard work used to illustrate this point.
When I praise a work, or performance, or performer, I often use expressions such as 'reached out to the audience'; 'gripped the audience and held then in rapture'. By 'the audience' I actually mean 'me' because I cannot possibly second-guess the reaction of anyone else. No one has ever pulled me on this one. But if I state that this work, or at least Scene 1, failed to grip the audience I feel sure that someone will question my right - if only in their mind, not the comments - to project my reaction onto others people.
I am glad that ENO put on this work, and I am glad that I bought a ticket and attended. Perhaps I should have sat it out. But I found the music to be so irritating, and the proceedings on stage to be so pompous yet pointless, I really did not wish to be there.
I know people who make it a matter of honour never to walk out except on health grounds, however awful the proceedings. I am brutal. I go to opera, and other arts/entertainment to enjoy myself. That enjoyment may include being emotionally wrecked, or having some of my principles and pre-conceptions challenged. I don't just seek out warm cozy feel-good mental chewing gum. I like to apply my considerable intellect to proceedings; I also like to find music, especially beyond easy-to-hum tunes.
When I am bored stupid in the first ten minutes, and the next ten minutes until the end of the scene drags interminably, I know it is time to cut my losses. I don't need to be achingly trendy or demonstrate (falsely) that I am full of bullshit masquerading as intellectual profundity.
If one element had been worth my while, I might have stayed longer. But I doubt anything would have got me past the realisation that the 'music' was nothing more than sound effects, unconnected notes played in a random way that was displeasing.
It wasn't that it was unsettling - I can cope with unsettling - it was because somewhere it resembled real music but was as annoying as the bloke I heard 'singing' along to his iPod on the escalators at Clapham Common, or the toddler in my neighbourhood who has spent the summer practising their recorder in the garden.
The small child I am okay about, because I know that they will progress. Le Grand Macabre (Scene 1) had as much meaning to me as when someone spatters a canvas with drips of oil-paint and someone calls it genius. Noise is noise and spatters of paint remain spatters of paint. Which I know makes me sound like a reactionary. I'm not: I like innovation, creativity and looking at things from a fresh angle.
Just because something ticks all those boxes doesn't make it great, or even good - I know that from reading middle-brow fiction and from watching TV as well as from classical art forms. I also know from the numerous academic political journals and textbooks I have read over the years. They are written with multi-syllabic words and long sentences, often with dependent clauses. The high-falutin writing style masks but does not conceal that the writer says nothing of worth. As an accountant I have been trained to value substance over form.
I think in the long-term, attending this work, if only for Scene 1, will move my consciousness forward. Also, it will be another useful benchmark in the 'as bad as Pelleas & Melisande, or La Gioconda at Holland Park' League table. Considering the frequency I attend opera and related performances, I think I am due an 'unremittingly awful' about once a year!
Just for the record - Pelleas & Melisande is a dull opera with a ghastly static production which wasted three great singers giving, I think, great singing performances. La Gioconda is a trashy but tuneful opera with some poor quality singing in a so-bad-it's...no-it's-bad production. Le Grand Macabre pretty much wipes away P&M's use as a benchmark of bad, and like it, will probably win all the relevant awards!
NB I bought the ticket for this myself; I did not receive compliments of ENO or anyone associated with them. I took advantage of the discount for buying tickets for performances of several operas
* I was friendlier with his older brother, he was friendlier with my younger brother. My mother often chats with his parents, especially when I have spotted him in ROH or ENO chorus.
