Where there's a will, there's an injury!

 

 

 

As domestic accidents go, being impaled by an electric toothbrush seems to combine triviality with impossibility.  And yet it drew blood!

     How, you might well ask, did I manage to stab myself with what is a fairly blunt instrument, with the bristles being the sharpest element in the construction? 

     The answer lies in my refusal to pay the inflated prices for the replacement brushes sold by the big-name maker of the toothbrush.  The cheaper alternative that I bought on line did not attach to the vibrating metal spike (the retaining, moving, part of the brush) as securely as it should have done and so it came loose, fell away from the spike and the residual hand pressure brought the spike into my face and into the right hand nasolabial fold - and that is the first time that I have ever written those last two words knowing what they mean.

     Luckily (if that is the word) the colour of the blood merely darkened the shadow of the nasolabial fold (2^nd use) and made me look a tad more mysterious.  I like to think.

     Shaving the next day did not reopen old wounds and so, apart from giving one line on my face a more emphatic outline, no real harm has been done.  And, anyway, I dabbed a bit of TCP on the wound to do its stuff and one can’t really be expected to do very much more in terms of medical care.

 

The month of May is a sort of Family Nexus, where everyone appears to have a birthday or name day and each one of which has to be celebrated.  When I was teaching in Barcelona, this period reminded me of the start of the Autumn Term in the UK which coincided with the start of the WNO Opera Season with a consequent attendance at various performances of WNO in my triple guise of Clarrie’s Friend, Friends of the WNO ‘helper’, and Opera aficionado with an almost fatal deficiency in time allocated for school.  The start of term is the worst possible time to have a multi-tasking crisis, but it did mean that after the start of the season I was able to relax into the frenetic horror of new timetables and making ‘grouping’ work, with something approaching failed-Zen tranquillity.  It is truly amazing how much you can be powered by hysteria!

     Anyway, we have had two birthdays so far: the first in a well-aired living room with mask wearing; the second in a 50% occupancy restaurant with mask wearing and ostentatious hand washing with alcohol, and the third is about to take place tomorrow in the outside terrace of a restaurant in Terrassa.

     The last of those celebrations will not be dovetailed into the time before the curfew as that particular restriction has now been stopped, so in theory we could actually get back to Castelldefels after 10 pm rather than making sure that we did get back before 10 pm with a Toni High Speed Drive of Death, during which I kept most mousey quiet!  But we did get back before 10 pm.  And we did survive.

     The loosening of restrictions is a prickly subject.

     The End of Curfew was officially at midnight last Saturday – so you had the really odd situation that, on Saturday night at 10pm you were expected to be in your home obeying curfew, but two hours later you could, quite legally, go out again to enjoy exercising your “freedom”.

     It is significant that the right wing have framed the Covid restrictions as attacks on “freedoms” and the Zombie of Madrid actually had the temerity and barefaced audacity to run under a banner of “Freedom”.  And, in spite of the astonishing hypocrisy and mendacity – she won!

     But, having painted the relaxing of restrictions as regaining freedom, it was hardly surprising that the younger population of Madrid saw a justified opportunity for celebration, and dully swarmed into the centre of the city and partied as though it was New Year’s Eve.  They did not of course socially distance and many of them were not wearing masks, and a medical expert who witnessed these scenes of mass celebration in Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla, and other major (and not so major) cities remarked, “We will have to look at the Covid figures in a fortnight” when the new cases of Covid that could result from the ignoring of the on-going pandemic might show themselves.

     At present Madrid has a high rate of occupancy of ICU beds; it has a reasonably high rate of infection – it is a bloody good place NOT to visit, though Parisians have flocked there because as they said, “We can do things and go to restaurants and clubs here that we would not be able to do in France!”  So, Madrid has been accepting visitors from a place with an even higher infection rate in order to boost tourism – but, as always, collateral human damage has never been a disincentive to commercial gain and political advantage for the right.

     Although we are constantly told that the vaccination rate in the country (Spain and Catalonia) is increasing, and the President of Spain was on television yesterday keeping to his assurance that 70% of the population would have had a first jab by the end of the summer, the fact remains that a small proportion of the population has actually been vaccinated and a very small percentage of the population has had the second jab.  I suppose that I am one of the lucky ones, given a late-surgery jab that just happened to be a single dose vaccination.

     The fact remains that we are not prepared for an influx of tourists.  We do not have the virus “under control” and we are in the fourth wave of the pandemic.  The emergence of a new “difficult” variant of the virus would be disastrous as most people are (in spite of evidence to the contrary) looking towards old normality and assuming that the virus is all but beaten.  This is a very dangerous attitude.  And we will pay for it.

 

Although with my single dose vaccination, I should be gaining daily immunity, I am taking no chances.  I still wear my mask at all times that I am out of the house and I continue to wash my hands with Uriah Heep regularity, but with real alcohol soap rather than false sanctimoniousness!  I am very wary when in groups and keep my distance.  I take to heart, “No one is safe, until everyone is safe” and hope that others are as fervent in that belief as I am.

     Not that safety is entirely risk free.

     Today we went out to lunch as we usually do on a Tuesday and, although we deemed it still just a fraction too inclement to eat on the terrace, we were happy enough to eat inside in a reduced capacity restaurant.  Toni is punctilious about hand washing with the ubiquitous 70% alcohol hand wash which is good, but the alcohol soap while disinfecting the hands also gives them a certain slipperiness which was disadvantageous when attempting to move a cup of Coke.  The glass certainly moved, but the contents of the cup moved even quicker and flowed along the tabletop from Toni and into my lap, my meal and my legs.

     Our waiter was one of the old school Spanish waiters (though Indian) and was effortlessly efficient in clearing the table and mopping up.  My meal was taken away, and I was given an extra portion of Catalan tomato and garlic bread to keep me happy while my meal was re-plated.

     The one good thing to come of this is that I will have to wash my shorts.  The shorts are new, and red - so the Coke did not stain, or not visibly at least.  They are also too big, and that brings me to our late PM Mrs May.  During her sad Brexit-fuelled decline, as the more rabid parts of her party turned on her in an orgy of self-delusion and lies, she was described by John Crace in the Guardian (and if it were not he, then it is something he certainly could have said) as having the same authority as the “Do not tumble dry” instruction on a garment.

     If clothes cannot be tumble-dried then they should be thrown out.  I therefore buy T shirts and shorts deliberately large on the expectation of shrinkage when they ARE tumble-dried.  So, if my super plan is correct, the Coke defiling will ensure that the clean shorts are a snugger fit.

     Never let it be said that I cannot find something positive in the most trivially negative irritations!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 25 – Maundy Thursday in Holy Week, 9th APRIL

Yesterday I was shown disturbing pictures of the build up of traffic in Madrid suggesting that numbers of people were taking advantage (how appropriate that word now sounds) of the ‘holiday’ period to escape from the city to the coast and to second homes.  While I can fully understand the need to find something more congenial than the cramped inside of a city during a pandemic, as someone living in a costal resort, exactly the sort of place that city dwellers target during holidays, I have to pray that Barcelona does not follow the lead of Madrid!

     To be fair, Barcelona does not appear to have followed other parts of Spain, and the indications of traffic flow are markedly lower in Catalonia than in other parts of the country.  But tomorrow, with the Bank Holiday of Good Friday and the whole Easter weekend and Easter Monday, the temptation to get out and take the sun in the freedom of a coastal resort might be too much to resist.  I sincerely hope that Barcelona has not looked at the slackness of Madrid and thought what the hell, what’s good for the goose etc. and determined to come and visit us tomorrow.

     I read this morning that the head of the National Trust in Britain has issued a statement reinforcing the advice of not visiting either the buildings in the Trust or the open spaces.  I wait to see if this advice will be followed.

     Again, I do know that we are privileged in terms of space: Toni can be working on his remote distance learning course on the computer in the living room, whereas I can be working on my computer on the third floor- two distinct spheres of influence!  How many other couples are so fortunate!  The lure of the coast and the sea is strong, and it is tantalizingly near, I can see a scrap of sea (if I try hard) from the terrace, but has been resisted – but we are not cramped together in a small flat.

     I know that for some people the addition of danger adds a piquancy to experience and the idea that something is forbidden adds a kick of anti-establishment adrenaline, but going against the Covid-19 restrictions is more surely akin to drunk driving: you put yourself in danger but you also endanger others.  Like the tag line on the safety belt adverts in cars, “You know it makes sense!”  And, it isn’t for ever.

     But just how long will it be for people of my age?  We Baby Boomers have been speculating how long our isolation may reasonably last and the general consensus is that we will be well into the summer before restrictions are relaxed.  That is a more than sobering thought.

     In a town like Castelldefels, where our USP is a long beach, bars, restaurants and hotels, to lose Easter and a chunk or even the whole of the summer is disastrous.  I wonder just how many restaurants will re-open when they are allowed to reopen.  A few had well established take-away services before the crisis, but the rest will have had to think on their feet and find customers at a time when advertising is difficult.  Even in the best of times, the ownership of restaurants is, to put it mildly, fluid; in times of crisis?  Who knows?

     Our major shopping centre Anec Blau, was undergoing a major restructuring of a mystifying thoroughness.  Most of the shops had had to close causing economic chaos.  Construction has been postponed, the centre is not ready to reopen any time soon and the crisis must have added complications that we can only guess at.

     Castelldefels is not poor.  We have inhabitants who are very, very rich and some who are world famous e.g. Messi – but reconstruction of a thriving seaside resort will take time, effort and imagination.  And money.  Lots of money.  I shudder to think how all of that is going to be managed.

     Still, one has to be optimistic.  The most positive element in this crisis is the way that we have all rallied round the efforts of the services that are working to keep us going and to keep us healthy.  It would be a disaster beyond the crisis if that fellowship is squandered in the remaking of normality after the crisis is over.  Though, it would be wise to remember never to underestimate the stupid selfishness that a population is capable of – just look at the political trash that have been elected!

Today is National Theatre Premiere Day, or rather evening.  This evening the NT At Home is showing their production of Jane Eyre https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/whats-on at 7.00pm UK time and 8.00pm for us and it will be available for the next week, until the next production to be aired.

     I am really looking forward to this production because it seems to be in the tradition of Nicholas Nickleby that I saw in a RSC production in London: an ensemble production which used clever theatrical devices, that only work in the theatre.  It will be interesting to gauge my reaction to genre specific techniques in another media type.  I remember a production of Macbeth with McKellen and Dench which transferred from The Other Place to the much larger venue of the Main Theatre in Stratford: it didn’t work, it needed the intimacy of a smaller venue.  But when the acclaimed production was televised, it worked again because the closeness of the camera restored the lost intimacy.

 The production was excellent, theatrical in the best sense of the word.  A small musical ensemble and a versatile company utilizing the open multi-level simple staging.  The best thing you can say about a theatrical production of a novel is, at the end of the performance, you feel like reading the novel itself.  I urge you to go to the website and see the production for yourself.  And don’t forget to leave a donation at the end of the performance if you have enjoyed it!

Today’s poem is in a half finished state, but what I have was ‘easier’ than the poem yesterday which I cant help feeling is going to be hacked around in the next stage of editing!  But that is half the fun.  If I manage to get something on the poetry blog tonight then it will be on smrnewpoems.blogspot.com

Tomorrow, Good Friday, when in all past years I have made my annual visit to a church.  Not this year.  This year is indeed, different.  So different.

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 11

I am, as I never tire of telling people, a Labrador person: yellow, bitch to be precise.  It therefore comes as something of a personal insult that people (even flat dwellers with limited space) can contemplate providing living area for the various species of rat dogs (goggle-eyed, spindly-legged, yappily-voiced) that abound in this area.  One such grotesquery lives near us, and its emasculated barks cut through the air with the irritation of a domesticated buzz saw.  It is the sort of sound that is intolerable at its first utterance; continuation is torture.

     When I started my solitary walk this morning on the first of many circuits of our communal pool, I was accompanied by the cringe-making sound of the damned dog-insult-creature.  And then I saw why it was making the sound.  Sitting in the lane that runs behind the creature’s house was an entirely unconcerned cat, studiously ignoring the high-pitched hysteria of the so-called dog.

     I am no lover of cats.  While I can admire the liquid beauty of the larger beasts of the category, I find the domestic variety repellent.  I think it’s the tiny teeth and the lazy contempt that I find so uncongenial.  To say the least.  
      I am not entirely negative: some cats are sleek and refined, but that is the sort of thing that you can admire in pictures, not in reality.  Anyway, this cat was obviously glorying in the commotion that it was causing and by unconcernedly licking itself and showing its undying contempt (which I share) for the noisy scrap of canine vulgarity.  However, that same attitude was extended to me when the cat noticed that I was walking about.  I changed my direction at once and made towards it.  Lazily, with that elegant lassitude that only cats can show, it moved away to its ‘home’ and the dog-scrap immediately shut up.  Mission accomplished!

     That was the only point of interest, as I wandered around and around with only the sound of BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time programme on George and Robert Stephenson and the birth of the railways filling my ears.  As usual one comes away from programmes like that with snippets of knowledge to keep one sane: did I really know that it was Robert who did the work designing The Rocket and not George? 

     I also picked up on the panel’s championing of the Stephensons as opposed to the showier grandstanding of Isambard Kingdom Brunel (surely one of the few engineers who most people know by his full name) with some withering comments on Brunel’s engineering skills being somewhat partial as opposed to the comprehensive nature of the Stephensons’ skills taking in both the civil and mechanical aspects. 

     Radio 4 and The Guardian are the mainstays of my sanity in a time of confinement. 

     God bless them both!

We have been informed that this week that the number of cases of Covid-19 may peak.  The numbers certainly give no cause for complacency as Spain has now surged past China in the number of people with the virus.   
     One town in Catalonia has been put on total lockdown with people banned from coming in and out of the place.  This is because of a spike in the numbers infected.  Catalonia seems to be taking things extremely seriously and there appears to be growing animosity between Madrid and Barcelona, as Madrid appears to be much more lax than Barcelona – with a consequent surge in numbers of infected.

     We are also hearing of incidents of absolute stupidity.  The police stopped one car with five people in it (including one person in the boot!) who were going to visit a family!  Another couple of guys were found in a bar having a drink, claiming that it was a business meeting: that did not impress the police who promptly arrested them!

     The renovations in the house next door have ramped up again.  There are now two vans on the road outside and a variety of people working inside.  The people seem to be taking no precautions at all: no masks, no separation – and nothing happens.

     Toni is very cynical about what is going on and says that the stories that we actually get to hear of people not taking the virus seriously are just the tip of the iceberg and that things are going to get much worse as our period of lockdown continues for the next couple of months.

     As I have not been outside the front gate for ten days now, it is difficult for me to gain any real perspective from a first hand point of view; everything is via the television and the Internet.

     People are becoming lazy in assuming that the only fatalities are going to be the old or those with underlying conditions, but the death of a 21 year-old with no underlying conditions should be a wake up call to those who think that they are not vulnerable.

     We are all at risk, and I am more than prepared to put up with these restrictions if it is a matter of life and death – and it is a matter of life and death!

Last night I was ‘doing’ part of my new course on paintings and watched a series of videoed lectures on Van Eyck and Van de Weyden and, as I watched I could not help feeling a certain sense of dislocation between what was happening in the wider world and my attempting to rationalise my position of normality by studying Art History: when in doubt look at a painting! 

     That hardly seems to be practical advice – but that isn’t the point is it?  At times of instability and upheaval you find whatever ‘still point’ works for you to give the equilibrium you need, and if that is found in daubs of oil on canvas, then so be it.

     It is easy to rationalize turning to Art (capital A) in any of its forms to find placidity.  You are tapping in to a version of western culture, something that has lasted, stood the test of time, something that is generally regarded as important, something which seems to stand for the achievement of humanity that is larger than a single work or a single person, it links to into a continuum, into a story of progressive achievement that welcomes your passive contemplation and encourages your active participation.  Or something.

Toni has resurrected his electric guitar from the chaos that is the third floor and with notepad, Internet and a badly tuned instrument is attempting to drive me upstairs to get away from the more than slightly-off cacophony that learners engender.  This adds a new dimension of horror to our containment!

We have had a talk about how long we really think this form of confinement is going to last and we have come to the conclusion that things are not likely to get back to anything resembling normality until June or July.  God help the US if the man-child governing the country decides that “everyone back to work by Easter and with full churches” is the way forward.  I only hope that our political leaders have a tad more responsibility than that ignorant person (and that last word was my fifth choice!) when it comes to recognizing that a situation has returned to normal. 

     I am sure that there is someone somewhere who is calculating just how many people died to fit in with a political rather than a national methodology when it came to dealing with the virus. 

     CEOs and other executives of businesses can now be accused of Corporate Manslaughter if it can be shown that people have died because of the actions of individual firms. 

     It is not enough that our political leaders can be ‘voted out’ at the next general election; they should be held judicially culpable for the mortality of their political choices.  And I look towards the Civil Service to ensure that the paper proof of decisions by the politicians survive to be considered by the inevitable commission of enquiry that will take place when we are finally out of this crisis.

The weather has been cold and blustery with some periods of sunshine – not really the weather to laze out on the third floor terrace, but each day brings us nearer to the period of unrelenting sunshine that will make the time go more pleasantly.  Please.

Meanwhile, we try and not get too upset at the seemingly deliberate idiocy on the part of those charged with our safety.  Time after time, it seems that the only real safety is in our own hands and the intelligence and patience with which we approach the demands of this situation.

And I miss ice cream!  I really do!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 10

Hoovering, dishwashing, Guardian, tea, muesli, rant at renovations next door: all done!  What a domestic soul I am becoming.  As if.

     The sharing of homemade videos is becoming rampant and the innate lunacy contained within them is becoming more pronounced; but there is a sort of defiant dark humour that is positively uplifting in them as well.

     The dark humour connected to the virus is best exemplified by the writing of John Crace, the parliamentary sketch writer, in the Guardian. 

https://www.theguardian.com/profile/johncrace

     He was a point of sanity throughout the whole Brexit farrago and he continues to be a guide through the shameful antics of the so-called government of the United Kingdom.  If you have not read his withering condemnation of the Blond Buffoon and Dom then you should.  It might be gallows humour in these dark times, but it always manages to raise a laugh, yes, that laugh might well be rueful but it is better than allowing yourself to plumb the depths of disbelief at what the Conservatives think they can get away with!  I recommend him without hesitation, as I recommend any and all of the books that he has published.  Long may his pen show up the vicious charlatans for what they are!

     While we are on the subject of the worth of our present government, you might like to read the following:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/24/confused-dangerous-flippant-worlds-media-pans-pms-handling-of-coronavirus-boris-johnson

This is a summation of the reactions of the rest of the world to the way that the Blond Buffoon and his circus have handled the pandemic in the UK.  When this is over, we must hold our political ‘masters’ to account.  It is more than likely that the Conservatives’ policy over the virus has directly led to more deaths than if they had adopted some of the measures that other countries have put in place.  There must be an accounting with an independent report that aims at transparency when apportioning blame.

     My jaundiced view has been tempered by the fact that the renovation next door continues (illegally?) with much banging and that is the last thing that you need when you have been locked up for the last nine days – with the prospect of months to come!

     Another irritation (if that is the right word for it) is that I have not managed to dislodge the various earworms of snatches of the operas that I recommended yesterday.  The bits and pieces of “Four Saints in Three Acts” by Virgil Thomson is particularly difficult not to hear.  Stein’s libretto is nonsensical and I pity the poor singers having to learn some of the sequences that they have to sing, but it is undeniably (for me) catchy.  When Stein was taxed about the fact that nobody could understand what the opera was about, she countered with the brave assertion that if you enjoyed it you understood it!  And the opera was popular and ground-breaking.  It had a black cast of singers in its first performances and the set design used the newly invented cellophane as part of the decoration: very avant-garde!  Well, for 1927 it was!  I do urge you to go to YouTube and listen and look at the fragments of this fascinating opera!

     I do also urge you to look at the classic repertoire as well.  It is easy to cheat your way through famous operas on YouTube as they often give you the famous bits, in terms of overtures, preludes and arias, in manageable bite-sized chunks.  And you never know what you might like.  I know someone whose first operatic experience was ‘Tristan and Isolde’ by Wagner, a long and dense opera.  She loved it and become an enthusiastic operaphile on the spot!  It takes all sorts.  And it has taken me a long time to honestly admit that I enjoyed a performance – which I did with the last production of the Liceu.  Some operas, like ‘Eugene Onegin’ by Tchaikovsky I first heard in a dress rehearsal and instantly ‘knew’.  It helped that I knew the dance music from it that I had given to me as one of my first EPs (extended play discs) when I was a kid, but operas like that are almost absurdly approachable.

Enough of this escape into Culture.  Back to reality.  We have now been in lockdown for 9 (or officially 11) days, so that means that we are getting to the end of the incubation period for the virus and this week may well be one in which there is a jump in the figures of those who are infected.  It has been suggested that people should think twice about ANY journeys outside the residence (yes, I am talking to you people next door!) for any reason at all.  Even bread buying, which is an almost sacred ritual in this country, is too weak an excuse to leave the house!

     We are not entirely breadless.  We do have individually sealed, square, flat, wholemeal, calorie reduced, ‘buns’ that seem to last for ever.  Whether you can actually convince yourself that what you are eating bears any resemblance to ‘bread’ is something else, but in times of crisis it is better than nothing.  Just.

     We have enough food to get us through to next week and we can assess the situation then and decide whether it worth while for (Toni) to venture out again for supplies.

I have just come in from my morning walk around the pool.  The weather is not as clement as it has been for the past few days and it was more of a chore than usual.  As I trudged my way around (varying the direction) on my lonely circuits, during which nobody has joined me, I felt like a Rudolf Hesse figure, plodding his way around the empty exercise yard in Spandau.  Having typed that, I realize that there are too many associations with that image that have nothing to do with my present situation.  But it is interesting that I did not delete it, but rather chose to discuss its inappropriateness; or on further consideration there are elements that illuminate: the sense of isolation in an institution made to accommodate more; the artificiality of the incarceration; the politics of continuation – and I think that I am overthinking an image of an aging man in a prison exercise yard!  A bit.

The number of Covid-19 infected people in Spain has not surpassed that of China!  The largest number of cases is in Madrid, which is not locked down in the same way as Barcelona.  It seems foolish not to be truly Draconian in a situation of absolute crisis, but that is politics for you!

I have always taken a ghoulish delight in following the build up to each Olympic Games.  I am not so much interested in the sports as in the various crises: political, financial, social, architectural etc that illuminate the via dolorosa from the moment the games are awarded, to the opening ceremony.

     It used to be the almost comical corruption of the IOC members and the shocking ways in which the successful city managed to capture the games that added to the delight of nations.  The IOC has (allegedly) cleaned up its act, a little and there is more transparency about the awarding of the games, so my prurient interest has to concentrate on unrealistic timetables for delivery and the corruption in building that seems an Olympic Event in its own right.

     I well remember the tune of the BBC presentation of the Olympics in Tokio in 1964 - I am humming it in my mind as I type)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw1mgjrXZ0c

Only surpassed as an Olympic tune by the brilliant song for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgVGl5bnf8c

Tokio 2020 has had its share of scandal, but is obviously going to be overshadowed by Covid-19.  If (and it’s a big ‘if’) the games take place in 2021 they will still be called the 2020 games apparently.  I like quirky things like that!  Does this mean that the next games will be three years later, not four? 

     Such considerations keep me occupied.

Janacek - Katia Kabanova - Liceu

Janacek, Katia Kabanova, Liceu.  Buy a ticket and see it tomorrow, it’s your last chance!

I know that is not the conventional way to start a review, but after the performance that I saw last night, I am not only going to start by review with that injunction, but also end with it as well!

With a stripped-back, sparse staging comprising intersecting planes enlivened by projection and lighting it becomes a gaunt setting to highlight the singing of what is one of the most complete ensemble productions of an opera that I have seen.

I have come to expect orchestral playing of the very highest order from the Orquestra Simfònica of the Liceu, but last night’s performance conducted by Josep Pons took their playing to another level.  They emphasised that the music for this opera is the equivalent of a concerto for orchestra and the whole band would have been fully justified in taking a bow on stage for the meticulous and nuanced playing that they produced.

The soloists were dazzling with the signal exception of Aleksander Teliga playing the boorish uncle Saviol Prokofievitx Dikoi, wearing an absurd furry coat with top hat and cane and failing to reach the level of professional fullness of his accompanying cast.  Perhaps his cartoonish appearance and stilted acting was intentional as many of the other characters appeared more suited to melodrama or Expressionism than naturalism.

A case in point would be Rosie Aldridge’s chilling portrayal of the domineering mother-figure Marfa Ignatievna Kabanova, presented as a stage villain in tight fitting black bombazine and sung with the sort vicious relish that meant that when she came on stage at the end of the performance to take her well deserved ovation there were boos for the Mother’s character mixed with the enthusiastic applause for her superlative singing and portrayal!  A true accolade! 

Her character had been fleshed out by an interlude with the Saviol character where she showed herself as a hard drinking, straight from the bottle dominatrix, at one point straddling Saviol, threatening him with his own cane and producing gurgles of delight from the prone character as the curtain fell!

In another staging detail, this production chose not to include the iconic moment at the end of the opera where, after the suicide of her daughter-in-law, with the drowned body at her feet, Marfa bows to the workers who had searched for the corpse.  In this production she remains still until her right hand shoots out, demanding the hand of her grieving son, whom she then leads away from his dead wife into the darkness of the wings.  An electric - and truly horrible moment too.

Tikhon, sung by Francisco Vas, as the ineffectual and mother-dominated cypher of a husband, was initially disconcerting because of his resemblance to William Rees-Mogg, another ineffectually destructive character: lean rectitude masking dark forces!  He sung the role with the confused passion exactly matching his confused, damaged character, expertly juggling the contradictory complexities that he is too weak to surmount.

But the evening belonged to Katia, sung by Patricia Racette, who claimed the role for herself singing with the sort of confidence and assurance that allowed her, paradoxically, to portray the self-destructive repression and lethal freedom, the sensitivity, sympathy rejected and half-understood, the full passion and hesitancy with a range of expression that was breath-taking in its scope and effortless delivery.

The recipient of her love, Boris Grigorievitx, nephew to Saviol, sung by Nikolai Schukoff, was presented as a spiv-like, gigolo, Latin lover, smooth, cigarette smoking, spoilt “rich” boy who can’t get his hands on his inheritance, frustrated and bored in a provincial small town – certainly not a man to lose your life over, but superficially attractive – and brilliantly sung and confidently acted.  The attraction between Boris and Katia was convincingly displayed and the scene of the assignation when Katia takes off her coat and reveals that she is wearing an evening dress with butterfly-like gauze ‘wings’ emphasised the incongruity of the match, and perhaps the inevitability of the fatal attraction as she was caught, insect like by her investment of the light of love in Boris.

Vania Kudriaix, the other lover in this opera, sung by Josep-Ramon Olivé, is a contrast to Boris.  Vania is a writer and finds beauty in nature and expresses himself in folk song, you feel that he has more authenticity than Boris will ever have.  Olivé possessed the role and through excellent singing, spirited dancing and a rounded performance made the character appealing and real. 

 

He was matched in singing and acting by his lover Varvara, sung by Michaela Selinger, who portrayed a repressed semi-adolescent at last breaking free from the tyrannical hold of her adopted mother with élan.  These two had some of the most lyrical sung moments in the opera and were a delight to watch and listen to.  Her first appearance, returning from Church, was accompanied by a (real) small dog on a lead – an interesting coup de theatre in a live opera, and I suppose it was to show that she was a more expressive character, to prepare us for the love affair that had already started.  But would Marfa have allowed a mere dog as a plaything, something so purely decorative and useless in such a regimented household?  I am not sure, and anyway, I think that for the dog to be introduced, it should have had some sort of continuing role as a living metaphor at other points in the drama.

The chorus has a small, but essential role in this opera and their spectral voices added to the music richness of the music.

As the sets were so stark, the lighting played an essential scene setting character.  At times the use of shadow reminded me to Murnau’s 1922 film of Nosferatu with characters throwing looming outlines, large and threatening.

The climactic suicide of Katia throwing herself into the Volga was a true spread-eagled jump – no walking down hidden stairs here on the far side of the set but a full body, break taking leap.

For me, this is the sort of production that justifies opera as an art form, a true combination of music, drama, spectacle.  The production played straight through with no intermissions, and lasted a doable one hour, forty-five minutes.  A triumph.

Janacek, Katia Kabanova, Liceu.  Buy a ticket and see it tomorrow, it’s your last chance!