Yes, I know I've said before about how I thought opera was crap, but that's modern opera, pasty white men in leotards and sweatbands singing about their bad day at the office. Classic opera is different. It's great stories told with beautiful and stirring music, performed by musicians at the height of technical perfection. Isn't it? Well, isn't it?
Well, truth be told, I had no idea. I went through a classical music phase for a while when I realised that I loved well played acoustic instruments, and there were certainly plenty of examples of great opera music on collections that I bought at the time, however I'm aware that buying classical music on a greatest hits basis doesn't exactly make me a candidate for radio three listener of the year. But everything I'd seen of opera had led me to think of it as, in general, elitist, oversubsidised drivel.
So when a friend asked on Facebook if anyone wanted to use a spare ticket to the opera that evening I sat on my sofa and thought hell, why not? I agreed to meet her at the theatre for a performance of La Traviata.
Maybe you're au fait with the plot of La Traviata already, but for the uninitiated it boils down to this; woman with a bit of cash, kind of a Paris Hilton type, gads about town going to parties and such, takes a lover and lives in sin with him, giving up her life of leisure for, erm, well, a more quiet life of leisure, probably just an excuse as she knows she has a fatal disease, probably something social, I wouldn't put it past her. Her lover's dad turns up and says his daughter is upset by it all (what it has to do with her is never really addressed) and so she leaves her new boyfriend in an act of supreme self sacrifice, whereupon after a duel that never really amounts to anything,(and takes place off-stage, spoilsports, or that might have been a good bit) and a lot of bemoaning her lot, runs out of money and promptly drops dead.
Sound a load of old piffle? Well have I got news for you! Oh, wait, this just in, no I haven't, because that's exactly what it was. Much of the music kind of meandered at trying to be some kind of a tune, but never really got anywhere, God knows how they ever remember it, because it's not exactly a foot tapper. The theatre hover a message board where a translation of the lyrics, like live subtitles, serve only to amuse: I am going now, alright you are going, yes I am going, go then, now is the time that I am going, I wish you well, I thank you as I am going, here is me going, there I have gone, oh wait, I forgot my hat... On and on and on. If you wrote this stuff in a musical it had damn well better be a comedy, but somehow in an opera nobody ever dares to point out the emperor's clotheslessness.
That said, the performances were very well done, the soprano was quite spectacular, though the overall effect was more like that of a dog standing on its hind legs than anything else; not actually entertaining, but remarkable. I would probably have enjoyed the orchestra more, but the singing often drowned them out, and with a curtain separating us from them didn't even get to see them much. A balcony seat might have been better. My friend, herself an opera virgin as well, rated it five out of ten as an experience. I think that's probably fair. Maybe a little generous.
There is one good bit, that occurs fairly near the beginning, and only serves to make the rest of what follows look pale and pathetic by comparison:
There you go, that's officially the only bit of it worth seeing. I just saved you about thirty quid. Feel free to send me a cheque.
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