what you're supposed to feel II

An unexpected invitation to the opera and Glyndebourne. It's a beautiful building in a lovely setting, in one of the valleys around Mount Caburn, the vegetation almost supernaturally lush at the height of summer and the beautiful people were there..in force

I feel slightly uneasy about the combination of high culture and extreme wealth and ostentatious privilege. I lived in Milan for a few months and got to go to La Scala a few times. There it's the same people as here would perhaps go to Country and Western concerts that fill the theatre, and they hum along to all the best tunes!

The opera last week was Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, a typically Russian take on the Byronic hero.(See also Lermontov's A Hero of our Times, one of my favourite books when I was eighteen.) The singer in the title role was very handsome, with a fine voice, but perhaps didn't have the galvanic, brooding intensity and charisma you hope to see in a Byronic hero.

Still, it was a beautiful production, the sets were beautiful, there was some very clever staging - in the duel scene, you couldn't see for a suspenseful few moments who had been shot - the dancing was magnificent  and looked authentically Russian, and there were a couple of achingly-wonderful tunes, perfectly, intensely sung at high points in the drama with a mounting sense of climax so that everyone was quite carried away. At its best opera is almost as good as Roy Orbison.

Comments

[Al]

"Almost" being the key word. :D

[Stef]

I used to sit in the Gods eight times a season at the English National Opera - made me feel like I was reliving my student days. Nobody batted an eyelid that I'd turned up in jeans and shirts, or just straight from work. I didn't pick up on any sense of elitism at all. Strangely, the first opera I saw there was The Magic Flute... perhaps that should have told me all I needed to know.

I managed to get to La Scala once, also for Eugene Onegin. I don't remember much about the performance (naughty Stef) but the building is wonderful.

Still haven't managed Paris yet, or the Royal Opera House. I only earn so much money.... :-D

[jonathanblack]

Naughty Steff

My lesser experience of ENO is that it isn't stuffy. Gylndebourne is the extreme end of the spectrum - black tie etc.

Almost worth it for the garden and the view alone, though. The chalk under the grass gives the hills a translucent glow at certain times of day.

[Archaico]

Dear Mr Black,
I have a question about your book ' The secret History..'. So first of all I hope not to have used a wrong sectiong of the blog to post my question. In this case thank you in advance for redirecting me to the right page.

Anyway there it is: at the page 475 (paperback edition) you state (talking about sacred number 33 in history): [...] in Ovid's Metamorphosis, where the murdered Caesar's spirit is described exiting by his thirty-three wounds [...] .

I have two questions:
- which is the verse?
- I 've always read, in classical texts (latin texts) that Caesar died stabbed 23 times, not 33.
Has Ovid unveiled a new fact, based on which sources?

Thank you for your help

[jonathan black]

Thanks for Archaico. I was told about the 33 wounds by the initiate I describe meeting in the intro - and the translation I later read seemed to confirm this...

It certainly seems to be the case that when you look at esoteric history with a microscope you discover variant tradions - some of them, no doubt ideologically (or perhaps better, spiritually) motivated. The different and contradictory accounts of the death of Pythagoras provide another example.

I'll see if I can find out more.