Haven't we been here before?

HERE WE GO AGAIN: DAY 1, New ‘Lockdown’, FRIDAY.

 

 

 

It’s just as well that I went to the Opera on my birthday as I have just been informed via email that the next opera performance due on the 24^th of November, has been ‘postponed’ – as it is a concert performance of a juvenile Mozart opera composed when he was 14, I cannot say that I am devastated by the delay!  I am prepared to do some YouTube musical ‘homework’ to make its three-and-a-half hours of straight singing tolerable, as I find that even a slight acquaintanceship with the music of operas, I don’t know gives me a partial key to their enjoyment in performance! 

     At least there are always tunes in Mozart, and I do remember that I had a much-played record of music by Mozart written when he was in London at the age of 12, and that was intimidatingly excellent, so an opera composed after two long years of extra maturity from that music does demand attention! 

     After all, given Mozart’s short life, a Mozartian Year must be very different from those lived by mere musical mortals who tum-ti-tum along to the tunes!   

     The State of Emergency in Spain has been extended into next year in Parliament, so we are now in the ‘New new-normal’ as the restrictions get more and different.  At present we are under curfew (10pm-6am) with bars and restaurants closed.  As of today, those restrictions stay in place, but other closures have been added which include larger stores, shopping centres, places of entertainment like Opera Houses, and gymnasia, which includes my swimming pool.  There are further restrictions on movement with heightened restrictions during the weekend.

     This morning, for example, I could not go for my usual swim, but I was able to go for my normal bike ride which extends the length of the paso along the coast of Castelldefels.  At the southern limit of the city it actually extends into the jurisdiction of Sitges.  There was no problem about that today, but on Saturday and Sunday I will be restricted from completing the final length as Sitges will be out of bounds. 

     We also live on the ‘border’ with Gava to the north and tomorrow the stretch of the paseo along the Gava coast will also be out of bounds.  In the previous lockdowns there were police stationed at the invisible borders of our town to enforce the ban. 

     There will also be police on the approach roads to the beach part of Castelldefels as the weekends are usually the time when people from Barcelona city come to visit.  Gava and Castelldefels are the coastal resorts of choice for the city dwellers and the police are going to have their work cut out if they are going to try and stop all of the visitors that we are likely to have.

     Obviously, all this inconvenience is designed to stop the spread of the virus, but all of the measures are going to be pointless if the general population doesn’t get behind the restrictions.

     Since February we have been subject to a bewildering array of instructions, some of which seem to be ‘arbitrary’ to put it mildly.  We are constantly told that proximity is the most important factor in the spread of Covid and yet schools are still open.  Buses are still running, as is the Metro and the train system.  Shops have limits, but most shops now do not have dedicated assistants restricting entry. 

     The “if this, then why not that” approach to instructions is making following them difficult, and the shameful dinner of 150 politicians and the assorted Good and Great, is a calculated spit in the face of the ordinary joe trying to follow the rules where for us gatherings of more than 6, and closed bars and restaurants are the norm.  The Minister for Health was one of the attendees at this rule-breaking gathering, giving yet another example of “One rule for us another for them” approach to governing.  And yet, with breath-taking hypocrisy these discredited chancer politicians still appear on the TV and in Parliament giving voice to rules that they do not follow themselves.

 

I’ve now been told, or rather I’ve been “I thinked” by Toni that my bike ride tomorrow on Saturday is OK because I am going to adjoining municipality and that is allowed.  But certainty?  None.  I will try it out tomorrow and when I am stopped by the police, I will know the limits to my activity.

     As I didn’t have a swim this morning, I went out on a second bike ride taking the Gava paseo as my route.  It was pleasantly empty with only a few hardy walkers and riders.  One even hardier gentleman was sunbathing on the beach.  The sun is out, but there is a sea breeze that tells you that you are in the month of October, and towards the end of that month as well.  But ‘Bravo!’ for a stronger determination that even I have to keep summer alive – my continued wearing of T-shirt, shorts and sandals seems positively overdressed compared to the nakedness of the beach devotee!

 

The situation in the UK appears to be getting even worse than it is here.  The piecemeal tiered approach is more geared to commercial concerns than human ones; the projections for British deaths over the winter is horrific; the government is a sick joke.  But perhaps I am being unfair.  My country of Wales seems to have taken difficult but hopefully effective drastic measures, as have the other constituent nations of the UK, with the signal exception of England.  I fear that Johnson and his third-raters in the Conservative Party put politics and survival of their ‘brand’ above the human cost of failed policies.  And just to make my cynical misery complete the fiscal here in Spain has archived or shelved any criminal action against the ex-king in relation to his shady dealing and less than honest behaviour.  It makes you weep.  That same disgraced ex-king once famously proclaimed that, “Justice is the same for everybody!”  How hollow that sounds today as he skulks away in some undemocratic eastern kingdom.  What a shower of shits our ‘ruling’ classes are!

 

Still, any day at the end of October in which anyone can even think about divesting themselves of clothing and sunbathing next to the Med, has to be positive. 

     Long live the sun!

Put it down to experience!

An underwhelming evening at the opera

I am constantly aware of how niche going to the opera is, especially sitting as I do in one of the more expensive seats in the Liceu, surrounded by the good and the great of the cultural scene in Barcelona.  I do my bit for egalitarianism by wearing sandals and jeans, but it doesn’t alter the fact that I am (generally speaking) surrounded by the white, the elderly and the middle class.  Count the number of balding men exiting a performance at the opera and you will begin to fear for the survival of this art form after another generation or two!

            It doesn’t have to be like this of course.  In some parts of the world going to the opera is a normal and relatively inexpensive experience.  But there is no way of producing good opera cheaply.  Think about it: there is an opera house, seats, a stage, sets, lighting, soloists, costumes, a chorus, technicians, an orchestra and so on and so on.  Opera is an expensive business and it is only ‘affordable’ with subsidy.  That subsidy is either via ticket prices or via public finance.  I am well aware that, expensive as my ticket might be, it would be a damn sight more expensive without government help!

            It all comes down to whether you think that opera as an art form is worth subsidising to make it more available to a greater range of punters.  As far as I am concerned, opera at its best successfully combines so many different art forms that the resultant melange is exhilarating.

            And sometimes it isn’t.

            And the performance of La Clemenza di Tito by Mozart in the Liceu last night was one of those underwhelming evenings that makes you question the expense.

            La Clemenza is an opera seria: a serious opera, historical and heavy with moral worth and interminable continuo.

            The legendary ‘mercy’ of the Emperor Titus was chosen as a subject matter to flatter Leopold II as part of the celebrations for his coronation as king of Bohemia.  Opera seria was the preserve of the nobility and played to their predilections, but it doesn’t necessarily play to ours.

            Even though the opera includes love, fidelity, betrayal, rebellion, arson, confusion and moral dilemma it is a fairly static piece with most of the real action being the inner turmoil of the individual characters expressed in recitative or decorated aria.

            At the end of the first act I understood why this opera had had a century and a half of obscurity before its modern rediscovery.

            The opening of the opera gave an opportunity for the Orquestra Simfònica conducted by Phillipe Auguin to show its ability in the playing of the overture and in this, as throughout the opera the playing was nuanced and authoritative.  While the orchestral playing was excellent the stage picture of the opening of the opera was less convincing.  The scenery was drab and literally clunky and the sombre, black uniformed figures of the praetorian guard formed a circle around a shrouded figure and did nothing else for minutes until, towards the end of the opening music they pushed the plinthed figure into an alcove up stage and allowed Roman architecture on wheels to form a frame for the opening numbers.

            Myrtò Papatanasiu as Vitellia had a good stage presence but I felt her voice sometimes lacked conviction.  She certainly rose to the occasion in her final aria, but I remained unconvinced.  Stéphanie d’Oustrac as Sesto moved around the stage well and had a dramatic presence, with a tendency to melodrama and a voice that was more than competent.  Annio, sung by Lidia Vinyes-Curtis, was always a lively presence and, although I found her voice a trifle too nasal for my liking, she played her part well.

            The eponymous role of Tito Vespasiano was taken by Paolo Fanale whose lightish tenor voice was pleasant within the middle range but became harsh at the top end of his register.  He lacked the commanding quality that would have made his presence on stage striking.

            For me, the stand-out voice of the evening was that of Anne-Catherine Gillet singing the role of Servilia, a voice that was thrillingly immediate.

            The chorus were their usual characterful selves, and it would have been good to have had more of their work enlivening this drawn-out entertainment.

            The end of the opera had a moment that I wished had informed more of the preceding couple of hours.  As the tediously magnanimous emperor walked upstage after forgiving everyone for everything, his praetorian guard suddenly turned on him and the last stage picture was of a suggestion of another rebellion.  This ‘false note’ runs counter to the thrust of the original intent of the piece but it did add a (tragically too late) indication of how the staging could have been more interesting.

            If this review seems unduly negative, then that’s how I feel.  There were good things in this piece, and some of the ensemble music was captivating – but recitative leaves me cold and I left the opera with a feeling of shaking the dust off my sandals and hoping that this is a production that will not see a revival over the next decade or so.

And I was ripped-off for the Indian meal that I had before the start of the performance.  But let it pass.  Let it pass.

The next opera is Lohengrin which I am ashamed to admit I have never seen in a full performance!

Back again!

 

Old habits die hard.  Or at least they have a way of rising zombie-like from time lost in laziness or indifference.

This writing is a case in point.  I am using, not my newish laptop bought after extensive trawling through reviews and at least one expensive mistake, but my old trusted MacBook Air.  Although I have abjured the buying of new Apple machines after the shameless pricing of the latest iteration of the Apple Watch, I am ever drawn to my MacBook Air.  It is the only piece of computer technology which, even after the decade (or ‘century’ in computer age years) of use that it has given, it still looks the business and its svelte metallic appearance still makes it a little object of desire. 

I understand (horror of horrors!) that the Apple logo does not light up on the latest versions of the machine – that surely is a travesty!  I speak as someone who bought an entire music system (there are three words that you don’t often see together nowadays) because it met two of my basic requirements: it had to have lots of flashing lights and the cassette eject system had to open in slow motion.  The user may not see the illuminated logo, but other people do and they either feel a fellowship with the user that they can see, or they know themselves cast into the other darkness of lost souls with dead logos.  It may not add to the operating system but the light from the logo paradoxically puts others in the shadow.

Little things are important.  And they are not ‘little’ either.  The last time that an Apple Dealer saw my MacBook Air when I was trying to update the system, he described it as ‘Vintage’, as all machines over five years old are described!  That lustrum is the age of a Secondary School generation as it progresses from Year 7 to Year 11, and I suppose that kids in Year 11 looking back to their younger selves in Year 7 would wholeheartedly agree that anything that they liked and admired when fresh-faced first formers (forgive my own regression to out-dated nomenclature there) playing ancient games on their outmoded mobile phones in those far-off times!

But the look and the feel of the MacBook Air from 2010 still looks good, still makes other machines look clunky and somehow stodgy.  So, in spite of the fact that my (expensive, compact and powerful) Dell is within a hand’s reach, I am typing on the Mac.

And typing a blog entry.  I have been very remiss over keeping up my blog and it has become very much an Occasional Feast for me instead of the Daily Duty that it was at one time.  My self-protestations that I will produce a piece of writing every day, have been empty, and each day without writing makes it easier to add a further day to the dilatory approach.  But today, today I feel inspired to put finger to key and get back into the habit.

Why, you might ask.  The sad reason is that I have left my mobile phone upstairs and I am too lazy to go up and get it.  My morning schedule includes going the quick crossword in the Guardian and I usually complete that on my phone.  I can do the crossword on my iPad, but I have allowed the battery to run down and I have had to put it on charge.  I could, of course, use the very computer that I am typing on now to do the crossword, but doing the crossword on the computer smacks of slight perversity – so, it was either sitting down sipping tea and trying to look demure; going up stairs to get the phone, or setting-to and writing.

Today I had a lie-in and didn’t go for my usual early morning swim, so the opportunity to write in my notebook after my swim had been taken away.  Yes, I know that I can write in my notebook at any time, but I do it after my swim, so I hope that you begin to see that ‘circumstances’ have conspired to get me writing another entry for my long ignored blog, because ‘historically’ most of the entries for my blog have been written on the machine that I am using now, my Mac.

So, from the dark days of wordlessness, I lurch towards the light of articulacy and prose.

As someone who find the style of ‘Tristram Shandy’ eminently natural in its predilection for digression, I do not find it at all surprising that I have taken the best part of a couple of typed pages to say, “I’m writing a blog entry.”  And I now feel that I can get on with what might be appreciated as actual subject matter.

Since Christmas, indeed since a little before Christmas, we have been beset by noise.  Now, Catalonia is not a quiet place (although, paradoxically it is only the lingering sounds of the tail end of Toni’s cough that echo through the house at the moment) but we have had the cacophonous horror of the house next door being completely renovated.  As far as we can appreciate, this involves hitting all wall, floor and ceiling surfaces an infinite number of times with hammers.  As we live in a group of five conjoined houses, structural sound in one is seamlessly transferred to the others – and even more so if you live next door.  As far as I can tell, the workmen must have hit every square inch of the surface and each of those blows we feel.

One Sunday (sic) the noise was so intense that I couldn’t hear the radio in our living room.  I complained, but if the work needs to be done, what can I reasonably expect?  This is what you get when the skeleton of our houses is concrete; hit one part of the frame and it is shared with all!

This evening, Opera, Mozart’s last, La Clemenza di Tito – and not one that I know particularly well, but I am open to being enthused by the production, and of course the music!

When I go to the opera I take the opportunity in the interval to go to the Café de l’Opera in the Ramblas and scribble a few notes about the production with a view to writing a review in the blog.  I have again been rather remiss here too and my notes have remained notes.  Today, however, I will assume that tomorrow I write and post the review!

Talking of writing.   The production of my latest book, The eloquence of broken things[1], has been beset by problems.  The pdf of the book was used for the print but, for reasons that have not been discovered, a double series of printing errors made their way to the finished books.  The printer has not been able to explain how a good pdf copy produced faulty final product.  A reprint was necessary and I am more than pleased with the results.  But.  In reading through and admiring my and the printer’s handiwork, I noticed a typo in one of the first poems!  This could not be put down to the faulty printing; this was a proof reading error.  By the time I noticed it, it was too late to change anything.

I decided to make the best of a bad job and therefore wrote an insert ‘celebrating’ and explaining the error in a poetic mea culpa, tucked inside the front cover – each copy individually initialled to make it more official!

The poem is included here as part of the lead up to the publication of the collection.

 

Erratum

p.14,  l.2,  w.6
for hr read her

Within a Turkish rug’s

expensive symmetry

is woven an intentional false note –

because perfection’s the preserve of god,

and not of stumbling, imperfect Man.

But, isn’t there an arrogance

in saying, “Yes, of course there’s that –

but all the rest . . . !”  As if

parading of a self-made fault

limits additional faux pas?

It’s Baldrick’s bullet[2]. 

Logic?  False!

Yet it’s a way of life we all adopt

because we live inelegant reality,

not textbook-sharp, black-outlined clarity.

Mistakes and errors?  That’s who we are!

Come with the territory.

Flaws are the marbling of life.

We have to say.

Because it’s inescapable.

I’d read and read again

the poem that contains the fault,

and yet not seen the missing ‘e’

until the final print was done

and it was then too late to change.

The sticking-plaster-sized

erratum slip is grudgingly applied

accepting and bewailing

my falling short.

But, what are vowels in the scheme of things?

Thngs tht cn b thghtlssly gnrd –

and still the consonantal frame

allows a certain fluency. 

If there had only been a gap

the reader could have,

would have, filled it in

without a thought.

But these are cavils

trying hard to justify

imperfect sight.

I should regard the ‘humbling by slip’         

as something more akin to public sacrifice:

(expiation, celebration,

for inexact humanity)

than hoping that,

in spite of all the odds,

the misprint, all alone,

is by itslf.

---

[1] Rees, SM. (2020) The eloquence of broken things, Barcelona, Praetorius Books.

[2] Private S. Baldrick, Captain Blackadder’s idiot batman is caught inscribing his name on a bullet when in the trenches in 1917, his explanation is, “I thought if I owned the bullet with my name on it, I’d never get hit by it.”  Blackadder Goes Forth Series 4, Episode 1.  First broadcast 28^th September 1989, 9.30 pm on BBC1, written by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton.