(I say six hours – but in fact it’s just four and a quarter.
The rest of the time is taken up with intervals. Wagnerians always stress the
inordinate length of Wagner’s operas in order to impress.)
I was very pleasantly surprised by the experience. The
singing was quite ok (contrary to expectation), Bryn Terfel (above) a massive presence
and voice, and the orchestra really exceptionally good.
It’s an opera that I first saw some forty years ago – the
legendary Sadler’s Wells production from the early 1970s with Rita Hunter an
amazing BrΓΌnnhilde,
Alberto Remedios as Siegfried and Norman Bailey as the Wanderer (Wotan in
disguise), conducted by Reginald Goodall. Still hard to beat, although a bit
slow for my taste now.
A major difference between then and now was in the audience.
Hushed as before. But now constantly littered with coughing. Not the
unavoidable muffled cough, handkerchief over mouth. But the unprotected, full
volume, listen to me, I’m here, cough.
It was a very long time ago, but I still remember one of my
old headmaster’s “lectures” to us all at school. It must have followed a
concert where there had been lots of coughing, wheezing and general shuffling.
His theme was “the loud cough that betokens the empty mind”.
His stern talk must have made quite an impact, because, in
the hundreds of concerts and operas that I’ve been to in the intervening half century, I don’t think that I’ve coughed or sneezed out loud at a performance.
If it happens to me, as it does, I find a way to suppress or smother it.
I realise that younger music-lovers prefer a more relaxed
atmosphere at performances. In general I’m with them, but not, for me,
including obbligato coughing.
There!
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