Rules for Opera Goers, 1891

I found this in the university library today and barely managed to control myself. One of the funniest things I've ever read about opera.

From the Illustrated Sydney News, 23rd May 1891, p. 5

When people glare at you because you have some particularly bright things to say and are afraid that you will forget them if you wait till the curtain falls, it is considered jeu d’esprit to talk louder than ever, and make things as pleasant as possible for the musical cranks.

When the ballet comes on it is thought eau devie to look through the large end of your opera glass.

When two sisters attend the opera together, it is not nom de plumé for one to wear a bonnet and the other to merely wear false hair. It looks as if there were only one decent bonnet in the family.

The custom of throwing things on the stage is not encouraged by the most eminent artistes.

Never send a floral lyre to the prima donna. A lyre is a more appropriate gift for the manager.

Such expressions as ‘bravo,’ ‘encore,’ and ‘chestnut,’ are not considered affaire de coeur. The bon ton will merely ejaculate ‘rodents’ to express condemnation, and 'immenza’ to express approval.

Gents will be sufficiently mise en scène to abstain from having beer brought to them during the performance. The beer is apt to become flat in transit, and therefore it is advisable to wait until the act is over.

Opera goers from Ashfield and ‘up the line’ can have their overshoes stored in an adjoining building, and thus avoid embarassing the audience.

Playing progressive euchre in the boxes is not esteemed entre nous in the most chic circles.

Gentlemen will please not rise in the midst of a cavatina and enquire: ‘Where in thunder is the cuspidor?’ Such an enquiry is a breach of all that is protègé.

Trousers are a good deal worn by opera goers this winter inside and out.

We have jotted down these few points for the unenlightened, without any special thought, and without consulting any works of reference. If by these few words any soul is led into the ways of behave, our mission is accomplished, and we are content.


B. BATHURST BURR-SMITH

Death at the Opera pt 2

From the Illustrated London News, June 2, 1849

Death at the Opera

On May 10th 1849 in New York a long feud between two Shakespearean actors, the populist, scenery-chewing American Edwin Forrest and the aristocratic, cerebral Englishman William Charles Macready, finally went beyond strong words to violence. Forrest was the star of the Bowery Theatre, catering to the working and immigrant classes. Macready played at the Astor Place Opera House further north on Broadway, which catered to a wealthier audience. On May 7th both actors opened in Macbeth. Forrest was a success, while Macready’s performance was cut short by Forrest’s supporters who heckled and threw eggs, vegetables and furniture at the stage. On the night of Macready’s next performance a crowd of about 10,000 people gathered outside the Astor Place Opera House and attempted to storm the theatre. The police called in the National Guard, who fired point blank into the crowd. Twenty-two people died.

In Highbrow/Lowbrow Lawrence Levine writes that the Astor Place riot marked a change in United States culture. Slowly over the mid to late nineteenth century theatres stopped being places where all classes met for similar entertainments; not only did different classes start attending different theatres, they began to prefer different styles of performance, and eventually different content. It was the start of the “serious” vs “popular” divide.*

Could an Astor Place Riot ever have taken place in Australia? I don’t think so. Australians have generally had little interest in violent partisanship – that’s why the Cronulla riot shocked us. The issue of class raises passions in Australia, but I can’t recall the last time anyone died in an argument over it. And in Australia art has never been the focal point for class war, merely the opportunity for sniffiness and sneering. If I ever see a fight in the audience of the Sydney Opera House, it’s not likely to be because of artistic or class issues – it’s going to be because some inconsiderate jerk hasn’t turned off his mobile phone. (I will probably be the one who starts it. But then I’m a Cronulla boy.)

Richard Waterhouse observes that opera audiences in Australia in the nineteenth century were “more representative of the population at large than was the case in Europe”.** Eventually opera became more patronised by middle and upper classes, but the split into different “spaces” that occurred in America never happened here. After six weeks of performances the Australian National Theatre Opera Company had to extend its 1953 Sydney season because of the popularity of Menotti’s The Consul starring Marie Collier; but it had to move from the Tivoli Theatre to the Theatre Royal because a variety show with local and West End stars, puppeteers, and “Gene Jimae, ‘Harmonica Wizard’” was booked into the Tiv. In 2006 at Star City a season of the Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess was followed by Titanic The Musical. We have our separate pleasures but we don’t mind if they sit cheek by jowl.

Why did the serious/popular bifurcation happen the way it did in Australia?

* Lawrence W. Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 68.
**Richard Waterhouse, Private Pleasures, Public Leisure, (South Melbourne: Longman Australia, 1995), p. 136.

No gain...

Late last week on my Facebook page:

Kim is writing a really bad paper on Foucault.
9:36pm

Kim is disheartened at how really, really bad his Foucault paper is. Really. It's shit.
12:07am

John wrote
at 12:15am
Do you need help with kooky Foucky?

Kim wrote
at 10:46am
I don't need help with the Foucster - I've forgotten how to write! I haven't written an essay since 1999, and getting the right words onto the page is bloody painful. I'd rather have a bone marrow biopsy.

In a huge, possibly fatal, blow to my confidence (not really) I have discovered that writing is painful. Like love, it hurts. Only with a pen (or keyboard, or whatever.)

Part of the problem is because I had fallen out of the habit of engaging with complex texts. Part of it is because I don’t start writing until I finish reading. Part of it is because I take notes in point form instead of full sentences. Part of it is because I record ideas the way they’re stored in my brain, instead of converting them to expressive language. Part of it is because I don’t have mastery of my material. Part of it is because I get stuck on the detail – agonising over “compare with” versus “compare to” instead of writing one of them, either of them, and quickly getting on with the rest of the paragraph. Part of it is because I keep hacking away at the tricky bit instead of rewriting the whole section from the beginning.

But mostly it is because, for some reason, I have a physical or emotional response to the act of writing. Sometimes it really hurts when I type something – it’s as if the change on the screen hits me in the head and shakes me. I like that analogy – some parts of my Foucault paper needed so much work I felt like I’d been “rope-a-doped” (see Ali v. Foreman, Kinshasa 1974*).

It’s probably the ADHD when the medication isn’t working. But I don’t have the choice to stop writing when it happens. Maybe I should just see it as a challenge, like hitting the wall during exercise, and work through it.

Perhaps it’s what Barthes meant by the “text of bliss”:

the text that imposes a state of loss, the text that discomforts (perhaps to the point of a certain boredom), ... brings to a crisis [the reader's] relation with language. (The Pleasure of the Text)**

Cool – I mention Ali and Barthes in the same piece. I can write like Norman Mailer!

* That’s a fight, not a legal citation. Unfortunately it took me longer than eight to get Foucault down on the canvas.
** Then again, perhaps it's not.

Pilgrim’s Progress, 27th March 2008

Published on Opera-L 28th March 2008

The Pilgrim's Progress by Ralph Vaughan Williams

Soloists: Alan Opie, Joshua Bloom, Kanen Breen, Catherine Carby, Henry Choo, Conal Coad, Taryn Fiebig, Antoinette Halloran, Hye Seoung Kwon, Michael Lewis, Lorina Gore, Barry Ryan, and Pamela Helen Stephen.

The Bach Choir
Opera Australia Chorus
Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra
Richard Hickox, conductor

Concert performance
Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House
Thursday 27th March 2008

In March every year Opera Australia marks the end of its Sydney Summer Season by stepping out of the Opera Theatre across to the other side of the Opera House, the Concert Hall, for a one-off concert performance of a major vocal work. In past years there have been the Verdi Requiem and Carmina Burana. This year it was Ralph Vaughan Williams's "morality", "The Pilgrim's Progress".

This has been an old favourite of mine. The Adrian Boult EMI recording was one of the first opera sets I bought way back when, and I've always loved the "cowpat" school of British music (RVW, Delius, Finzi, Moeran et al). I had never thought I would hear a live performance, so this was an opportunity not to be missed. (I overheard one other person who thought the same - he had flown over from New Zealand for the performance.)

RVW wrote the work over four decades in various versions, and it shows - at least to my ear there is a certain patchiness. But this is covered over by the distinctive Vaughan Williams "sound": lots of strings, plangent woodwinds, flowing melodies and, most importantly, modal harmonies. Add "Hymns Ancient and Modern" and the English oratorio tradition, and you have "The Pilgrim's Progress".

Last night the orchestra was arranged traditionally, with the Opera Australia Chorus and the Bach Choir (totalling about 150) seated behind. Soloists were not seated on the platfrom but came onto the stage as required.

This was a necessity by virtue of numbers, but it allowed more opportunity for theatricality. For example, the "Shining Ones" in Act I made their entrance near the top of the choir stalls, Watchful started and finished his aria offstage, and Apollyon was heard though a speaker rather than onstage - shades of Fafner's speaking-trumpet. Theatrical effect was also helped by clothing: most of the women changed gowns between their different roles, while the men wore suits or tails, or black shirts for ensemble appearances. (NB Frockwatch: there was a preponderance of bias-cut satin among the women, mostly in primary colours, with sequins coming second. In a solidarity appropriate to such an ensemble work, there was nothing that screamed "look at me" or "no gay friends".)

The vocal writing in "Pilgrim's Progress" is not spectacular - certainly, it is not easy, but there are no show-stoppers. Most of the fireworks belong to the orchestra, and they delivered. On occasion the brass drowned out the strings, however Hickox had a good overall control of the sound. All the principals played their solos well, however I especially enjoyed Virginia Comerford's viola solo in Act IV.

An absence of surtitles may have made the going difficult for some of the audience, because much of the time the (English) text could not be understood. This may have been the acoustics of the Concert Hall; however I was pleasantly surprised by the excellent German diction of many of the same singers in a performance of "Arabella" in the sonically-abysmal Opera Theatre a few weeks ago, so I'm not sure how to explain it.

Alan Opie gave a very strong peformance as Pilgrim. He took the role beyond the one-dimensional character of the libretto, and I can imagine how much more he could do with the role in a staged production. His performance of the Prison scene in Act II showed great expressive variation without going over the top.

I can only single out a few of the supporting singers, as they were all very good. Watchful's aria, not an easy one, was beautifully sung by Barry Ryan. Kanen Breen was sometimes overpowered by the orchestra, but his Lord Lechery was a typically expressive characterisation. Matthew Clark produced an unusual amount of volume (for a treble) as the Woodcutter's Boy.

I was greatly impressed by the combined choir. They did not "leap out" at entrances and tuttis but remained part of the texture, blended with the orchestra. This is a tribute to the skills of the conductor and those who prepared the choristers. The hair stood up on the back of my neck when they sang as the "doleful creatures" in the Valley of Humiliation - at first I though some strange instrument was playing. In the Vanity Fair scene the choir was more frightening than in the Boult recording - rather than the slightly G&S feel that Boult conjured, the scene came across as more of a "March to the Scaffold". And what point is there in having a huge choir if they can't make "huge choir" sounds? In the "Arming of the Pilgrim" the combination of solo trumpet and choir was very stirring to one brought up on early 20th century Anglican hymnody.

In all, a good piece, well performed.