Mike Newell's 'Great Expectations'

Great Expectations

1^st December 2012

Husband likes to do things in the correct order:  read the book, see the film.  And now that you can download a lot of the classics onto your Kindle for free I foresee a number of visits to the cinema to see period adaptations. 

So, off to our little, local, art house cinema.  Sounds cute, I know.  And it could be if they could just stop getting everything wrong.  Every time I go, some sort of slap-stick calamity hinders our enjoyment of the entertainment on offer.  Yesterday, we arrived to discover that we were half an hour early because the time that the website stated was inaccurate.  I paid £15.60 for two tickets, YES, £15.60 for two tickets!! And made my way to the bar to kill time that could have been spent on something other than parting with £6 for a small glass of Sauvignon*, YES, £6.00 on a small glass of wine!!  The bar was so cold that I could see my breath.  I put my complaints to the girl behind the bar; said, “Gosh, isn’t it cold in here?” and “Gosh, what expensive wine,” and felt like the oldest, most curmudgeonly cinema-goer in the world.  She said sorry in a vague way, said that people kept going outside and letting the warmth out.  Nobody went out whilst I was there and there seemed to be no source of heat present.  An elderly customer sat by the bar in sheepskin coat and red beret.  We smiled at each other, as if united in a tremendous effort to enjoy ourselves.

Still, with the gift of time came the chance to reflect on what we were about to see.  Why always Great Expectations, I asked myself.  Why not A Tale of Two Cities or Dombey, for a change?  Well, I think Mike Newell answers this question well in his adaptation of the book.  We can overlook the numerous details of the hard-to-believe plot; we can overlook the obsequiousness and downright blandness of Pip because what this tale has, or rather, what it is, is a string of utterly striking and compelling images, more so than any of Dickens’ other works.  Newell knows this and has not tried to mess with the origins of the book’s power.  The opening scene is everything that it should be, the marshes stretching out to a misty nothingness, a lone child clearing moss from his parents’ headstone.  It is perfect, I thought.

Indeed, what Newell’s film does in its honesty to Dickens’ novel is it brings us a greater understanding of Pip.  If Newell’s film is original in any way, and I fear it may be criticised for not being, it is in this power to make us understand and not just pity the character of Pip.  When the young Pip, played by Toby Irvine, gives food and file to Magwitch, we see here that it is not just out of fear that he does so but out of a sense of moral rightness.  This raises the character of Pip in our estimation as he is not simply a receptacle for the whims of others.  As Pip and Joe travel across the marshes, joining in the soldiers’ search for the convict, Pip whispers to Joe, “I hope we don’t find him,” with which Joe agrees.   Joe Gargery, played here by Jason Flemyng, is the book’s moral compass but in seeing the two characters together like this, united, not just as victims of Mrs Gargery but as good souls in a cruel world we do not give up on Pip later in the film as can happen for readers of the book.  Here, we believe that he has not strayed too far from his roots.  The older Pip, played by Jeremy Irvine, convinces far more as a blacksmith than as a would-be gentleman and for this we like him much more.

Satis House was beautifully Gothic and the vines growing around it gave a wonderful intimation of fairytale to the scenes outside.  Husband and I disagreed on Helena Bonham Carter as Miss Haversham.  He thought that she was too wholesome to play such a twisted shrew but I thought that our National, Gothic treasure was just ripe for the part.  She hints just enough at menopausal madness to fully embody the despair of Miss Haversham.  However, the film’s greatest travesty comes in the burning of said character.  Who does not see it in their mind’s eye?  The white dress going up in flames, the darkened rooms suddenly illuminated;  these are such dramatic images that it struck me as gratuitous that we should then be exposed to her charred, dying flesh as she squeals her way towards her fate.  This was not necessary, Mr Newell but thankfully your only slip.

Casting was inspired without missing the mark.  Robbie Coltrane as Jaggers was a surprise but a successful one.  I suppose I think of Jaggers as being physically spiky and not so rotund but such is the Scottish actor’s talent that he embodied the part perfectly; his meanness of spirit and rigid self-control were portrayed convincingly.  Olly Alexander was superlative as Herbert Pocket; played as if the character had jumped straight off the pages of our imagination and onto the screen.  David Walliams as Pumblechook was suitably revolting.  My only criticism of casting was that Ben Lloyd-Hughes as Bentley Drummle was far too attractive; if I was Estella I wouldn’t have put up much of a fight.

The pace of the film was mercifully swift.  Before we have time to be bored of Pip’s exploits in London, Ralph Fiennes’s Magwitch appears again to call proceedings to their inevitable denouement.  Fiennes does not play a pathetic culprit as is often the case in adaptations but brings a quiet elegance to the part.  We see his devotion to Pip as a supreme act of selflessness which has the effect of finally enabling Pip to grow into the decent man that he promises at the beginning of the tale.  When he dies in prison with Pip at his side I felt genuinely moved.

To conclude I would say that this adaptation was visually superb and that the casting was effective.  I hope now never to see another adaptation of Great Expectations.  Let this be enough.  Oh, and one last thing:  Wemmick’s drawbridge.  I loved this; perhaps the greatest achievement of the film!

*I do not live in London

The Comedy Of Errors

The Comedy of Errors

RST, 12^th September 2012

I wasn’t sure if I’d seen this one before but knew the general pretext; mistaken identities, shipwreck, riotously funny and not necessarily in that order.  The RSC’s current production is launched alongside ‘Twelfth Night’ and ‘The Tempest’ as being a shipwreck trilogy.  Hmmmm. 

 

We were up high, in the upper circle as they euphemistically call it now.  I sat next to an old chap who talked loudly about how much he hoped the play would not be in ‘modern dress’.  This does seem to be a pre-occupation with the older audience members – what does it mean?  Surely they don’t think that all Shakespeare’s plays should be performed in Elizabethan costume?  And for the first ten minutes of the performance he muttered a lot, presumably not impressed by the 1970s shiny suits and military uniforms of the cast.

 

The opening scene introduced us to Egeon being interrogated and tortured by the Duke.  Sandy Grierson, who played the Duke, has a broad Scottish accent.  I know we’re meant to embrace cultural differences on the stage but I could not make out what he was saying.  Anyway, it was unpleasant seeing old man Egeon’s head plunged into a fish tank every few minutes; very Tarrantinoesque.  But then, it’s quite a dark play and you would be forgiven for thinking that you might be in for some dark humour.  The setting of Ephesus is a brutal and militarised state of fierce commerce where all interlopers are assassinated; this being the intended fate of Egeon.  However, what he tells the Duke, about his quest for his long-lost son, his son’s servant and his own wife sets the scene for the play’s action.  For that reason, you don’t need to worry too much that you can’t understand anything that the Duke says; he is of less importance to plot. 

 

And so we encounter Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse as they sneak into Ephesus where, unbeknownst to them, their twin brothers have been living a life of prosperity as master and servant, unaware that they each have twin brothers.  Well, this is Shakespeare so one is trying very hard to suspend disbelief but this is early Shakespeare.  Indeed, it would be fair to say that by the time he got to ‘Twelfth Night’, he had perhaps perfected this particular genre of play.  By that, I mean, perhaps he had made it funny.  ‘Twelfth Night’ possesses charm which is why it is widely performed.  Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Ague-Cheek and Malvolio are amusing creations who feed off one another in a comedic triumvirate.

 

In ‘The Comedy of Errors’ we have the Dromio servants.  In this production they are played by Bruce MacKinnon and Felix Hayes.  The greatest achievement in this casting is that both men look remarkably similar which aids the confusion over identity.  Felix Hayes’s Dromio of Ephesus is like some sort of Little Britain creation of camp idiocy while Bruce MacKinnon plays the slightly less extravagant twin, Dromio of Syracuse.  Both are dressed like Where’s Wally.  They looked silly and if you think that people falling over and being hit over the head is funny, as the vast number of Americans clearly did, then you’re in for a real treat.  Americans, it seems are not content to chuckle quietly to themselves when amused but feel it necessary to clap and whoop.  The old chap and I sat stolidly still, arms folded, refusing to join in with this riotous behaviour.  ‘It’s not a bloody pantomime!’  I thought to myself; I’m sure that the old chap would have agreed with my sentiments.

 

Kirsty Bushell as Adriana amused me more with her take on wifely neurosis, as she spiralled into a hysterical banshee when confronted with the confounding behaviour of her husband.  The odd bit of slapstick when she assaulted her husband’s courtesan made me smile; but only smile.  To denote a change of scene to Antipholus and Adriana’s house, a huge platform was winched onto stage by a great industrial pulley, where it hovered so that the predominately female scenes could take place.  This was very clever.  Scenery on the whole was very clever.  A pirouette with a door allowed the audience to see actors on both sides when Antipholus of Ephesus is locked out of his house and Dromio of Syracuse is being seduced by the giant Nell on the other side of the door.  Sarah Belcher wore a very effective fat suit for this part and succeeded in looking a lot like Dawn French but not as funny.

 

So, you might have gathered that I didn’t find it that funny.  It’s a stupid play and I can only assume that when The Lord Chamberlain’s Men performed it most of the humour came from men dressed as women as there is patently nothing funnier in life, either four hundred years ago or today.  The play is mercifully short; the first half only an hour long, the second less than an hour.  The second half, as we hurtled towards resolution, is much more enjoyable and it’s an adequate effort but I would like to see a much darker take on it next time.

Richard III

Richard III

The Swan Theatre, 1^st June 2012

Was Shakespeare a feminist?  That’s not a very original question.  I wonder how many theses are proposed along those lines each year.  Still, there seems no better play than Richard III to demonstrate an over-riding ‘yes’.

 The current performance at The Swan is a Machiavellian delight which channels greed, fury, duplicity and madness to such an extent that the audience is in no doubt that this play is first and foremost a tragedy rather than a history play.  Indeed, in the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays it was titled ‘The tragedy of Richard the Third’.  Shakespeare distorts history into melodrama to a shocking extent.  Most of Richard’s appalling deeds in the play are fabrication.  Most evidence suggests that Richard was no more of a tyrant than the next Fifteenth-century King.  It seems that this is probably the point.  Richard may not have done half the things that the play suggests but given the power of a King, the play seems to show that he could have done them if he was crazy enough. 

Jonjo O’Neill’s Richard is certainly crazy enough.  His opening soliloquy shows him to be a menacing cripple whose boyish face is made truly horrible when he smiles to reveal a mouthful of rotten teeth because, of course, he ‘had his teeth before his eyes’ as Margaret tells us in Act IV, Scene IV.  He was not born with teeth, apparently, so this is pure fabrication on Shakespeare’s part but effective, of course.  As he comes to the end of his first speech, the orchestra begins to play creepy music, the sort that might overplay the speech of a Disney villain and as he leers at the audience, taking us into his confidence, we laugh at his villainy.

The laughs continue thick and fast through the first half of the play.  Richard’s wooing of Lady Anne and the murder of Clarence are turned beautifully into farce but as the action becomes more blood-thirsty, the laughs become more slap-stick.  When Richard is ‘playing’ the reluctant monarch, his henchmen are dressed as monks; when trying to convince the Mayor that the enemy is without and that he is the rightful leader, he and his men concoct of faux sword battle.  O’Neill throws himself around, his eyes growing bigger and crazier with all the ensuing bloodshed and the humour starts to feel misplaced.  But this is the great achievement of Roxana Silbert’s staging of the play. 

When we rejoin the action, after a long first half, Gloucester is now King and Jonjo O’Neill is channelling a camp, furious, petulant Napoleon; the tone has changed.  The message seems to be; ‘not so funny now’.  And indeed it is not, because the women take centre stage.  Act IV, scene IV is a triumph.  It is spectacular on the page and Silbert has ensured that it continues to sparkle on her stage.  Queen Margaret, Queen Elizabeth and the Duchess of York gather to bemoan the deaths of so many of their men.  All of them dressed in black and collapsed on the floor in desperation, the image of the trio is startling and powerful, echoing Macbeth’s witches in appearance if not in language.  This adds a supernatural power to the characters that seems to usurp anything that the male characters convey in all their lust for power.  Margaret, played by the talented and endlessly experienced Paola Dionisotti is given a ghostly, witchlike persona from her first prophetic appearance in the play.  Margaret has words for her fury and has voiced her dissent from her first appearance; the bereft Queen Elizabeth, who has channelled a sort of 1940s respectability throughout the play, begs to be given counsel on how to express her agony.  Margaret’s response is pertinent:  “Thy woes will make them sharp, and pierce like mine.”  Although, Elizabeth’s words have already wielded tremendous power as she speaks of her dead sons:

            “Ah, my poor princes!  Ah, my tender babes!

            My unblown flowers, new-appearing sweets!
            If yet your gentle souls fly in the air,
            And be not fix’d in doom perpetual,
            Hover about me with your airy wings,
            And hear your mother’s lamentation.”

 I insert the speech here because I think it is beautiful on its own but in the play its power comes from its juxtaposition in a drama that is about the parts men play and the duplicity of greed.  Buckingham, in advising the greedy Gloucester on how to act is a modern day spin-doctor without any political integrity.  Elizabeth’s honesty in this context gives emotional response a power above and beyond the tenuous power of covetous kings, who never last long once they have won the crown.

Was Shakespeare a feminist?  In this play he has distorted the facts in order to make a compelling and powerful drama that encompasses all facets of a twisted human nature.  He did not have to give these women a voice.  Richmond could have been presented as the all-victorious King and the power of virtue could have been all his.  Instead, Shakespeare shows even this character to be duplicitous and cunning (at Bosworth Field, Richmond places his doubles amongst the battle to torment and consume the energies of the failing Richard).  No male character is blameless or without a concern for his own portion of power and glory.  It is true that Richard never commits any of his murders himself but is able easily to convince others to conspire with him and for him.

I came away from this performance totally satisfied.  They had been expensive tickets – we sat right at the front; reluctant recipients of all that saliva, fearing for our lives as the swords swung before our eyes, close enough to see the sparks flying from the blades during the battle scenes.  It is tempting to see the price of theatre tickets, particularly in these times of austerity, as prohibitive and elitist but on this occasion I thought that I had received exceptional value for money.  Richard III is a long play and Richard appears in 14 scenes and delivers 300 speeches totalling over 1,000 lines.  The applause for Jonjo O’Neill was rightly loud, long and riotous.  To provide entertainment like that for three and a quarter hours night after night, sometimes twice a day is a commendable feat. 

           

The Woman In Black (Film)

The Woman in Black

Film, 21^st February 2012

The filmmaker has so much wizardry at her fingertips that a poor film is an unforgivable thing.  I don’t tend to watch poor films, or any films for that matter.  If you go to the theatre regularly and you like to read books there doesn’t tend to be much room for film as well.  And it’s hard to sit still at home without a book resting in your lap and somehow anchoring you with a guilt-free pursuit of self-improvement.  Film does not seem to offer self-improvement which might be why a good film is so enjoyable, providing you’re in a cinema and not tempted to multi-task with the ironing.  Anyway, I had to see this particular film because the original film held a sort of vivid sentimentality in my mind and I doubted that this recent Hammer production would be as scary.

Circa 1995 an old charmer who went dubiously by the profession of teacher used to allow his class of bright girls the illicit opportunity to forget their studies temporarily and watch a film in his English lessons.  Not a film of a set-text, I might add.  And the excuse for this indulgence was usually the end of term or something like that.  And always the same film, wasn’t it girls?  The Woman in Black.  No doubt it was a bit of a thrill to have a class of adolescent  girls squealing behind their hands as they hid from the maniacal eyes of the said woman.  Middlemarch is all very well but if you really want to get a reaction from the pubescent mind, put on a film.  Even better, put on a scary film and watch them scream. 

I haven’t read Susan Hill’s book so apologies to anyone who is hoping for a point-for-point discussion on how true to the original text the most recent  film is.  A film should stand as a thing in its own right but I suspect that the two films made of this book are successful because the book obeys so many fundamental principles of scare-mongering:  A spooky, old house cut off from civilisation by mists and marshes, dark windows, threatened children and a ghost woman with such over-riding anger issues that she kills children to avenge her own cruel history.  It is the simplicity of the story that makes it such a success and no amount of techno-wizardry can make a film good, or bad for that matter.  Usually the film is made good in the same way that the stage play is made good:  Well-written script, compelling story-telling, accomplished cast etc. 

The screen-play was written by the indomitable and hugely talented Jane Goldman who was responsible also for the fabulous Stardust.  Clearly she likes the Gothic genre.  So too does little Daniel Radcliffe who plays Arthur Kipps, a young lawyer fresh out of Hogworts and trying to cope with the death, in childbirth, of his wife in white.  Radcliffe is the perfect bland canvas on which to hang all things Gothic.  He is small in every way, the ideal narrator of a story that is bigger than he is.  He is supported wonderfully by big, old Ciaran Hinds whose stolid performance as Sam Daily grounds the ghostly story in some sort of sensible reality.  Unlike Sam’s wife Elizabeth, played by Janet McTeer, who has transferred her maternal affections, after the death of her young son, onto a couple of pooches who sit at the table in high chairs and get rocked to sleep at night in cradles – wonderfully twisted stuff; it could be Dickens.

As for being scared; I was not disappointed in the least, I was petrified.  So much of the film was lost to me as I hid behind my hand.  Sitting now, in front of a computer screen, it seems incredible that I was rendered so terrified but this is film’s trump card:  You can put down a book and walk away but if you walk out of the cinema half-way through you look like a bit of a wuss and that is your only get-out clause.  From the first moment Arthur approaches the old house we notice the dark porch with weeds growing out of its recesses.  Instantly I thought that a spider would fall on his head and so the imagination starts on a little journey.  I confess that I remember very little of the original film other than that face leering suddenly through the window.  What is it about the window at night?  Even now that I am a rational grown-up I do not like to look out into the darkness.  Why?  Do I really think that the Woman in Black will appear and scream her nasty, penetrating scream?  Or does a part of all of us want to be scared?

When Arthur pursues the woman we are thinking to ourselves, ‘don’t go into the house, you crazy fool, run, run for your life!’ But it is alright so long as he is not scared himself.  But at some point this changes and he starts to run through the old house to escape the ghost-woman’s clutches.  A chase is almost agonizingly exciting because we all know the feeling of being pursued, in our imaginations, from childhood.  Whenever the torment became too great, Sam would appear and provide light relief before the next bout of scariness.  The underlying unease, however, comes from the threat to the children.  We don’t really care what happens to Radcliffe, he is, as stated; simply a vehicle of narrative but whatever torment can be borne oneself the threat to innocents causes excruciating anguish.  When the pale-faced girl is dragged into the police station and the boys tell Arthur that she has drunk poison he takes her in his arms where she coughs up blood and dies.  This comes out of nowhere and is startlingly effective at unnerving us.  A clever little touch is that Arthur is on his own and when he shouts for help nobody comes.  It is as if he is suddenly in a night mare where however much you shout nobody comes to help.  But the death of this girl is nothing in comparison to the impending doom we feel when mention is made of Arthur’s little son coming to join him in the ghostly town.  And little Misha Handley was chosen to play Arthur’s son, Joseph, because of his unbearably cute and squidgy loveliness.  He is a character born to die and we know it from the first moment we see him.

It was exhausting, it was exhilarating.  How on earth was it rated 12A?  I don’t think I was really old enough to see it. If you’re brave enough, do go and see it.  It is the rare work of art that delivers more than you expect.

Nora

Nora

Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, 31^st January 2012

In 2008 I went to the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry to see Ingmar Bergman’s play, Scenes from a Marriage, directed by Trevor Nunn.  Marianne and Johan were played by theatrical royalty:  Imogen Stubbs and Iain Glen.  Theirs was a dramatic match made in heaven, unlike the characters they played, where Stubbs’s earthy naturalism was contrasted to powerful effect by Glen’s masterful command of presence.  I must confess here that I am something of an Iain Glen groupie.  It was not by chance that I happened to be in the Belgrade in 2008 watching him perform.  No, I was stalking his performances after his 2006 role in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible at Stratford.  Heavily pregnant I watched, mesmerised, by the sense of quiet gravity that he brought to the performance.  Perhaps a little hormonal I wept through most of the play and ordained him then as England’s finest stage talent.

So, imagine my delight when I learned that Glen and Stubbs were to be reunited once again at the Belgrade in another Bergman play; this time an interpretation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House called Nora.  Hastily I booked tickets and eagerly anticipated the event.  But things never go according to plan and so it was that husband and I found ourselves running full pelt towards the Belgrade after somehow managing to leave late and in the general way of things, thus arrive late.  The multi-story car park seemed to go on forever but we could see the welcoming illumination of The Belgrade the whole time.  It is a feature of the largely bomb-flattened city that you can usually see where you are trying to get to without having a clear idea of how to get there.  Still, I digress, now as I did then; to wonder briefly that Coventry is much prettier at night than it is in the day.  Pretty lights on buildings certainly have the desired effect.

So it was that we hurtled into our seats, husband briefly squashing the lady behind’s artificial foot and before we could catch our breath Nora and Torvald were on the stage.  Where were Mr Glen and Ms Stubbs?  Clearly I had made some sort of grave error; who were these nobodies on the stage?  The absence of my favourite luvvies tinged the play with an internal sneer for about twenty-five minutes; until I forgot about what I had hoped to see and started to pay attention to what I was seeing. 

Penny Layden as Nora was almost unbearably irritating and it was only as her character metamorphosis begun to take place that it became apparent that this was the result of a great talent.  She was doll-like to such a beautiful extent that it seemed real.  At one point, Torvald dances around with her and she is stiff in his arms like a real doll.  Nora brought into the twenty-first century was tremendously effective because there really are women like Nora is at the start of the play; who dress like dolls and play dumb to their husbands, even now.  Ibsen, like Shakespeare, could reduce all themes to the nuts and bolts of universality.  Imagine being able to relate so exactly to a female character, not only created some hundred and thirty years previously but also created by a man.  Layden’s Nora is, at times, maniacal but always within the social expectations of woman.  At the end of the play, when her transformation is complete, she walks off stage, case in hand and exits through the audience doors.  With her serious and reflective expression and dark clothes it was remarkable to think that this was the same person who opened the play.  It was as if Ibsen’s Nora walked right out of his 1879 script and into the modern world.

David Michaels played Torvald Helmer and provided the play with much of its humour.  We are laughing always at him and never with him because for most of the play he does not know what is going on and this makes him foolish.  His final, pathetic descent was displayed when he stripped on stage and simulated sex with Nora who was wearing rather more clothes than him.  Of course, this is an obvious motif for vulnerability and so it was that the audience seemed to sigh in collective relief when Nora threw a blanket over the naked Torvald.  Phew!  It’s nice to be shocked but, as with McKellan’s Lear a few years ago, one’s lasting impression of a play tends to be of nudity sprung upon us.  I can still see the old man’s surprisingly large penis swinging between his legs as he descends further into madness but I could not tell you much else about that particular Lear.  Still, by this point in Nora it has been ensured that nobody will feel any real sympathy for Torvald.  Perhaps Mr Glen opted out when he discovered there was nudity involved....

Bergman’s play differs from the original mostly in that it is paired down.  This seems to me a good thing because it makes it seem more modern.  Ibsen was not a subtle writer and the themes of the play, familiar as they are to us today do not need to be quite so overstated.  The beauty of A Doll’s House is that it is a feminist play that even men can understand.  One of the simplified aspects of the play is that Nora and Torvald’s three children are noticeably absent and only ever referred to.  This is effective because we are spared the discomfort of seeing Nora as a mother and we can focus on her simply as a wife.  A woman’s relationship with her children may never change but clearly there is room for improvement in a marriage such as Nora and Torvald’s.  It also helps with the controversial end scene; always a source of dissatisfaction with audiences is the idea of Nora walking out, not just on home and husband but crucially on her children.  Personally, I find the idea quite tantalising, especially at about eight o’clock in the morning but conventional stereotyping of women has prevented this aspect of the play from being considered acceptable and so in this play, Nora maintains the moral high-ground.

It was a marvellous, thought-provoking performance which was more than worthy of the ticket price and the Belgrade is a cracking theatre.  Its light and open layout stops it from ever feeling provincial and the staff are always friendly and without any sense of self-importance (small dig intended at some of the ushers at the RST).  And what’s more, if you want to really push the boat out, go hell for leather, or any other cliché you might care to mention and buy the best, most expensive tickets; you will be out of pocket to the tune of £13.50!  A bit more than going to see a 3D film at a fancy cinema.  And what you get is as fine as anything that you might see on the London or Stratford stage.

LA TRAVIATA

La Traviata

A review by an Opera Virgin

There would be something indescribably magical about the Opera, so say those who know such things.  Running into the Royal Opera House from a drizzly Covent Garden just late enough to be in a slight panic, I noticed that everyone around us was in a similar rush.  The foyer was packed, not with the well-dressed, cultural elite but with normal people wearing jeans and un-tucked shirts.  My husband quickly removed his tie which I had insisted that he wear.  It is hard, on such occasions, to believe that we are in the grips of one of the worst recessions of the last half century.  Had all these hundreds of people forgone food for a month in order to buy their tickets?

            Inside the theatre, the opulence of the surroundings is breathtaking; the garish ceiling, a work of art in itself.  I had been made aware, via the internet when booking our tickets, that we would not have armrests on our seats and that sufferers of vertigo were not advised to sit in such altitude-scaling seats.  I was expecting shoddiness indeed, I was expecting to have seat-envy for the duration of the performance but no; we were not the highest ticket-holders by some way.  Some poor opera desperados were even standing for the duration of the performance.  Visibility, due to the steep gradation of the seats, was excellent. 

            When the curtain was raised, the lavishness of the scenery and the exquisite delicacy of the orchestra’s ‘Preludio’ promised so much.  When the singers began, a screen above the stage gave a translation of the Italian into English.  I had not expected this and perhaps it was rather a distraction.  It is not really necessary, or should not be necessary, for the lyrics to have such precedence when the point of opera is surely that the music says all.  Still, a nice touch if you were finding the plot of Traviata complex.  But really, you would have to be an imbecile if you could not follow the plot of Traviata! 

            Before long, we are plunged into “Libiamo ne’ lieti calici” which is a bawdy waltz in which Alfredo, performed by Piotr Beczala, sings of the pleasures of wine and he and Violetta interact for the first time, flirting publicly.  As that was the track on the CD that I had listened to most I felt that I was actually enjoying the music.  Although, according to Roberta Montemorra Marvin it is ‘one of La Traviata’s least ‘proper’ and most sexually suggestive numbers’ and ‘the duet’s facile, waltz-like tune certainly would have made it a quick favourite’[1].  So, you see, I have unrefined tastes.  Following on from this, Alfredo is soon offering to look after Violetta and admitting that he has loved her since he first saw her over a year ago.  They sing of this in “Un di felice, eterea” which showcases some of Ailyn Perez’s stunning high notes which bounced around the auditorium to great acoustic effect. 

It is not surprising then, given the exertion that must be required to sing like this, that there are two intervals of half an hour each.  In fact, if the intervals are discounted, as well as the pause given over to a scene change, and the endless clapping after each ‘number’, it is surprising how little there is to an opera.  Indeed, what began with such sensory promise soon began to seem slightly juvenile.  If the music does not sustain you, it seems to me that there is very little else in an opera to do so. 

We know that Violetta will die, not just from watching Moulin Rouge, but because she has tuberculosis.  Audiences in the 1850s understood consumption very little.  Indeed, a physician of the time, Cesare Vigna believed in the curative effects of music on his patients.  The opera plays with this illusion that consumption can be delayed or reversed.  This is evidenced in the final act when Violetta revives to sing plaintively with Alfredo.  By this point, however, I was willing her to die sooner rather than later.  The melodrama was lost on me; I felt no sort of emotional potency.  It is hard, in the twenty-first century, to suspend our disbelief and not to question the honesty of this old morality tale.  La Traviata is a simplified version of the play by Alexandre Dumas fils, La Dame aux camelias.  This in turn was a simplified and sanitized version of his novel by the same name, which in turn was a dramatic retelling of his own affair with the notorious courtesan of the time, Marie Duplessis. Verdi evidently felt a bond of sympathy with the story as he himself was pursuing his own affair with a prostitute, Giuseppina Strepponi, whom he later married against the wishes of his family.  So, we are already someway from truth when the first performance of the opera was given in Venice on 6^th March 1853.  By 2011 didactic art makes us suspicious. 

Violetta is made a victim by Verdi and Dumas before him.  And indeed she is.  The real Marie Duplessis was sold by her father to a local paedophile when she was eleven.  Once she escaped, she fled from Normandy to Paris where she made her living through prostitution and eventually died, at the age of twenty-three, of consumption.  But if Verdi wants to create a moral out of this, surely he himself, and Dumas and the hero Alfredo are the perpetrators of evil, for prostitution cannot exist without the men who exploit this service.  Dumas maintained that ‘The French economy could not function without the funds put in circulation through sexual commerce.’  It seems to me that, far from being a critical attack on a society that endorses prostitution, La Traviata is actually a defence of the prostitute in all her frail, consumptive beauty.  For in 19^th-century literature and painting consumption was commonly idealized, its symptoms of pale skin, red cheeks and sparkling eyes being thought to denote great beauty.  This is sinister fetishism indeed.

But we must not interrogate meaning too much.  Opera is music.  It is music which is performed with great skill, with beautiful costumes, sumptuous scenery and it can confer celebrity on its talented stars.  But the music is all and perhaps it would be better to close your eyes and shut out all the other sensory delights, stop thinking and just perceive where the music takes you.

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[1] The Domestication of La Traviata by Roberta Montemorra Marvin