Overheard at the Opera House (Jan - March 2017)

NB: May also include non-opera classical venues, but who’s really complaining? (Spoiler, the following disgruntled punters are).

I think the provenance of the opera [Adriana Lecouvreur] is rather remarkable. [After being pressed] – I mean, Mascagni is just genius!

• For non-opera geeks, Adriana Lecouvreur was the brainchild of Francesco Cilea not Pietro Mascagni.

If it’s not Callas, I just don’t care

• Words of a person who I cannot understand being inside any opera house at all post 1964.

Those rather bright lights in the second act [Woolf Works] were rather intriguing. What are they called? The disco-like flares! Ah, yes – lasers.

You’d think they would have promoted Yuhui by now! That vision scene pas de deux was so luscious, if I were Kevin O’Hare, I’d promote her to principal at the end of the show.

• Issued during the interval of a Sleeping Beauty performance starring Japanese principal Akane Takada, not the (admittedly overlooked and deserving of promotion) first soloist Yuhui Choe, who is her compatriot. #everydayracism #checkyoprivilege #oratleastchecktheprogramme

And then Harriet got so squiffy when her daughter failed to get into White Lodge yet again [NB: the Royal Ballet’s lower school]. It’s those broad shoulders, you see. You’d think Harriet would know full well the poor girl’s limitations, seeing as the bulldog physique comes from the maternal line…

I just don’t believe that Giorgio Germont really had a daughter.

• This is not so much funny as it is depressing and begrudgingly possible. What if, instead of being society’s creature much like Violetta (as I always read it), old Germont was just a huge bastard? It rather shatters the romantic ideal I – and a good chunk of the classical world – always held La Travs to.
• This is the pallid horror I get in return for asking a casual opera-goer for their opinion. But it is precisely this sort of discourse that convinces me puritans are the worst things to happen to any art, ever. Open mind, folks. Open mind.

I’m rather surprised I wasn’t bored. I was expecting to be bored. In fact, I’m rather upset I’m not bored.

• My surprised companion at the end of a six hour Wagner opera.