Au revoir á Europe

And as the sun sets slowly over the Champs-Élysées we say, not ‘Adieu’, but a fond ‘Au revoir’ to Paris and to Europe…

Actually it’s not quite that easy. First we had to get from London to Paris, and then we have to wait until midday tomorrow to start flying home. The last train trip has been taken, and next time I’m going in First. I’ll stick with Economy for the flight.

I write this on our balcony at the Hôtel Cecelia five floors above in Avenue Macmahon. I have a very good view of the Arc de Triomphe a couple of hundred metres up the road, but more interestingly of the traffic circulating around it – Paris traffic is especially enjoyable in the roundabouts, and the Arc de Triomphe sits in the middle of the granddaddy of them all. All it would take is a couple of cameras and you would have a very popular cable channel, Canal Etoile.

After checking in we strolled up to the Champs-Élysées. As the song goes, the Champs-Élysées is a busy street, full of tourists gawking at the sights and marvelling that they’re in Paris. I know a couple of people who did that about two months ago, so we forgive them. Chocolate at Ladurée, an establishment near Etoile that sells, well, chocolate, and back up the road and the subway under Etoile (the roundabout) to get to the Arc.

The only word is massive. Not the Arc de Triomphe, although that’s pretty big. I’m thinking of the ego it takes to build something like that. Napoleon wanted it finished by the time he married Josephine, but he had to make do with a full scale replica on the site. The displays are ho-hum, but the view from the top is spectacular, in some ways better than the Tour Eiffel because you are closer to the buildings. We could see all our favourites: the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Pantheon, Les Invalides, and the Eiffel. You can also see La Defense, but you don't have to.

The time to see the Arc de Triomphe, however, is at about 6.20pm. Every night the flame on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is relighted, and it is as much an event as the Ceremony of the Keys. A military guard, parade of standards, wreath-laying, salutes, and the singing of La Marseillaise. Now you see the Arc de Triomphe as a war memorial, not a monument to Napoleon’s vanity. At the moment the flame was relighted the sun broke out of the clouds. If that was scripted, I’m impressed. The solemnity of the ceremony is accompanied by amusement at the traffic stopped by the gendarmes for the standard bearers to parade across Etoile from the Champs-Élysées. That’s France; rush hour, and they hold the traffic up. I love this place.

Bath

‘You must go to Bath’, said Tim and Olivia when we ran into them at the Palace. Barb and Michael were equally adamant. ‘Make sure you get to Bath.’

So we went to Bath, from Paddington again, across the Sounding Arch at Maidenhead, and all the way across the waist of England, in only ninety minutes. A sunny and warm day in London became a cloudy and cool day in Bath.

At the door of Bath Abbey an elderly man took our donation and asked where we were from. ‘Australia’, we replied.

‘USA’, he said.

‘No, Australia.’

‘Espagna.’ He reached for the Spanish leaflet.

‘No, Australia.’ As we walked away Megan said, ‘There you go, honey, you could’ve been as deaf as him.’

Edgar was crowned the first King of England at the Abbey in 973 A.D. Since then it has been completely re-built once, and repaired lots more times, including after minor damage in WWII. The stained glass is nothing to write home about if you’ve seen Chartres and Cologne – typical Victorian, like the stuff I grew up with at Cronulla. But the fan vaulting of the roof reflects the light so that it seems brighter inside than out. It also feels good. Like Saint Vulfran’s in Abbeville, you get a strong feeling that this is a working church, with a ministry to its parishioners.

Our chief interest were the memorials. Arthur Philip, the first governor of New South Wales, and who died near Bath, is remembered with a plaque and Australian flag on the northern wall. On the other side of the nave we found the plaque for Richard ‘Beau’ Nash, the Master of Ceremonies (that was his title) at Bath for much of the eighteenth century. Ensuring that all social events proceeded without gaffes or embarrassment, he did more than anyone else to establish the town as a fashionable winter resort:

If social Virtues make rememb’rance dear,
Or Manners pure, on decent rule depend;
To His remains consign one gratefull Tear,
Of Youth the Guardian, and of All the Friend.


The Roman Baths are just across the square from the Abbey, in the middle of Bath cheek by jowl with shops and other businesses. This would have presented problems to those wishing to present the Baths in historical context without overcrowding the site. But they have built the museum around the baths in such a way that there isn’t a wasted square metre. We had lunch in the Pump Room, the legendary venue of many a Regency gathering, and where a young musician from Germany, of whom we shall hear more, regularly played oboe in the orchestra gallery.


Up the hill from the main part of the town is the upper crust area, the most-desired real estate in both Regency and modern times. The Assembly Hall was another important venue for all sorts of social engagements, where many a social career was launched and consolidated under Nash’s watch.


A little further west you come to the Circus and the Royal Crescent, two of the finest examples of Georgian architecture anywhere. They represent a classic solution to the form and function problem, and look impressive by anybody’s standards.



Back down the hill, where the middle class lived, is 19 New King Street, now the William and Caroline Herschel Museum. William was the young musician, who came from Hanover in the late eighteenth century to earn a living playing and mounting concerts for himself and his sister Caroline, a singer. But there professional life was eclipsed by their hobby. William was a gifted astronomer who made his own telescopes (to Caroline’s chagrin and the detriment of the flagstones in his workshop, cracked by molten metal). It was in the backyard at New King Street that William discovered the seventh planet, Uranus, in March 1781. (This impressed me more than the Abbey or the Baths. I’ve looked at the planets from my backyard. Like seeing where Thunderbirds was made, it’s the connections with your personal history that are more exciting, not someone else’s.)

Under the patronage of King George III, William became a professional astronomer for the rest of his life, cataloguing many stars and discovering infra red radiation. Caroline learned astronomy to assist her brother, but became notable in her own right, discovering eight comets and being honoured by the Royal Society and the University of Edinburgh.



On the train back to London Megan and I tried to think of other musicians with a significant link to astronomy. We came up with Brian May of Queen and Bryan Cox of D:ream (Things Can Only Get Better - you’d know it if you heard it). Any others?

A weekend in the country

On the first of our out-of-London excursions we spent a weekend in Berkshire with our friends Barbara and Michael. We took the train from Paddington along the Great Western Railway (another legendary name) to Taplow.

At Eton we parked in the High Street and walked across the Thames to Windsor. We gawked at the Castle (no, she wasn’t in) and took a long walk along the Long Walk. Good name for it.


Back over in Eton students hurried along in their morning coats or cricket whites. A shop sold classy merchandise for the school; when I bought a fridge magnet the woman served me with a sniff, which I thought was hilarious given that she was the one who sells fridge magnets for a living.

We had the mother of all afternoon teas at Oakley Court, a Victorian mansion in mock Gothic style, used as a film location in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Murder by Death and lots of Hammer Horror movies. It’s just up the road from Bray Studios, where Gerry Anderson made The Thunderbirds.


Barbara picked up Tess the terrier from home at Maidenhead, and we went to Cookham. After visiting the churchyard of Holy Trinity church (where Barbara’s parents are buried, as well as the artist Stanley Spencer) we walked along the towpath beside the Thames and through a water meadow. All I could hear in my head was Paul Weller’s beautiful words for Tales from the Riverbank, which suited the place perfectly.



It was the classic ‘green and pleasant land’ on which I was brought up. A winding road took us up Winterhill from where you can look down on Marlowe across the Thames Valley.


At Maidenhead the Thames is spanned by I.K. Brunel’s Sounding Arch. A part of the Great Western Railway, the bridge was painted by Turner in Rain, Steam and Speed which we saw at the National Gallery last week. It’s the ‘Sounding Arch’ because of its powers of echo. When Michael took us there on Sunday morning a goose was entertaining or confusing itself by honking at the echo of his own voice. Our laughter echoed, so did whoops, claps, and other weird noises, coming back multiplied as the echoes echoed. Good fun.


On Saturday night Barb and Michael took us to a little pub called ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’, where we had a great time. I wish we’d had more time to spend with them. Next time!

The Damnation of Faust, English National Opera, London Coliseum, 6 May 2011

On Thursday night there had been a buzz at Covent Garden about Rolando Villazon. On Friday night there was a buzz at the Coliseum about Terry Gilliam’s debut as an opera director.

Judging by a body of work that includes Monty Python, Brazil and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Terry Gilliam’s talent needs an epic canvas, something large scale, examining the individual in the context of their world rather the intimacy of human relations. So Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust (based on Goethe) is a good choice for his first opera production. But it is essentially a concert work, with long sections of orchestral music in which nothing happens. It is a director’s piece, needing a strong concept to hold it all together. So what would his concept be?

Controversial. Gilliam takes Faust as an analogue for the German people, and Faust's journey is their path from Romanticism through cynicism to Fascism.

Faust/Germany is Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer, standing on his rock and bemoaning the vapidity of life. Mephistopheles tries to win him by showing him the delights of the ‘Back to Nature’ movement. But Faust is disillusioned and he returns to the rock to watch the rise of Prussian militarism and descent into World War I, played out to the Hungarian March. The tavern scene takes place in the Weimar period, the design reflecting the Expressionist works of Otto Dix and George Grosz. Brander is a Nazi brownshirt, tormenting Jews and communists. As the Nazis come to power, the Wanderer’s rock becomes the balcony at Berchtesgaden; Faust becomes enmeshed in Nazi society, and during a presentation of Die Walküre is given a vision of Marguerite. The first half finishes with images from Riefenstahl’s Olympia and Triumph of the Will as this new path seems to bear fruit.

But Marguerite is Jewish. Faust seduces her (to the background of Kristallnacht), but this does not save her from transportation. Faust agrees to sell his soul to Mephistopheles if Marguerite is saved. Mephistopheles takes Faust to hell on his motorbike, and a gentle snow falls on a tangled pile of corpses in a concentration camp, as the angels sing Marguerite’s soul into heaven.

So was this ‘Naughty Nazis’? Did Gilliam take inspiration from ‘The Producers’ and deliberately try to make the production a flop? No. Because for the only time I can remember, the Nazi analogy actually worked! It is a very deeply thought-out concept that works consistently through the whole piece. I was impressed how the ideas Gilliam used reflected Berlioz's text while maintaining historical chronology - it's as if Goethe had foreseen how things would go.

Peter Hoare sang Faust with a beautiful dramatic tenor voice and a red Eraserhead hairdo, Christopher Purves was a lyrical and nasty Mephistopheles, and Christine Rice was a bewildered but beautiful Marguerite. The cast and production team, including Terry Gilliam in a huge woollen cardigan, received huge cheers, and when the curtain calls were ended prematurely by the house lights the audience expressed their disapproval.

Two Goethe operas in a row, and both absolute crackers.

Werther, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, 5 May 2011

Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther is one of the lynchpins of the Romantic movement. Werther loves Charlotte, and Charlotte loves Werther. But she promised her mother she would marry Albert! There is only one thing worse than unrequited love, and that is requited but impossible love. So Werther kills himself. In normal circumstances you would just give these people a hard slap, but Massenet’s music is so ravishing you have to go for the ride.

It was exciting to be at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden on Thursday night. I had been there earlier in the week for a few hours’ work in the archives, but that was backstage, which is not as glamorous as you might think. The thrill when I walked up the stairs and saw that proscenium…

What made it all the more exciting was the buzz. This wasn’t just another opening night; it was an opening night with Rolando Villazon, superstar tenor, beloved of millions for his gorgeous voice, his sense of humour, his crazy hair, and his Mr Bean eyebrows.

Rolando Villazon is a beautiful singer, but a bad one. He produces beautiful sounds, full of expression. But he produces them in a bad way, riding his throat rather than supporting the breath from the abdomen. You can get away with it for a while, but eventually it affects your voice: the top notes get harder, and polyps form on your vocal cords. The damage happens quicker if you sing roles too demanding for your voice. Rolando has been doing just that; the voice started getting unreliable, and he had to take a long time off singing. His path back to the stage has been unsteady. So spending a large amount of cash on fourth row centre tickets could have been a disaster, and the ability to say ‘we were there when Villazon’s career went down the toilet’ wouldn’t have been much of a consolation.

But Werther is a role that suits Villazon’s voice. At his first appearance there was a little hoarseness when the notes weren’t well-supported, but as the night went this became rarer. He always took care, he didn’t force, and we were given one beautiful phrase after another. The big aria ‘Pourquoi me reveiller’ was brilliant, with no strain, only passion.

I can understand why Werther fell in love with Sophie Koch (Charlotte), I did it a long time ago. Her tone is clear, her looks are radiant, and she’s a good actor. The letter aria was exciting, and the scenes between the two thwarted lovers had a chemistry that added to their intensity.

Antonio Pappano, one of the best opera conductors today, guided the orchestra and singers with his usual skill and understanding. We were pleased to see that he was conducting in his characteristic manner: chewing away in time with the music. That’s one of the advantages of a fourth role seat.

The production was unconventional: it was set in the time specified in the text. Nice change.

What makes a good museum?

I’ve thought about this a lot during our trip, and I’ve come up with a few criteria. Here are some observations on the museums we’ve seen since we hit London.

Personal interest
If I see a place I want to have a reason for going there. I went to the Tower of London because so many important events happened there. I went to the Imperial War Museum at Lambeth because I like war stuff. I went to the Churchill War Rooms because I was fascinated by Churchill since I read My Early Life as a boy. I went to the British Museum because I wanted to see if the Parthenon Marbles were as beautiful as everyone says. (They are, but they’d look even beautifuller in Athens.) So I found them all interesting.

Stuff
Original stuff, the real thing that was used by the real people. The Crown Jewels (the Tower). John Harrison’s clocks (Royal Observatory). A Spitfire that fought in the Battle of Britain (Imperial War Museum). Pink Floyd's Azimuth Converter (the V&A).

Space (and preferably light)
To see things. To walk around and think. To let each object show its character.

The Imperial War Museum has it. The British Museum has it. The National Gallery, with space to swing a cat even with a zillion schoolkids around (tempting idea), has it.

The Churchill War Rooms doesn’t. You expect that from the Cabinet Room, Churchill’s office, etc – they were fighting a war underground. But the purpose-built museum space is just too small and too dark – both inadequacies due to their dependence on high-tech.

A clear direction and/or narrative
Something that shows the context. Signs saying ‘This is…’, ‘You are here’, ‘This way to the bouncy castle’. Art galleries have them: ‘15th century Florentine painters’, ‘Monet and Impressionism’. A logical layout.

Most places achieve this, like the ‘Time and Longitude’ display at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. When they’re not good at it you can usually muddle through, like the White Tower at the Tower of London. But the Churchill War Rooms were in another class altogether. Truly awful. I know more about Churchill’s life than most people, and I had trouble working out where things were.

Not too much high tech
I like a good simulation. The Imperial War Museum has two: ‘The Trench Experience’ and ‘The Blitz Experience’, letting you experience for a few minutes the sights, sounds and the smells (yes, but not too realistically) of like the real thing.

The Churchill War Museum has won awards for its high tech displays. An interactive electronic timeline stretches across the room, a long touch screen display at table height that gives you access to documents, photos, audio and film from their extensive archives. It’s a brilliant piece of technology. But it takes up too much room, is too noisy and chaotic. Yes, you need audio-visual in a Churchill museum – you have to be able to hear him say ‘We shall fight them on the beaches…’ But they’ve gone so overboard they’re in another ocean altogether.

No audio guides
Sorry, no one wins here. I thought the bloke at the Churchill War Rooms was going to hit me when I said no, he got really stroppy. I should have told him why I loathe them:

• I don’t want someone else telling me what to think about what I’m seeing
• I’m deaf and I can’t hear the thing properly even with hearing aids
• The bloody things create static and feedback in my hearing aids when other people are using them around me
• They turn human beings into shuffling, erratic morons who can’t remember they’re not the only person in the room (most important reason).

But I was trying not to tell him that he should shove it up his arse, so I just walked on.

Balance
There’s nothing wrong with admitting that you’ve stuffed up. The Imperial War Museum spoke of the terrible toll of Arthur Harris’ bombing strategy on Germany. But the Churchill War Rooms explained the failure of the Dardanelles campaign as the result of poor intelligence – ‘Winnie wasn’t wrong’. I like the guy, and I can give you a list of his poor judgemnents a mile long.

Good catering
A decent cafeteria is all you need – it doesn’t even have to be made-on-the-spot.

The Court Restaurant at the British Museum is silver service (tick), reasonably priced (mains about £15-18) (tick), and truly excellent food (double tick) – a veal hot pot with potted shrimp that made my heart sing. The V&A has dining rooms designed by William Morris and Edward Poynter - very nice, except you can't get in there for all the Kensington matrons meeting their friends for lunch.

The lunch we had at the Churchill War Rooms, is a contender for ‘Worst Meal of the Trip’. (More on that another time.)

Something you’ll never forget
The Imperial War Museum: the hundreds of shoes taken from Jews killed at Majdanek
The Churchill War Rooms: his toy soldiers
The Tower of London: the Traitors’ Gate and the execution place.
The National Gallery: Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire and Rain, Steam and Speed.
The British Museum: the Parthenon Marbles, the golden torcs and the Portland Vase.
The V&A: Pink Floyd's Azimuth Converter.

No more marriages

Royal Wedding day came, it didn’t rain, and everyone had a good time. We watched it on tv. The best moment was when the Lancaster, the Spitfire and the Hurricane flew over; we could hear it through our windows, the beautiful bass throb of the engines sounding like the love-child of a Harley-Davidson and the Death Star.

What better way to celebrate a wedding than to attend a performance of Hamlet at the Globe Theatre? We crossed the Thames over Tower Bridge, full of footsore soldiers from the Westminster frontline bearing their Union Jacks and looking totally knackered from having stood up since the early morning and walked all the way back. (The Circle and District Lines, which service Westminster and Tower Hill, have been closed for ‘planned engineering works’ over the long weekend. Morons.)

Our seats at the Globe were on the second tier facing the stage. We rented cushions so that we wouldn’t get sore backsides. Didn’t work. Those benches are tough, with no backs, which is bad news because my back has been playing up for a week. There isn’t much room, but it’s still much more comfortable than the Théâtre du Champs Elysees.

The stage looks just like the ‘wooden o’ I always imagined. No curtain, with costumes and props hung at the back of the stage. Just before 7.30 the bells were rung and the actors came out on stage, putting on costumes, chatting with each other, having a word with the groundlings.

It was still daylight when it started, but the stage was lit. The lighting was unobtrusive, illuminating the whole stage rather than individuals or for effect. And the audience was also lit; we could all see and be seen..

Eight people played all the roles, doubling up on minor roles, providing the music (violin, lute, recorder, drum) and dancing. Two stage hands helped at other times.

Joshua McGuire (Hamlet) is short and slightly built – looking adolescent rather than a young man – and has a RADA accent, which could have been unfortunate. But he has the intensity to carry the role. Jade Anouka was compelling in Ophelia’s mad scene, and Simon Armstrong was equally impressive as Claudius and his brother the slain king.

They played the jokes as jokes, not as arch comments, and this made the play very funny at times, for example when Polonius gives his advice to Laertes. John Bett’s Polonius had a Scottish accent, and his delivery made him as funny as he reads.

And Hamlet’s ‘We will have no more marriages’ will probably never get as big a laugh as it did the night of William and Kate’s wedding.