RANDOM JOTTINGS

"The show goes on though the bombs are falling; the enterprise is bigger than you are. There is no room for sentimentality: you have to be ruthless and put your personal life second. We don’t know the details of your son’s accident, but the boy has a mother and it’s her job to be at the bedside."

The above is a quote from an article written by the Telegraph’s opera critic and has brought about a very large post bag indeed most of which has a tone of total outrage at these remarks.  Before I go any further with this post I will make quite clear, just in case there is anybody out there who is unaware of this, that I am a huge fan of Bryn Terfel and, therefore, biased in his favour.  It also helps that I decided not to purchase tickets for the forthcoming Ring Cycle he has cancelled.  I will be honest and say that I might be less sanguine about this cancellation if I had shelled out up to £500 for the seats, but I havered and havered and decided not to buy them in the end.  My main reason is that I think the production is dire as I have already posted  here the singing of John Treleaven ss Siegfried is utterly appalling and I spent most of the evening in the final opera, Gotterdamerung, with my eyes shut so I did not have to watch the stage, thus negating the whole point of attending. 

I understand, that contrary to my earlier post, Bryn has earned the nickname Bryn the Cancel and several instances are given of his withdrawal from large events.  One article which waxed wrathful about this mentioned a cancellation because he had a ‘bad back’, another because his ‘wife was ill’ and the third ‘so he could be present at the birth of his son’.  It would seem that the so called bad back which was written about as if it was a muscle twinge, resulted in an operation on his spine; his wife being ill was when she had a life threatening illness when pregnant and, the third time he was away, was because Bryn wished to be at the birth of his next child because of what had happened in the second pregnancy.

Now to me, all this seems perfectly reasonable but opera fans are not reasonable people and can get very heated if the artist you wish to see goes AWOL.  I have suffered this on several occasions and the disappointment is huge, but come on, it is only opera.  Missing out on Bryn, Jose, Luciano and worst of all the chance to see Callas (I have done all of these and I can tell you the upset is intense at the time), is not the end of the world.  I also speak with some little authority as for nearly 25 years I was married to a musician who was a fully trained opera singer.  When we first married he was touring round the UK with a now defunct group called Opera for All. This did what it said and sang opera in gyms, halls, school classrooms etc etc.  My honeymoon was spent with an entire company being driven around the less beautiful parts of the UK in a van.  Oswaldtwistle and Clackheaton on a dark and damp winter’s evening are not places of beauty let me tell you (and if anybody from either of these places should read this and take offence well I am sorry but please don’t write and tell me…)..  When my two daughters were babies/toddlers I was often at home alone with them for weeks at a stretch and the responsibility and exhaustion was immense.  Mrs Terfel has, I gather, put her foot down about Bryn’s long absences and says after 20 years she has had enough.  Well, I am sure she can afford more help than I could and is not short of money to feed the gas meter as I was, but the loneliness is still the same and I totally understand how she feels.

To get back to the quote at the start of this post, this particular writer seems to think that a broken finger suffered by Bryn’s six year old is not enough reason to cancel (the hand was crushed I gather) but if the child was more seriously ill then it would be more understandable.  So if he fell out of a tree and broke his neck and was rushed off to hospital and put in intensive care, well that is OK but anything less than life or death and you still have to turn up and sing.  The postbag and excoriating comments on this attitude was not, as you might think, all female but a large number of men disagreed with this stance as well.

The opera world is hugely pressurised and young singers today are pushed far harder than they used to be years ago, if you cancel or turn down a role as you think you are not ready for it or are not well enough, no matter, somebody else will be there instead.  No wonder that singers grab every opportunity going.  An American tenor, recently sacked by an opera house as they accused him of drug abuse, broke ranks and ranted about the tyranny of management and their behavior and made the assertion hat a lot more opera singers take drugs that one would think.  He said the pressures of the opera world are just as bad as those of the pop scene where it is almost expected that drugs will be taken by all and sundry.  He also asserts that Rolando Villazon, the tenor of the moment, is unhappy and suffering from depression.  Jerry Hadley, another American singer, who I saw at Covent Garden years ago has just committed suicide after a bout of drinking and depression.  He was only 53.   All of this has caused shock waves and instant rebuttal by assorted managements, but just a day after reading all of this, I then spotted a paragraph in the evening paper on Thursday in which it was announced that the aforementioned Rolando Villazon has cancelled his forthcoming appearances in L’Elisir d’amore at Covent Garden as his doctor has recommended he take at least 3-4 months off.  It seems he is suffering from depression….

So, if you are an opera lover, then you buy your ticket for six months hence and keep your fingers crossed that all is well and the singer of your choice will be there.  Other articles read by me in the last few days include one in which the writer opines that the true opera goer is there for the music and not the singer.  I have attended operas around the world with artists who are not well known outside their country but are very good, have sat through wonderful productions at the English National Opera which does not go in for big names, and while I have enjoyed some superb evenings in these places, I can tell you that nothing beats sitting in an opera house listening to a great talent and a superstar at the top of their form.  The main reason I enjoyed the Ring Cycle earlier this year was not only the music, which I love, but also because Bryn and Placido were there chewing the scenery and generally causing the collective audience hairs to stand on end.  I am pretty sure I am not alone in this view either.

Those people who have got totally worked up about the Bryn cancellation (though I have to say I do think he could have told ROH a little earlier) should get their priorities right and decide what is important in life.  I adore opera but I know its place….