I'm still on a massive high after last night's magnificent benefit gig, and this is where the Oscar-style thanks come in. I've never been an Exec Producer before- I felt as if it was incumbent on me to swan around saying unhelpful things like 'Can we change this floor?'.
Firstly, if anyone can think of a better line-up than Kevin Eldon, Stephen Merchant, Justin Edwards, Adam Buxton, Shappi Khorsandi, David Armand and Mitchell and Webb, all held together by the incomparable compere Lucy Porter, I'd like to hear it. We were so lucky to get them; every act stormed. The fact that so many wonderful friends were in the audience no doubt helped with that, but that lot would have made the most grimly humourless of fun-haters bark with laughter.
And somehow, somehow, we managed to keep the surprise celebrity guests under wraps. The squeals of delight when Miranda Hart came on were only matched by what a friend of mine described as the 'Beatlemania' when Dermot O'Leary took to the stage. It was huge fun to be part of that final sketch, in my cameo appearance as Lady Gaga's blood-spattered murderer. Hint to anyone needing to write a gala-ending sketch is to ask the brilliant Toby Davies to write it with you.
All the volunteers and helpers on the day- from the Bloomsbury staff to the people our producers recruited- were cheerful and excited and wonderfully efficient. The tech finished EARLY- who ever heard of such a thing? Dan Cooper and Fran McNicoll made the best possible runners-for-a-day-slash-programme-sellers, (we only had a programme in the first place courtesy of the bargaining and design skills of Michelle Tuft and Joel Morris) Tracey Littlebury, Rob Swift and Ben Sneddon shook a mean bucket, and Francis O'Dea secured one of London's most glamorous and prestigious venues for aftershow drinks.
Above all, the calmly hyperefficient Beth Gorman, the unflappable Annelie Powell, and the huge-hearted and tireless Julia Raeside, who were undoubtedly the best producers this side of Bialystock and Bloom.
Jerome was an extraordinary man, and only an extraordinary evening would have done justice to him. Thanks to a load of kind, generous people giving up their time and talent, that's exactly what came to pass. The overwhelming sensation of the night was the goodness of people, whether performing for nowt, operating lights or sound, or digging into their pockets. We raised about a grand from programmes and donations, to add to twelve and a half raised on the marathon, a further 12 and counting from the auction, and over ten grand in ticket sales. The numbers make my head spin.
And any evening which includes wandering into a Green Room and discovering David Mitchell, Dermot O'Leary and Miranda Hart tucking into Domino's Pizza while discussing Angela Rippon has to be a good one, right?
Sunday, 1 May 2011
Tuesday, 19 April 2011
What I did for most of sunday.
There are two main problems when it comes to writing about the marathon.
Firstly, I don't really remember it, not in detail. Moments stand out- such as when friends were standing by the road, which is more immensely useful than you could imagine- but the rest is more or less a blur. Cheering, sunshine, trying to find the blue lines on the road which represent the shortest route. Children holding out their hands for a high five. Idly reading the back of other runners' vests and realising that the common factor that has brought together all the 'fun' runners is tragedy. Grabbing water, grabbing carb gel, grabbing vaseline (of which more later). Hungrily looking out for the red and white balloons in the distance which mark another mile completed, and resenting them hugely when they turn out to be a 5k marker. The showers and the sweet relief they offered. The memories are impressionistic, and for huge swathes of the route they're absent.
Secondly, a lot of personal reportage is based on thought processes. When writing about a holiday, for example, there are moments when one takes a mental snapshot of an experience; maybe even starts to write the eventual sentence in one's head. There's none of that phrasemaking on a marathon- the internal monologue is tedious beyond belief, the very definition of 'single minded'. 'Come on' it goes, and 'I can do this'. And 'keep going'. And not much else. Sometimes it goes 'I can't do this' and has to be quashed. Then there are the calculations- 'When I crossed the start line the clock said 0:27, now it says 3:38, so I've been running for three hours eleven minutes, which is 191 minutes, and I've done about 18 miles, so that's... 18 into 191...Oooh, carb gel. Come on. Keep going'.
But nonetheless, I feel the need to record the experience. I'd never run a marathon before after all, and dear god I never will again. Plus, I can use this blog as a record of my split times, so I don't have to keep the official marathon page open for the rest of my life.
BEFORE THE START
In Robert, Katie, Charlie and James, my co-runner Julia and I had the best of overnight hosts, and the best of spag bol and garlic bread (carb loading is fun). We even had a small glass of red wine, but don't tell anyone. The Thorogoods live on the road which leads from Maze Hill station to the park, so come Sunday morning there was a steady stream of passers-by going past the front window, all clutching the official red plastic bags for storing kit, and all looking intimidatingly lithe and fit. Terrifyingly soon after waking up (I hadn't slept brilliantly) it was time to head to the start.
...which felt more like a festival than anything else. Crowds of people milling around seemingly aimlessly, a tannoy (manned by a maddeningly chirpy Geordie, whose palpable desire to be Ant and Dec served only to underline how good they are at their job), signs and banners and trucks. There were a few more people stretching than at the average festival, and more vests, and more of a smell of embrocation, but the queues for the portaloos had that authentic Glastonbury touch.
Utterly terrified at this point, I nearly lost it in a flurry of tears when a man in a yellow vest walked past me. He looked like the archetypal closing-time bruiser- you'd cross the street to avoid him even in broad daylight. But on his vest was a photo of a toddler, on his arm was a tattoo of the same toddler, and the logo on the vest was that of the Child Bereavement Charity. On Saturday I was saddened by a tweet from a journalist I used to admire, who said something along the lines of marathon runners being attention seekers, and the charities they run for a 'figleaf' for their own self aggrandisement; I've noticed a few similarly sneering references to marathon runners in the press in the last few weeks. I'd like to put all the oh-so-ironic, 'edgy' journos who came up with this sparkling piece of snidery into a room with the man in the yellow vest.
Once the bag was stowed on the luggage truck (bye bye possessions! See you on the Mall, with any luck!) there really was nothing for it but to head to the start line itself. A couple of nurofen plus (ibuprofen to guard against joint inflammation, codeine because why not) a couple of bites of banana, and then onto the path with the other 30000-odd people to await the hooter.
And wait, and wait. The start itself is hugely anticlimactic. We were pretty much the last people over the line (the clock, as previously mentioned, read 0:27) and half an hour is a long time when you're more frightened than you've ever been. I felt a little sorry for the tannoy man at this point- finding something interesting to say about 30000 people when you've only got a name on a vest to go on is quite a tall order. There now follows an apology for diehard users of the imperial system; the marathon split times are measured in metric. For reference, 5k is more or less 3 miles.
0-5k. 5k time: 33.32 Total time: 33.32
This is the fun bit. The first half mile flies by on wings of 'Oh my god, I'm running the actual marathon'. The people lining the roadsides are a novelty, every child's hand is highfived as you run past. I was determined to take it slowly- the cautionary tales I'd heard all focused on people who went off too fast and had nothing left by mile 16. I was helped in this task by my choice of music. For some reason I decided almost immediately after I got the place that I would listen to the whole of Cosi Fan Tutte followed by the whole of Aida, and that I would listen to versions I'd never heard before. That's how I ended up running 16 miles accompanied by the Barenboim/Erato Cosi, which has some lovely singing in it, but is so slow and ponderous in its tempi that it is the perfect metronome for someone aiming at about an eleven minute mile. Metronomic is the word, by the way; you get into a rhythm. My rhythm was so insistent that I ran each of the first twelve miles in almost exactly eleven minutes, dead on. For those of you who don't run (ie me, six months ago) I'd found in training that ten minute miles were a decent average, and that I could do nine if I really pushed myself, so eleven seemed nice and easy.
Easy was the word, really, for the first ten miles or so. Surprisingly, wonderfully easy. I kept thinking 'Enjoy this. Enjoy it being easy. It'll get hard.'
It got hard.
5k-10k. 5k time: 33.37. Total time: 1.07.09
But not yet. This part of the route was also hugely enjoyable. It still felt easy, and the approach back to Greenwich provided the first sense of a milestone achieved- hurrah, I have got back where I started! I also got into the habit of indicating how many miles I'd completed with my fingers as I crossed each mile line. I have no idea why.
Realisation number one- you need things to look forward to. From about mile three I was egging myself on with the thought that Robert, Katie and family would be waiting with a load of my other friends at around the 6 mile mark. This was an unbelievably helpful thought, providing a distraction for the three miles before I passed them, and a pleasing memory for the miles thereafter. Patrick Wilde and Pete Shaw, compadres from the last two Edinburgh Festivals, were (unexpectedly) waiting about half a mile further on, so the return to Greenwich was a highlight.
Operafans: if you run 6 miles at about 11 min/mile on a hot day, Kurt Streit will be singing 'Un'aura amorosa' as you cross the six mile line.
10-15k. 5k time: 34.30. Total time: 1.41.49
Can't remember. Deptford, Rotherhithe, Canada Water. Jelly babies, water, vaseline.
15-20k. 5k time: 36.27. Total time: 2:18:16
I had a brilliant idea during this section. I was by now very conscious that the sun was beating down and I was very unprotected, especially on the shoulders. In what I now accept may have been my slightly addled brain, I came to the conclusion that the vaseline being handed out by begloved police officers and ambulance staff would make an effective sunblock, so I slathered it all over. I now accept that will have made it much worse and I might as well have rubbed butter on myself.
This was the beginning of the dark times. Getting to Tower Bridge was exciting (as was seeing my friend Francis at the pub on the corner, pint in hand, bellowing my name and blowing kisses as I passed) but crossing it was hard, even with the presence of another friend, Nic Holdridge, who took some photos as I crossed in which my smiling face belies the feeling of unease that was beginning to grow. I knew I couldn't stop; on all previous training runs if I ever stopped to walk I was unable to run again. On the other hand, it was searingly hot, my legs were getting very heavy, my mile times were creeping up, and the idea of another 14 miles was unthinkable. Even Mozart didn't help: I never want to hear 'Il Cor Vi Dono' again.
Everyone tells you that coming off Tower Bridge is the hard bit. All you want to do is turn left and head into town- but you have ten miles of fannying around the Isle of Dogs before you're allowed to do that. On the other side of the road are the runners with 22 miles under their belts. There's just a thin barrier between you. It is cruel, so cruel, to see them. I genuinely considered ducking under the barrier and somehow losing my timing chip. Only the thought of the shame and humiliation that would have followed stopped me; if the race were less well marshalled I would have done it like a shot. I don't like remembering this part, St Katharine's Dock and Wapping. This was the existential crisis, the moment when I knew for a fact I couldn't do it.
HALF WAY. TIME: 2.26.19
The realisation that I had run a slower half than either of my training halves was a blow. Can't do it. Not going to break five and a half hours. Going to have to walk the second half. Going to finish in six, six and a half, seven hours. Going to finish in more than eight hours so I won't even get an official time. Everyone will laugh at me. Everyone thought it was a joke idea for me to run the marathon. They were right.
25k. 5k time: 39.18. Total time: 2.57.34
My body saved me. Three and a half painful miles after Tower Bridge, in the Canary Wharf underpass, my legs stopped running and started walking without having received any such instruction from my brain. I am convinced that if I had insisted on continuing to run I would have collapsed by mile 20. At this point, however, I didn't realise this and spent a good half mile feeling angry and ashamed. I was walking- that meant I was a failure. Charlie Morgan Jones, the lovely lighting designer of the show I did last summer, was waiting by the road with a big smile and a wave. It was lovely to see him, but I just felt embarrassed that he'd seen me not running.
25-30k. 5k time: 40.50. Total time: 3.38.24
The word 'bargaining' came into my head. I'd heard it used by Paula Radcliffe at a nike event I'd attended a few days before. Then I heard the voice of my unoffical coach and running mentor Cat Armstrong, equally clearly in my mind's ear. 'Run a mile, walk a mile' she was saying. Suddenly it was possible again: I'd walk to mile 16, run to 17, walk to 18 and so on. Suddenly I only had five miles of running left! Cosi gave way to Aida (Mancini, Fillipeschi, Simionato/Gui) at exactly three hours, and exactly sixteen miles, meaning that even after a mile of walking I was now averaging eleven and a quarter minutes per mile.
30-35k. 5k time: 43.45. Total time: 4.22.09
Two obsessive thoughts in rotation now. The exciting one: I'm going to do it. I'm definitely going to do it. The urgent one: And I need to do it in under 5 and a half. I will be gutted if I don't do it in under 5 and a half. Memories of Canary Wharf- spotting Jerome's face on the back of a Tshirt and realising I'd found his brother in law Ollie. Jogging to catch up with Ollie, thinking how unfair it was I was having to run to catch him when this was a 'walking' mile. Having a nice stroll together from miles 19-20. The big screen by Canary Wharf station (I didn't spot myself because I refused to wave- that struck me as gauche and fun-runnery, and by now I was all about the Blue Steel determined look). 35k reached in Cabot Square, a place I spend a lot of time doing my corporate work. Picking up speed as I passed the office of one of my major corporate clients in case anyone I'd worked with was watching.
35-40k. 5k time: 41.43. Total time: 5.03.42
Euphoria and exhaustion. The 'walk a mile, run a mile' plan getting harder now, because running even one mile is unbearable. More friends passed- Stephen in Limehouse, nearly reducing me to tears as he shouted 'you're doing really well'. Then a whole clump of friends by mile 24 in Blackfriars (annoyed again- they were on a walking mile when I'd much rather have been running past them- although, pleasingly, there were fewer than I'd expected because I was making better time than THEY expected). At this point I remembered one of the worst training runs. I'd taken the tube to Westminster, hoping to run home via the South Bank, a run of about nine miles. I managed one before I had to stop at Blackfriars Bridge, so intense was the pain in my feet. This was in late February, about seven weeks ago. The idea that I was now closing in on mile 25 was incredible to me.
And then, as I walked round the corner by Big Ben and headed into Parliament Square, my sister and my niece and my mum and my brother in law. My sister, tearily bellowing 'WE LOVE YOU! WE LOVE YOU!'. Nearly lost it. Ipod losing battery and Aida coming to an end (I'd loaded it in the wrong order, too, so the chronology of the opera had been annoying me ever since Wapping- where I'd finally passed the 22 mile marker on the good side.)
Big sign. 800 METRES TO GO. Shuffle now playing Alisha's Attic, of all things. Everyone else is running. Surely I can run 800 metres? Nope. There's a 600 metre marker, I'll run it from there. 'I Am, I Feel/I sometimes think that you forget that/ I Am, I Feel'. Still not running. Walk past 400 metre marker and just beyond it, there it is. The 26 mile marker. 385 yards to go. Indicate 26 miles with my hands- both palms splayed, twice, then one palm and an upraised finger. I start to run. Alisha's Attic gives way to Alizee. Not a shuffle, then, alphabetical order. The absurdity of completing a marathon while listening to the justly forgotten Europop classic 'Moi, Lolita'. Arms aloft as I cross the line, so my runner number is visible in the photo. I've run the marathon. I've run the marathon. I never, ever believed I could. It's the dark secret that's terrified me for six months- the knowledge that I wasn't going to complete it, that I'd collapse or die or just give up. But I didn't.
26.2 MILES. TOTAL TIME: 5.21.15 MILE AVERAGE: 12 mins 15 seconds
I collect my medal and my goodie bag and walk towards the luggage trucks. Just as I'm thinking 'How funny, I thought I'd cry', I am suddenly overtaken by huge wracking sobs. My throat is so dry they make me cough.
Firstly, I don't really remember it, not in detail. Moments stand out- such as when friends were standing by the road, which is more immensely useful than you could imagine- but the rest is more or less a blur. Cheering, sunshine, trying to find the blue lines on the road which represent the shortest route. Children holding out their hands for a high five. Idly reading the back of other runners' vests and realising that the common factor that has brought together all the 'fun' runners is tragedy. Grabbing water, grabbing carb gel, grabbing vaseline (of which more later). Hungrily looking out for the red and white balloons in the distance which mark another mile completed, and resenting them hugely when they turn out to be a 5k marker. The showers and the sweet relief they offered. The memories are impressionistic, and for huge swathes of the route they're absent.
Secondly, a lot of personal reportage is based on thought processes. When writing about a holiday, for example, there are moments when one takes a mental snapshot of an experience; maybe even starts to write the eventual sentence in one's head. There's none of that phrasemaking on a marathon- the internal monologue is tedious beyond belief, the very definition of 'single minded'. 'Come on' it goes, and 'I can do this'. And 'keep going'. And not much else. Sometimes it goes 'I can't do this' and has to be quashed. Then there are the calculations- 'When I crossed the start line the clock said 0:27, now it says 3:38, so I've been running for three hours eleven minutes, which is 191 minutes, and I've done about 18 miles, so that's... 18 into 191...Oooh, carb gel. Come on. Keep going'.
But nonetheless, I feel the need to record the experience. I'd never run a marathon before after all, and dear god I never will again. Plus, I can use this blog as a record of my split times, so I don't have to keep the official marathon page open for the rest of my life.
BEFORE THE START
In Robert, Katie, Charlie and James, my co-runner Julia and I had the best of overnight hosts, and the best of spag bol and garlic bread (carb loading is fun). We even had a small glass of red wine, but don't tell anyone. The Thorogoods live on the road which leads from Maze Hill station to the park, so come Sunday morning there was a steady stream of passers-by going past the front window, all clutching the official red plastic bags for storing kit, and all looking intimidatingly lithe and fit. Terrifyingly soon after waking up (I hadn't slept brilliantly) it was time to head to the start.
...which felt more like a festival than anything else. Crowds of people milling around seemingly aimlessly, a tannoy (manned by a maddeningly chirpy Geordie, whose palpable desire to be Ant and Dec served only to underline how good they are at their job), signs and banners and trucks. There were a few more people stretching than at the average festival, and more vests, and more of a smell of embrocation, but the queues for the portaloos had that authentic Glastonbury touch.
Utterly terrified at this point, I nearly lost it in a flurry of tears when a man in a yellow vest walked past me. He looked like the archetypal closing-time bruiser- you'd cross the street to avoid him even in broad daylight. But on his vest was a photo of a toddler, on his arm was a tattoo of the same toddler, and the logo on the vest was that of the Child Bereavement Charity. On Saturday I was saddened by a tweet from a journalist I used to admire, who said something along the lines of marathon runners being attention seekers, and the charities they run for a 'figleaf' for their own self aggrandisement; I've noticed a few similarly sneering references to marathon runners in the press in the last few weeks. I'd like to put all the oh-so-ironic, 'edgy' journos who came up with this sparkling piece of snidery into a room with the man in the yellow vest.
Once the bag was stowed on the luggage truck (bye bye possessions! See you on the Mall, with any luck!) there really was nothing for it but to head to the start line itself. A couple of nurofen plus (ibuprofen to guard against joint inflammation, codeine because why not) a couple of bites of banana, and then onto the path with the other 30000-odd people to await the hooter.
And wait, and wait. The start itself is hugely anticlimactic. We were pretty much the last people over the line (the clock, as previously mentioned, read 0:27) and half an hour is a long time when you're more frightened than you've ever been. I felt a little sorry for the tannoy man at this point- finding something interesting to say about 30000 people when you've only got a name on a vest to go on is quite a tall order. There now follows an apology for diehard users of the imperial system; the marathon split times are measured in metric. For reference, 5k is more or less 3 miles.
0-5k. 5k time: 33.32 Total time: 33.32
This is the fun bit. The first half mile flies by on wings of 'Oh my god, I'm running the actual marathon'. The people lining the roadsides are a novelty, every child's hand is highfived as you run past. I was determined to take it slowly- the cautionary tales I'd heard all focused on people who went off too fast and had nothing left by mile 16. I was helped in this task by my choice of music. For some reason I decided almost immediately after I got the place that I would listen to the whole of Cosi Fan Tutte followed by the whole of Aida, and that I would listen to versions I'd never heard before. That's how I ended up running 16 miles accompanied by the Barenboim/Erato Cosi, which has some lovely singing in it, but is so slow and ponderous in its tempi that it is the perfect metronome for someone aiming at about an eleven minute mile. Metronomic is the word, by the way; you get into a rhythm. My rhythm was so insistent that I ran each of the first twelve miles in almost exactly eleven minutes, dead on. For those of you who don't run (ie me, six months ago) I'd found in training that ten minute miles were a decent average, and that I could do nine if I really pushed myself, so eleven seemed nice and easy.
Easy was the word, really, for the first ten miles or so. Surprisingly, wonderfully easy. I kept thinking 'Enjoy this. Enjoy it being easy. It'll get hard.'
It got hard.
5k-10k. 5k time: 33.37. Total time: 1.07.09
But not yet. This part of the route was also hugely enjoyable. It still felt easy, and the approach back to Greenwich provided the first sense of a milestone achieved- hurrah, I have got back where I started! I also got into the habit of indicating how many miles I'd completed with my fingers as I crossed each mile line. I have no idea why.
Realisation number one- you need things to look forward to. From about mile three I was egging myself on with the thought that Robert, Katie and family would be waiting with a load of my other friends at around the 6 mile mark. This was an unbelievably helpful thought, providing a distraction for the three miles before I passed them, and a pleasing memory for the miles thereafter. Patrick Wilde and Pete Shaw, compadres from the last two Edinburgh Festivals, were (unexpectedly) waiting about half a mile further on, so the return to Greenwich was a highlight.
Operafans: if you run 6 miles at about 11 min/mile on a hot day, Kurt Streit will be singing 'Un'aura amorosa' as you cross the six mile line.
10-15k. 5k time: 34.30. Total time: 1.41.49
Can't remember. Deptford, Rotherhithe, Canada Water. Jelly babies, water, vaseline.
15-20k. 5k time: 36.27. Total time: 2:18:16
I had a brilliant idea during this section. I was by now very conscious that the sun was beating down and I was very unprotected, especially on the shoulders. In what I now accept may have been my slightly addled brain, I came to the conclusion that the vaseline being handed out by begloved police officers and ambulance staff would make an effective sunblock, so I slathered it all over. I now accept that will have made it much worse and I might as well have rubbed butter on myself.
This was the beginning of the dark times. Getting to Tower Bridge was exciting (as was seeing my friend Francis at the pub on the corner, pint in hand, bellowing my name and blowing kisses as I passed) but crossing it was hard, even with the presence of another friend, Nic Holdridge, who took some photos as I crossed in which my smiling face belies the feeling of unease that was beginning to grow. I knew I couldn't stop; on all previous training runs if I ever stopped to walk I was unable to run again. On the other hand, it was searingly hot, my legs were getting very heavy, my mile times were creeping up, and the idea of another 14 miles was unthinkable. Even Mozart didn't help: I never want to hear 'Il Cor Vi Dono' again.
Everyone tells you that coming off Tower Bridge is the hard bit. All you want to do is turn left and head into town- but you have ten miles of fannying around the Isle of Dogs before you're allowed to do that. On the other side of the road are the runners with 22 miles under their belts. There's just a thin barrier between you. It is cruel, so cruel, to see them. I genuinely considered ducking under the barrier and somehow losing my timing chip. Only the thought of the shame and humiliation that would have followed stopped me; if the race were less well marshalled I would have done it like a shot. I don't like remembering this part, St Katharine's Dock and Wapping. This was the existential crisis, the moment when I knew for a fact I couldn't do it.
HALF WAY. TIME: 2.26.19
The realisation that I had run a slower half than either of my training halves was a blow. Can't do it. Not going to break five and a half hours. Going to have to walk the second half. Going to finish in six, six and a half, seven hours. Going to finish in more than eight hours so I won't even get an official time. Everyone will laugh at me. Everyone thought it was a joke idea for me to run the marathon. They were right.
25k. 5k time: 39.18. Total time: 2.57.34
My body saved me. Three and a half painful miles after Tower Bridge, in the Canary Wharf underpass, my legs stopped running and started walking without having received any such instruction from my brain. I am convinced that if I had insisted on continuing to run I would have collapsed by mile 20. At this point, however, I didn't realise this and spent a good half mile feeling angry and ashamed. I was walking- that meant I was a failure. Charlie Morgan Jones, the lovely lighting designer of the show I did last summer, was waiting by the road with a big smile and a wave. It was lovely to see him, but I just felt embarrassed that he'd seen me not running.
25-30k. 5k time: 40.50. Total time: 3.38.24
The word 'bargaining' came into my head. I'd heard it used by Paula Radcliffe at a nike event I'd attended a few days before. Then I heard the voice of my unoffical coach and running mentor Cat Armstrong, equally clearly in my mind's ear. 'Run a mile, walk a mile' she was saying. Suddenly it was possible again: I'd walk to mile 16, run to 17, walk to 18 and so on. Suddenly I only had five miles of running left! Cosi gave way to Aida (Mancini, Fillipeschi, Simionato/Gui) at exactly three hours, and exactly sixteen miles, meaning that even after a mile of walking I was now averaging eleven and a quarter minutes per mile.
30-35k. 5k time: 43.45. Total time: 4.22.09
Two obsessive thoughts in rotation now. The exciting one: I'm going to do it. I'm definitely going to do it. The urgent one: And I need to do it in under 5 and a half. I will be gutted if I don't do it in under 5 and a half. Memories of Canary Wharf- spotting Jerome's face on the back of a Tshirt and realising I'd found his brother in law Ollie. Jogging to catch up with Ollie, thinking how unfair it was I was having to run to catch him when this was a 'walking' mile. Having a nice stroll together from miles 19-20. The big screen by Canary Wharf station (I didn't spot myself because I refused to wave- that struck me as gauche and fun-runnery, and by now I was all about the Blue Steel determined look). 35k reached in Cabot Square, a place I spend a lot of time doing my corporate work. Picking up speed as I passed the office of one of my major corporate clients in case anyone I'd worked with was watching.
35-40k. 5k time: 41.43. Total time: 5.03.42
Euphoria and exhaustion. The 'walk a mile, run a mile' plan getting harder now, because running even one mile is unbearable. More friends passed- Stephen in Limehouse, nearly reducing me to tears as he shouted 'you're doing really well'. Then a whole clump of friends by mile 24 in Blackfriars (annoyed again- they were on a walking mile when I'd much rather have been running past them- although, pleasingly, there were fewer than I'd expected because I was making better time than THEY expected). At this point I remembered one of the worst training runs. I'd taken the tube to Westminster, hoping to run home via the South Bank, a run of about nine miles. I managed one before I had to stop at Blackfriars Bridge, so intense was the pain in my feet. This was in late February, about seven weeks ago. The idea that I was now closing in on mile 25 was incredible to me.
And then, as I walked round the corner by Big Ben and headed into Parliament Square, my sister and my niece and my mum and my brother in law. My sister, tearily bellowing 'WE LOVE YOU! WE LOVE YOU!'. Nearly lost it. Ipod losing battery and Aida coming to an end (I'd loaded it in the wrong order, too, so the chronology of the opera had been annoying me ever since Wapping- where I'd finally passed the 22 mile marker on the good side.)
Big sign. 800 METRES TO GO. Shuffle now playing Alisha's Attic, of all things. Everyone else is running. Surely I can run 800 metres? Nope. There's a 600 metre marker, I'll run it from there. 'I Am, I Feel/I sometimes think that you forget that/ I Am, I Feel'. Still not running. Walk past 400 metre marker and just beyond it, there it is. The 26 mile marker. 385 yards to go. Indicate 26 miles with my hands- both palms splayed, twice, then one palm and an upraised finger. I start to run. Alisha's Attic gives way to Alizee. Not a shuffle, then, alphabetical order. The absurdity of completing a marathon while listening to the justly forgotten Europop classic 'Moi, Lolita'. Arms aloft as I cross the line, so my runner number is visible in the photo. I've run the marathon. I've run the marathon. I never, ever believed I could. It's the dark secret that's terrified me for six months- the knowledge that I wasn't going to complete it, that I'd collapse or die or just give up. But I didn't.
26.2 MILES. TOTAL TIME: 5.21.15 MILE AVERAGE: 12 mins 15 seconds
I collect my medal and my goodie bag and walk towards the luggage trucks. Just as I'm thinking 'How funny, I thought I'd cry', I am suddenly overtaken by huge wracking sobs. My throat is so dry they make me cough.
Saturday, 16 April 2011
I blame Phidippides.
There are three things in life for which nobody is ever prepared. One, of course, is death. The second is University finals.
The third is running the fucking marathon tomorrow.
Gulp.
The third is running the fucking marathon tomorrow.
Gulp.
Wednesday, 30 March 2011
If Only We Could Know!
Well, this post was due to be a travelogue-type deal about my (flying) visit to Moscow, which I'm sure those of you who have read my travel 'writing' before will have anticipated as eagerly as turkeys look forward to December 20th. Unfortunately, the one and only opportunity I had for tourism has just been curtailed by some pretty central-casting Russian weather. I struggled halfway from my hotel to Red Square but eventually had to accept that what I was in was a blizzard, and that I was so covered with snow that I was in danger of Aled Jones or Peter Auty singing about me. Now I've made it back to the hotel, of course, the sky is almost sarcastically clear, but I ain't risking it again.
The hotel has provided one moment of amusement, though. In the information/map magazine provided, there are the usual depressing escort ads (Why do some hotels do this? Why? Actually, the answer to that might be even more depressing). In among them was one agency promising 'friendly, sophisticated girls' alongside a photograph of... Girls Aloud. Davina McCall didn't say anything about *that* on Popstars, did she? 'You could live the dream! Your picture could be misleadingly used on an ad for Russian Hookers...'
But that's all I've got, I'm afraid. Tonight was my only chance of breaking the hotel-training room- airport cycle and the snow wasn't having it, so I am unable to discover the magic that so appealed to Olga, Masha and Irina in the greatest play of the 20th century (you may disagree, but I am factually correct and you are wrong).
Actually, since we're on Chekhov, I have a small recommendation to make. I recently watched the 1975 US TV production of 'The Seagull' and it was a revelation. I've written before about a regrettable tendency in British performances of Chekhov for the sets, costumes and performances to be beige. What this production captures so vividly is that unhappiness can be as ENERGETIC as it is torpid. Nobody languishes in this production, and it's all the better for it. Blythe Danner (yep, Gwyn's mum) is the best Nina I've ever seen, and Frank Langella is just extraordinary as Konstantin. A jolt, too, to see how beautiful he was as a young man, when one is used to seeing him as craggy ol' Dick Nixon. But the whole cast (Lee Grant, a heroine of the McCarthy hearings who refused to testify and was blacklisted is ideally mercurial as Arkadina; Olympia 'Anna Madrigal' Dukakis is a wonderful tragicomic Polina) oozes quality. I can't recommend it highly enough.
So, in summary- I went to Moscow and it made me think about a DVD.
The hotel has provided one moment of amusement, though. In the information/map magazine provided, there are the usual depressing escort ads (Why do some hotels do this? Why? Actually, the answer to that might be even more depressing). In among them was one agency promising 'friendly, sophisticated girls' alongside a photograph of... Girls Aloud. Davina McCall didn't say anything about *that* on Popstars, did she? 'You could live the dream! Your picture could be misleadingly used on an ad for Russian Hookers...'
But that's all I've got, I'm afraid. Tonight was my only chance of breaking the hotel-training room- airport cycle and the snow wasn't having it, so I am unable to discover the magic that so appealed to Olga, Masha and Irina in the greatest play of the 20th century (you may disagree, but I am factually correct and you are wrong).
Actually, since we're on Chekhov, I have a small recommendation to make. I recently watched the 1975 US TV production of 'The Seagull' and it was a revelation. I've written before about a regrettable tendency in British performances of Chekhov for the sets, costumes and performances to be beige. What this production captures so vividly is that unhappiness can be as ENERGETIC as it is torpid. Nobody languishes in this production, and it's all the better for it. Blythe Danner (yep, Gwyn's mum) is the best Nina I've ever seen, and Frank Langella is just extraordinary as Konstantin. A jolt, too, to see how beautiful he was as a young man, when one is used to seeing him as craggy ol' Dick Nixon. But the whole cast (Lee Grant, a heroine of the McCarthy hearings who refused to testify and was blacklisted is ideally mercurial as Arkadina; Olympia 'Anna Madrigal' Dukakis is a wonderful tragicomic Polina) oozes quality. I can't recommend it highly enough.
So, in summary- I went to Moscow and it made me think about a DVD.
Tuesday, 1 March 2011
Judging Anna, MkII
One of the most disingenuous- and most pompous- of critical clichés is the 'I really wanted to like it' review, which usually means 'I was looking forward to hating it and hurrah, I did'.
But now I have to write one of my own, although there's no disingenuousness in my saying that I really, really wanted to like 'Anna Nicole'. And although I didn't hate it, I certainly didn't like it anywhere near as much as I wanted to.
That makes me sad partly (mainly?) because I don't want to be allied with the people who wanted it to fail. The mere existence of the work illustrates what is, for me, one of the most important of artistic principles- that great art can be made out of any subject, that any story can be made worth the telling. We can all give our examples (perhaps the most famous being that Godot is a play in which nothing happens, twice). So I have no sympathy at all with those who believe that dramatising Anna Nicole Smith's life is a Vulgar Desecration Of Our Holy Lyric Art, and in fact I think in the main that they are philistine snobs who are going to have a heart attack if anyone ever tells them about 'Lulu' (that's the opera, btw, although they probably wouldn't like the other Lulu much either).
Plus, I admire everyone involved. Mark-Anthony Turnage wrote 'The Silver Tassie', so his place in my personal pantheon is safe. Richard Thomas wrote the wonderful 'Jerry Springer', so ditto. The production is slick, smooth and clever, the cast unimpeachable. But, the thing is, I just didn't care. Two people die in this opera, a fact which was more affecting in the programme synopsis than it was on stage, and that, kids, is a problem.
The problem lies largely, I think, with Thomas' contribution. It's all very meta, very ironic, commenting on and contextualising every event rather than just letting it happen. We're never simply told a story- we're told we're being told a story, and then, we're told what it meant. But, crucially, we already know the story and we already know its implications. Nobody left the ROH tonight thinking 'Good God, I had no idea women were objectified in our society!' or 'Wow, being famous for being famous sure has a potential downside!' and it was the opera's lack of anything new or insightful to say about the sad, inevitable decline of its heroine which was its major disappointment. The only thing which could have saved the story from its familiarity would have been a hefty emotional kick- after all, we know what's going to happen to Gilda and Mimi, too- but the libretto opts for cool detachment from the start, never a good mood to set if you're looking for withers to be wrung. No decision has been made as to whether the heroine is amoral or admirable, whether we're supposed to root for her or judge her. There's not even any real ambiguity about her portrayal- just some fairly brutal, unearned gear changes between 'isn't she empty?' and 'isn't she tragic?'.
And while it's funny at times, it's not funny enough. Sondheim's set the bar pretty high for lyricists, and that means we all know that merely rhyming is not enough, especially if you can spot what's coming. When a group of women at a cosmetic surgery sing, crowbarishly, about being 'restless' we're not going to coo with delight when the rhyme turns out to be 'breastless', to give just one example. Thomas overuses the arch anti-lyric, too. 'We're lapdancers/We dance in laps' or 'It's a red carpet/It's a carpet/ That's red'. That kind of gag works once, if you're lucky, and there are a few too many iterations of it here. In defence of the jokes, though, some of them hit the spot dead on, quite an achievement when the surtitles blow every punchline twenty seconds before it's delivered.
Musically things were better. Without access to a score I've only heard once, I'm not going to attempt the kind of musicological analysis other people will do much better. What I will say is that, as in 'Greek' and 'The Silver Tassie', Turnage is brilliant at creating a musical language which defines the world his characters live in, and which defines them. There are definite personalites to the scoring of each character; Anna's melodic language is different from her mother's; her husband's different from her lawyer's. This ought to go without saying, but it's rare enough in even the most celebrated of operas to merit a mention.
What these singers were doing in it is perhaps another matter. Don't get me wrong- there wasn't a performance among them that was less than excellent, but why we needed a Minnie, an Ariadne as Anna, and an Onegin as the lawyer is beyond me. None of the MT professionals I know would have any problems singing this score. Don't get me wrong, part the second- I'm not suggesting, as others have, that this is a musical. It's just that it seems rather perverse to have cast such opulent voices and then given them not much to sing. As my friend John mischievously pointed out, the role of Anna Nicole would not stretch Danielle de Niese; it's not as big a sing as Despina. Eva Maria Westbroek was as terrific as everyone has told you, but it must have felt a bit like a night off. Gerald Finley, too, was vocally and dramatically underused in the musically and theatrically slim part of the Svengali-like lawyer. As the octogenarian husband, Alan Oke had a great deal of fun, although his healthy voice was at odds with his frail physicality (has anyone suggested it for Placido...? Hem hem).
There's nothing bad about Anna Nicole. But it's not as good as it could have been, not as good as we needed it to be. I don't see much life for it beyond this run. If opera is to remain as robust and contemporary as theatre and not dwindle into a succession of glorious museum pieces, issues such as celebrity, the morality of media voyeurism, addiction, feminism and social mobility are exactly the kind of things it should be grappling with. 'Anna Nicole' had the potential to do all that, and while it's not the shabby little shocker some people gleefully predicted, it's a missed opportunity. Slick, professional, interesting and intelligent, it nonetheless ends up taking aim at a very stationary target, and hitting it flabbily.
But now I have to write one of my own, although there's no disingenuousness in my saying that I really, really wanted to like 'Anna Nicole'. And although I didn't hate it, I certainly didn't like it anywhere near as much as I wanted to.
That makes me sad partly (mainly?) because I don't want to be allied with the people who wanted it to fail. The mere existence of the work illustrates what is, for me, one of the most important of artistic principles- that great art can be made out of any subject, that any story can be made worth the telling. We can all give our examples (perhaps the most famous being that Godot is a play in which nothing happens, twice). So I have no sympathy at all with those who believe that dramatising Anna Nicole Smith's life is a Vulgar Desecration Of Our Holy Lyric Art, and in fact I think in the main that they are philistine snobs who are going to have a heart attack if anyone ever tells them about 'Lulu' (that's the opera, btw, although they probably wouldn't like the other Lulu much either).
Plus, I admire everyone involved. Mark-Anthony Turnage wrote 'The Silver Tassie', so his place in my personal pantheon is safe. Richard Thomas wrote the wonderful 'Jerry Springer', so ditto. The production is slick, smooth and clever, the cast unimpeachable. But, the thing is, I just didn't care. Two people die in this opera, a fact which was more affecting in the programme synopsis than it was on stage, and that, kids, is a problem.
The problem lies largely, I think, with Thomas' contribution. It's all very meta, very ironic, commenting on and contextualising every event rather than just letting it happen. We're never simply told a story- we're told we're being told a story, and then, we're told what it meant. But, crucially, we already know the story and we already know its implications. Nobody left the ROH tonight thinking 'Good God, I had no idea women were objectified in our society!' or 'Wow, being famous for being famous sure has a potential downside!' and it was the opera's lack of anything new or insightful to say about the sad, inevitable decline of its heroine which was its major disappointment. The only thing which could have saved the story from its familiarity would have been a hefty emotional kick- after all, we know what's going to happen to Gilda and Mimi, too- but the libretto opts for cool detachment from the start, never a good mood to set if you're looking for withers to be wrung. No decision has been made as to whether the heroine is amoral or admirable, whether we're supposed to root for her or judge her. There's not even any real ambiguity about her portrayal- just some fairly brutal, unearned gear changes between 'isn't she empty?' and 'isn't she tragic?'.
And while it's funny at times, it's not funny enough. Sondheim's set the bar pretty high for lyricists, and that means we all know that merely rhyming is not enough, especially if you can spot what's coming. When a group of women at a cosmetic surgery sing, crowbarishly, about being 'restless' we're not going to coo with delight when the rhyme turns out to be 'breastless', to give just one example. Thomas overuses the arch anti-lyric, too. 'We're lapdancers/We dance in laps' or 'It's a red carpet/It's a carpet/ That's red'. That kind of gag works once, if you're lucky, and there are a few too many iterations of it here. In defence of the jokes, though, some of them hit the spot dead on, quite an achievement when the surtitles blow every punchline twenty seconds before it's delivered.
Musically things were better. Without access to a score I've only heard once, I'm not going to attempt the kind of musicological analysis other people will do much better. What I will say is that, as in 'Greek' and 'The Silver Tassie', Turnage is brilliant at creating a musical language which defines the world his characters live in, and which defines them. There are definite personalites to the scoring of each character; Anna's melodic language is different from her mother's; her husband's different from her lawyer's. This ought to go without saying, but it's rare enough in even the most celebrated of operas to merit a mention.
What these singers were doing in it is perhaps another matter. Don't get me wrong- there wasn't a performance among them that was less than excellent, but why we needed a Minnie, an Ariadne as Anna, and an Onegin as the lawyer is beyond me. None of the MT professionals I know would have any problems singing this score. Don't get me wrong, part the second- I'm not suggesting, as others have, that this is a musical. It's just that it seems rather perverse to have cast such opulent voices and then given them not much to sing. As my friend John mischievously pointed out, the role of Anna Nicole would not stretch Danielle de Niese; it's not as big a sing as Despina. Eva Maria Westbroek was as terrific as everyone has told you, but it must have felt a bit like a night off. Gerald Finley, too, was vocally and dramatically underused in the musically and theatrically slim part of the Svengali-like lawyer. As the octogenarian husband, Alan Oke had a great deal of fun, although his healthy voice was at odds with his frail physicality (has anyone suggested it for Placido...? Hem hem).
There's nothing bad about Anna Nicole. But it's not as good as it could have been, not as good as we needed it to be. I don't see much life for it beyond this run. If opera is to remain as robust and contemporary as theatre and not dwindle into a succession of glorious museum pieces, issues such as celebrity, the morality of media voyeurism, addiction, feminism and social mobility are exactly the kind of things it should be grappling with. 'Anna Nicole' had the potential to do all that, and while it's not the shabby little shocker some people gleefully predicted, it's a missed opportunity. Slick, professional, interesting and intelligent, it nonetheless ends up taking aim at a very stationary target, and hitting it flabbily.
Saturday, 5 February 2011
In which I am a guidice, ad Anna.
If you’ve ever heard me talk about opera (and let’s face it, you probably haven’t, unless you have) then you’ll know I have two major blind spots. Two great wodges of the operatic repertory remain more or less closed to me, despite my admittedly half-hearted attempts to the contrary. One is the works of Richard Wagner, a situation about which the Wagner-is-holy brigade get very shocked and lecture-y, and the other is bel canto.
The bel-canto aficionados don’t lecture; they just look wistfully disappointed when I tell them that I’ve never really got it. Like the most dyed-in-the-wool philistine, I have to explain using egregious, overused phrases like ‘it all sounds the same’ and ‘dramatically inert’.
I saw Anna Bolena at the Liceu last night (I’m in Barcelona, which helped with that) and although I haven’t been converted- sorry Greg, sorry John- I do come a little closer to seeing what the point might be. It’s not an opera I’ll joyfully come back to (that overture- I mean, seriously?) but it certainly has its moments, and I don’t just mean *that* one.
It helps, of course, if you have artists of the calibre the Liceu can offer. Edita Gruberova, still singing at the age of four hundred and sixty eight after a career spanning five centuries, is nothing more nor less than a force of nature. Her voice has always been more beautiful live than it was on record, and she made some transcendent sounds, especially in ‘Al dolce guidami’, which was met by a football stadium roar and an ovation lasting a good ten minutes. They like their Gruberova in Barca. Her voice is in miraculous condition (she is, in fact, 64). The middle is wirier, and she never had much at the bottom anyway, but the top still gleams and soothes and rings out as required. The highest of the high notes are something of a triumph of will these days, but she still has them. It’s a larger, more powerful voice than you might remember, too, by which I mean it’s a larger and more powerful voice than I remembered. A friend of mine described later Gruberova as ‘vilely mannered’ and I can see what he means- that whole trick of arriving on a note a few beats before the rest of the voice does (and yeah, that’s the technical term, so sue me) but the effect is breathtakingly lovely. Never an exciting actor, she nonetheless does by and large the right things (and cut quite a dash in her red hunting coat and leather pants- we’ll draw a gentlemanly veil over the fact that Anne Boleyn was 35 when she died, unfortunate given that Gruberova’s first costume, a regal frock-and-sash affair, made her look like a more recent Queen of England, which is to say the current one, as she looks now.) Reading this paragraph back I feel like I haven’t done her justice, been too picky; she knows how this music goes, she’s one of the reigning queens of this rep, and it was a privilege to be in the same room as she sang it.
Elina Garanca comes in for a hard time in certain quarters, because she has the effrontery to be tall and slim and beautiful, and is therefore apparently somehow responsible for the looksist dumbing-down of opera. REAL singers are the size of a battleship and would never stoop to something so base as a record contract, seems to be the implication. It’s odd, because a lot of the same people insist that opera should be about voice, voice and voice, and in this Ms Garanca has been as lavishly endowed as she was aesthetically. It’s a rich, full, even, big and beautiful sound from the bottom to the top. It sounds, again, like faint praise, but I haven’t heard such secure singing for a long time. Giovanna suits her slightly chilly stage presence, although she was able to access something a little more emotional and desperate in the duet with Anna and the plea to Enrico. That duet for the two women was comfortably the highlight of the evening, along with the first part of the mad scene as mentioned earlier (there was nothing wrong with ‘Coppia Iniqua’, nothing at all, bar a smidgen of an iota of a suspicion of tiredness from Gruberova). Garanca will make a hit in this role at the opening of the Met season next October, and this in a house which has arguably proved a little resistant to her. I would hope and imagine that David McVicar will give her something a little more interesting to do than the ‘stand there and look worried. Now, kneel’ that this production asked of her. One charming little extra- Garanca is the first opera singer I have ever seen corpse. During a particularly filigree cadenza from Gruberova in one of the Act 1 concertati, an audience member let out a strange, guttural groan. Garanca’s chin sank to her chest- always a dead giveaway- and she remained in that position, keeping as still as she dared, until she actually had to turn upstage to compose herself.
Josep Bros started a little nasally, and his voice isn’t an immediately beautiful one, but like Gruberova he was singing his music on his patch and the technical confidence he brought to the role was very welcome. In fact, it struck me that on my last two opera visits I had seen Guleghina, Licitra, Carosi and Cornetti, and one of last night’s great pleasures was the (for me, recently) novel experience of seeing a cast of singers in roles that were eminently suited to them, and which they were comfortably able to sing. On the interest, as they say, not the capital. Having sad that, Carlo Colombara has gone in my file of competent but dullish basses. It’s a big file. He didn’t do anything wrong (bar a slightly underpowered, husky first scene with Garanca) but he didn’t really do anything exciting either. The conductor, Andriy Yurkevich, made sure that the endless tonic-dominant cadences tootled away as rumtitumishly as necessary (what? I said right at the start I don’t like bel canto).
All in all, a very good night at the opera. It could have been worse. I will admit that before I took my seat I was worried about my antipathy to the genre, about Gruberova’s age, about the people I otherwise trust who had told me that Garanca was dullsville. I was especially worried when the curtain rose to reveal a bunch of dancers dressed as ravens. These ravens were clearly a favourite touch of director Rafel Duran (beware research: he’d obviously read about the legend of the ravens at the tower) and they popped in and out, pointlessly, throughout the evening, inevitably turning into Anna’s angels of death at the end. Duran introduced a few of these odd nods towards regie (Enrico and Giovanna’s Act 1 duet took place in front of a video backdrop of some koi carp, and no, I have no idea) in what was otherwise a fairly routine, stand-and-deliver kind of production. I have two things to say to this director. One is can we please have a moratorium on the whole ‘in this society everything is watched on cctv’ thing? Every production of Hamlet I’ve seen in the last ten years has used it. It’s become a kind of shorthand for a dictatorship and sure enough, there was the CCTV room downstage right, with a bored looking extra studying some footage of people who, the pinsharp clarity of digital video revealed, were clearly singing opera at each other. The other thing I would like to say to him is ‘Dogs on stage? Never a good idea’.
I really don’t want to gloat, but I have to stop now as I’m off to watch a match at the Nou Camp. Gruberova, Garanca, and the Nou Camp in one 24 hour period. Who am I kidding? I’m going to be gloating for MONTHS.
The bel-canto aficionados don’t lecture; they just look wistfully disappointed when I tell them that I’ve never really got it. Like the most dyed-in-the-wool philistine, I have to explain using egregious, overused phrases like ‘it all sounds the same’ and ‘dramatically inert’.
I saw Anna Bolena at the Liceu last night (I’m in Barcelona, which helped with that) and although I haven’t been converted- sorry Greg, sorry John- I do come a little closer to seeing what the point might be. It’s not an opera I’ll joyfully come back to (that overture- I mean, seriously?) but it certainly has its moments, and I don’t just mean *that* one.
It helps, of course, if you have artists of the calibre the Liceu can offer. Edita Gruberova, still singing at the age of four hundred and sixty eight after a career spanning five centuries, is nothing more nor less than a force of nature. Her voice has always been more beautiful live than it was on record, and she made some transcendent sounds, especially in ‘Al dolce guidami’, which was met by a football stadium roar and an ovation lasting a good ten minutes. They like their Gruberova in Barca. Her voice is in miraculous condition (she is, in fact, 64). The middle is wirier, and she never had much at the bottom anyway, but the top still gleams and soothes and rings out as required. The highest of the high notes are something of a triumph of will these days, but she still has them. It’s a larger, more powerful voice than you might remember, too, by which I mean it’s a larger and more powerful voice than I remembered. A friend of mine described later Gruberova as ‘vilely mannered’ and I can see what he means- that whole trick of arriving on a note a few beats before the rest of the voice does (and yeah, that’s the technical term, so sue me) but the effect is breathtakingly lovely. Never an exciting actor, she nonetheless does by and large the right things (and cut quite a dash in her red hunting coat and leather pants- we’ll draw a gentlemanly veil over the fact that Anne Boleyn was 35 when she died, unfortunate given that Gruberova’s first costume, a regal frock-and-sash affair, made her look like a more recent Queen of England, which is to say the current one, as she looks now.) Reading this paragraph back I feel like I haven’t done her justice, been too picky; she knows how this music goes, she’s one of the reigning queens of this rep, and it was a privilege to be in the same room as she sang it.
Elina Garanca comes in for a hard time in certain quarters, because she has the effrontery to be tall and slim and beautiful, and is therefore apparently somehow responsible for the looksist dumbing-down of opera. REAL singers are the size of a battleship and would never stoop to something so base as a record contract, seems to be the implication. It’s odd, because a lot of the same people insist that opera should be about voice, voice and voice, and in this Ms Garanca has been as lavishly endowed as she was aesthetically. It’s a rich, full, even, big and beautiful sound from the bottom to the top. It sounds, again, like faint praise, but I haven’t heard such secure singing for a long time. Giovanna suits her slightly chilly stage presence, although she was able to access something a little more emotional and desperate in the duet with Anna and the plea to Enrico. That duet for the two women was comfortably the highlight of the evening, along with the first part of the mad scene as mentioned earlier (there was nothing wrong with ‘Coppia Iniqua’, nothing at all, bar a smidgen of an iota of a suspicion of tiredness from Gruberova). Garanca will make a hit in this role at the opening of the Met season next October, and this in a house which has arguably proved a little resistant to her. I would hope and imagine that David McVicar will give her something a little more interesting to do than the ‘stand there and look worried. Now, kneel’ that this production asked of her. One charming little extra- Garanca is the first opera singer I have ever seen corpse. During a particularly filigree cadenza from Gruberova in one of the Act 1 concertati, an audience member let out a strange, guttural groan. Garanca’s chin sank to her chest- always a dead giveaway- and she remained in that position, keeping as still as she dared, until she actually had to turn upstage to compose herself.
Josep Bros started a little nasally, and his voice isn’t an immediately beautiful one, but like Gruberova he was singing his music on his patch and the technical confidence he brought to the role was very welcome. In fact, it struck me that on my last two opera visits I had seen Guleghina, Licitra, Carosi and Cornetti, and one of last night’s great pleasures was the (for me, recently) novel experience of seeing a cast of singers in roles that were eminently suited to them, and which they were comfortably able to sing. On the interest, as they say, not the capital. Having sad that, Carlo Colombara has gone in my file of competent but dullish basses. It’s a big file. He didn’t do anything wrong (bar a slightly underpowered, husky first scene with Garanca) but he didn’t really do anything exciting either. The conductor, Andriy Yurkevich, made sure that the endless tonic-dominant cadences tootled away as rumtitumishly as necessary (what? I said right at the start I don’t like bel canto).
All in all, a very good night at the opera. It could have been worse. I will admit that before I took my seat I was worried about my antipathy to the genre, about Gruberova’s age, about the people I otherwise trust who had told me that Garanca was dullsville. I was especially worried when the curtain rose to reveal a bunch of dancers dressed as ravens. These ravens were clearly a favourite touch of director Rafel Duran (beware research: he’d obviously read about the legend of the ravens at the tower) and they popped in and out, pointlessly, throughout the evening, inevitably turning into Anna’s angels of death at the end. Duran introduced a few of these odd nods towards regie (Enrico and Giovanna’s Act 1 duet took place in front of a video backdrop of some koi carp, and no, I have no idea) in what was otherwise a fairly routine, stand-and-deliver kind of production. I have two things to say to this director. One is can we please have a moratorium on the whole ‘in this society everything is watched on cctv’ thing? Every production of Hamlet I’ve seen in the last ten years has used it. It’s become a kind of shorthand for a dictatorship and sure enough, there was the CCTV room downstage right, with a bored looking extra studying some footage of people who, the pinsharp clarity of digital video revealed, were clearly singing opera at each other. The other thing I would like to say to him is ‘Dogs on stage? Never a good idea’.
I really don’t want to gloat, but I have to stop now as I’m off to watch a match at the Nou Camp. Gruberova, Garanca, and the Nou Camp in one 24 hour period. Who am I kidding? I’m going to be gloating for MONTHS.
Wednesday, 2 February 2011
Ha'porth of tar, ship, etc.
Here's how it happens.
You start with the best of intentions. Christmas- with all its excesses- has been and gone, you've had all the wassail of New Year... That's why I always insist on a 'dry January'. I like the discipline of it. I don't do it for health, or for losing weight, or even for smugness. I live an indulgent enough life- it's good to exert a bit of will power, even if only for a month.
The problem is, wagon day. The day that the first drink happens. After a month, it tends to hit one like a juggernaut. I am rather, perversely, proud of the tolerance for alcohol I've built up over my 37 years. Every Feb 1st, though, I become a mewling, drunk-on-one-pint heap. Every Feb 1st, I do something stupid.
This year's is a doozy. Other Feb 1st achievements have included retaking-up-smoking after a month's easy abstinence (and, as a result, finding myself painfully wedgied on a London street), groping- and, alas, I mean groping a dear friend on a crowded tube train, and... well. Too many to mention.
This year's, though, is a doozy. I think it was the successful achievement of my tax return- submitted yesterday, pre-back-off-the-wagon, which led me into this mess. 'I've submitted my tax return' went my thoughts. Because my thoughts are evil, they continued with 'I've been good about money. I should spend some money'.
A couple of years ago, some lovely friends of mine responded to my craving for New York by buying me some Virgin Atlantic vouchers. That way, I could book a flight whenever I found myself at a loose end; I was free to plan my holiday around my availability.
I have a small amount of available income at the moment (well, I don't any more, as you're about to see). Because it's Feb 1- wagon day- I thought it would be a great idea to do for myself what my pals did for me, so I bought myself some Virgin vouchers. That's still just about acceptable- I can more or less afford a wee break in New York, and it's probably a good idea to buy the flight now, so I can use it to cheer myself up when I'm a little skinter. So, I did. I bought some Virgin vouchers, to use at, literally, my leisure. Wow... have I actually been sensible? Have I used my Feb 1 blurriness to do something reckless but wise, brave in its impulsiveness?
Well, no. Not so much. It didn't stop there. I went on to choose a weekend, and buy a ticket for the Met opera and for a Broadway show. I went through all the pages and pages and pages of online booking for both. It was only when they were both safely purchased that I realised I had, in my off-the-wagon giddiness, booked my New York theatre and opera tickets for a weekend when I absolutely, totally, unequivocally have to be in London. Maybe the most important weekend of my whole entire year.
So what I guess I'm saying is- does anyone want to see Orfeo ed Euridice at the Met on 29 April? Or How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying on May 1? Because I need to sell my tickets.
What I'm also saying is that I should probably stay away from my laptop on wagon day. Sigh.
You start with the best of intentions. Christmas- with all its excesses- has been and gone, you've had all the wassail of New Year... That's why I always insist on a 'dry January'. I like the discipline of it. I don't do it for health, or for losing weight, or even for smugness. I live an indulgent enough life- it's good to exert a bit of will power, even if only for a month.
The problem is, wagon day. The day that the first drink happens. After a month, it tends to hit one like a juggernaut. I am rather, perversely, proud of the tolerance for alcohol I've built up over my 37 years. Every Feb 1st, though, I become a mewling, drunk-on-one-pint heap. Every Feb 1st, I do something stupid.
This year's is a doozy. Other Feb 1st achievements have included retaking-up-smoking after a month's easy abstinence (and, as a result, finding myself painfully wedgied on a London street), groping- and, alas, I mean groping a dear friend on a crowded tube train, and... well. Too many to mention.
This year's, though, is a doozy. I think it was the successful achievement of my tax return- submitted yesterday, pre-back-off-the-wagon, which led me into this mess. 'I've submitted my tax return' went my thoughts. Because my thoughts are evil, they continued with 'I've been good about money. I should spend some money'.
A couple of years ago, some lovely friends of mine responded to my craving for New York by buying me some Virgin Atlantic vouchers. That way, I could book a flight whenever I found myself at a loose end; I was free to plan my holiday around my availability.
I have a small amount of available income at the moment (well, I don't any more, as you're about to see). Because it's Feb 1- wagon day- I thought it would be a great idea to do for myself what my pals did for me, so I bought myself some Virgin vouchers. That's still just about acceptable- I can more or less afford a wee break in New York, and it's probably a good idea to buy the flight now, so I can use it to cheer myself up when I'm a little skinter. So, I did. I bought some Virgin vouchers, to use at, literally, my leisure. Wow... have I actually been sensible? Have I used my Feb 1 blurriness to do something reckless but wise, brave in its impulsiveness?
Well, no. Not so much. It didn't stop there. I went on to choose a weekend, and buy a ticket for the Met opera and for a Broadway show. I went through all the pages and pages and pages of online booking for both. It was only when they were both safely purchased that I realised I had, in my off-the-wagon giddiness, booked my New York theatre and opera tickets for a weekend when I absolutely, totally, unequivocally have to be in London. Maybe the most important weekend of my whole entire year.
So what I guess I'm saying is- does anyone want to see Orfeo ed Euridice at the Met on 29 April? Or How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying on May 1? Because I need to sell my tickets.
What I'm also saying is that I should probably stay away from my laptop on wagon day. Sigh.
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