A NIGHT AT THE OPERA

In the cabin next door they’re drunkenly singing Soviet working hymns like peasants being watched by the secret police. Actually, the songs are probably just football chants but the underlying qualities of blind patriotism and implied menace are there. I’d go find out more but it’s early and I’m not much in the mood to approach a group of lads wearing matching black shirts with the word “ULTRAS” embroidered in large white letters across their backs, even if they are only playacting at being football hooligans. The odds of having a sensible conversation with anyone drunk enough to sing on public transport are pretty long and at any rate these lads might think I’m trying to have them sent to the gulag so I can take possession of their best cow. Things could get tricky.

Still, football hooligans or no, the train from Budapest to Vienna knocks spots off the bus I’m now sitting on bound for Prague. Sorry about the Kaufmanesque jump in time line but it can’t be helped. Two days have passed between the previous paragraph and this and Vienna fell in between. The trip’s starting to take on an “it’s Monday so this must be Prague” feel. The overnight trains and dawn arrivals have taken the liquidity out of my sleep bank and the cheques are starting to come back bounced.

I went to the opera last night and learned that contrary to traditional depictions the devil is actually a Chinese man with hairy red hands and a nice suit. Watch out for this rooster and whatever you do don’t sign anything he gives you, you’ll only end up killing a man after impregnating his sister who in turn will kill your infant child in a fit of anguish at having slept with you in the first place. Then you’ll have to spend eternity in hell where you’ll be required to writhe about on the floor while wearing ladies undergarments. I know what you’re thinking – so where’s the downside? – but that fate fares pretty poorly compared to that of your baby killing paramour who gets spirited to heaven after a last minute reprieve from the almighty. The lesson from this little tale is clearly that it’s better to kill your own bastard child in cold blood than defend yourself against the moral outrage of some pompous bloke who’s obviously got a few issues regarding his sister that he desperately needs to work through.

Going to the opera in Vienna is probably Europe’s best value cultural night out. Provided you’re willing to stand in line for a couple of hours you can get a standing ticket to any production running at the state opera house for three Euros. Tickets go on sale about eighty minutes before the curtain goes up, so if you get there a couple of hours before kick-off you’ve got a decent chance of getting a spot. It also gives you plenty of time to size up the people sharing the wait. There seem to be three types of opera-goers chasing the cheap seats. The first lot are genuine opera enthusiasts who failed to get a seat to a sold out show, they’re mainly men who are either approaching retirement age or past it and for the most part they’re wearing bowties, tweed jackets and a look of pompous solemnity that says; “culture is wonderful and I’m wonderful too because I regularly enjoy culture through the medium of opera. You can tell I regularly attend the opera because I’m wearing a bow tie and don’t talk to anyone”. The second lot are genuine opera enthusiasts who can’t afford proper seats. In the main part these fall into two categories; students and travellers. Of this lot, well-groomed middle class English girls with nice hair and Home Counties accents and Asians make up the majority. The last group is made up of rubber-neckers like me. We’re underdressed, we’ve got no idea what’s going on and we’re standing in line listening to pop music on our iPods. The Bowties despise us for what we are, which is blow-ins who have only come down because we’re in Vienna and when you’re in Vienna you’re kind of supposed to go to the opera, aren’t you? And it’s Sunday night so there’s not going to be anything else going on anyway, so what the hell. They particularly hate it that you’re in front of them in the line.

So after listening to the Kings of Leon’s Aha Shake Heartbreak and an album of Cold Chisel songs covered by contemporary artists you go up to the window and get a ticket. According to the sign over the box there are three different varieties of ticket available. The first I didn’t understand and the third I couldn’t pronounce so I went for the second. It turns out I went for balcony tickets which was unintentionally a brilliant decision. The tickets to the other two areas are more desirable but only if you get in early. If you don’t you end up in an almighty scrap with The Bowties for a slice of space you’re never going to annex from them because they know all the tricks and they want it more. The balcony tickets, being initially less desirable than other two options, sell more slowly, so if you’re 70th in line it’s often a good shout to go for the balcony ticket as you’re likely to be able to claim the best of the balcony spots, which are much better than getting to the scrum on the floor late in the game. I fluked this and only found out while standing on the stairs waiting to be let into the theatre. An Austrian woman also explained that it was good practice to get into the theatre as soon as possible and tie a scarf, handkerchief or tie around the railing in front of where you would like to stand. That secures your spot from interlopers and means you can head out to grab a glass of wine before the bell rings for curtain. I didn’t have a scarf, hanky or tie so I tore up my programme and wrapped that around the banister and went for a walk. Such is the respect for the scarf wrapping convention that when I got back a sliver of space remained on the rail just where my loosely wrapped programme was placed, despite the fact a minor mêlée had developed on either side.

The balcony is a pretty good vantage point from which to draw a decent bead on both the stage and the broader show that is the general viewing public. You also get a great view down into the orchestra pit, which is pretty entertaining. Just as I got to my vantage point I looked down at the dress circle and saw a woman in a wheelchair freewheeling from the back of the theatre toward the pit. Despite only travelling a short distance she picked up a fair bit of pace and for a second I thought the jolt when she stopped was going to catapult her out of her chair and over the barrier into one of the timpani drums below. Sadly that didn’t happen. She just came to a rest with a solid bump. Disappointing result.

Up in the Gods, six seats back from the rail, a Japanese man looking almost exactly like Micky Rourke’s character in Breakfast at Tiffanies, shadow conducted most of the opera to himself, his hands flitting backwards and forwards like finches in a cage. He was mouthing the words to himself and every time he reached for the high notes he’d lift his face to the ceiling, close his eyes and open his mouth like a man with no arms trying to get his teeth into a delicious, chocolate covered profiterole cruelly suspended by a single thread of cotton just out of reach above his head. He looked so stupidly happy to be watching the opera that it made me feel good just to be in the same theatre as someone with that kind of unrestrained passion.

Midway through the third act the percussionist on the timpani grew dissatisfied with the tone of one of his drums. I watched him lower his ear to the skin, flick it gently and give the tuning screw a half turn to the right. After that he flicked the drum one more time to check the outcome of his intervention and, happy with the result, gave the skin a gentle clockwise caress with the fingertips of his right hand to dampen the vibrations. He managed to execute this task with the noise of the orchestra pulsating around him and the soprano’s solo cascading over his shoulder. I had a little moment of sadness when I realised that I’ll probably never be as competent at anything as he is at whacking a bucket with a stick.

An added advantage of getting a spot on the rail is that it comes with a tickertape translation screen to help the monolingual decipher the dialogue. That was lucky for me as my French is pretty much confined to saying yes, no and “Don’t leave me my little cabbage”. That last one didn’t come up much. That said the first two got a hell of a run with some of the numbers made up entirely of two of the characters arguing like toddlers. Songs went on for minutes with the only thing appearing on screen being; “No”, “Yes”, “No”, “Yes”, “No, no, no”, “yes, yes, yes”. To be honest I’m not sure if the translations were all that faithful anyway. There were times when the actors would sing for an immensely long period of time with several octave changes, a desperate look from the heroin in the general direction of the male lead, a triumphant but menacing fist pump from the bad buy and a six minute orchestral solo and all that would flash up on screen was “no”. Of course it could be that the composer, while pretty hot at putting together a melody, was actually a functioning illiterate, which would go some of the way toward explaining lyrics like; “we drink, we drink, we like to drink, we’ll drink anything but water” and “lets us spin and dance, this makes us feel good.” Who knows?

Anyway, in another Kauffmanesque timeline jump, I'm finishing this blog in the bar of the Prague hostel in dossing down in. Right now I’m hungry and just a little hopped up from drinking too much coffee during the day. Tonight could get interesting.

I’m back in London in two days. I’m looking forward to it. Hopefully I’ll see those of you based in the UK on Saturday. The rest of you I’ll see in the next couple of months.

That is all,

Dale Atkinson