Opera in three different forms

 I’ve always been a fan of opera even though I’ve zero musical talent: if I were a blues singer I’d be known as Wandering Keys. My mother, a mezzo soprano who was tutored by a pupil of Puccini, would have accepted an offer to join the Carla Rosa Opera Company, if my father - we’re talking about the patriarchal society of the 1930s - hadn’t forbidden her; I auditioned for a role in my school’s production of Bastien und Bastienne but, unsurprisingly, it was offered to a classmate who could actually sing. In brief, SirThomas Beecham had my measure: “The English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes.  
   For the first time since the late noughties, when they were on special offer with the Corriere Della Sera, I’ve recently purchased some opera videos: some from Apple Music + others as Blu Ray discs. And they’ve confirmed my long held opinion that the way you’re consuming an opera determines the ingredients it needs to succeed. To start with an audio recording. Here the only thing that matters is the quality of the singing. When we read a novel we each picture the  characters and their environment in our  own individual way. Hence, when you later see a film of the book you’re always disappointed: that’s not how the protagonists look! The same is true when we listen to a CD of an opera. If we hear that Gilda is incredibly beautiful then that’s how we see Rigoletto’s daughter, and that image will be different for each one of us. Then there’s going to see a performance at the opera house. In this situation a successful production will have performers who are not only gifted singers but competent actors. If you’re not sitting in a front box or using opera glasses it doesn’t really matter how closely they physically resemble the part they’re playing. Approximately will do. But video is a completely different kettle of fish. I bought Zeffirelli’s film of Rigoletto starring Pavarotti and Edita Gruberova. In many ways it was very enjoyable but unfortunately she didn’t fit my personal definition of beauty; I found Victoria Vergara, who played Maddalena much more attractive. And this really spoilt the opera: hearing someone you don’t find physically attractive being endlessly referred to as irresistibly beautiful. What comprises good looks, of course, is completely subjective. The fact that I wasn’t enchanted by Miss Gruberova’s appearance doesn’t mean her looks don’t appeal to others. Kim Karshadian is lusted after by many, but not by me. However, there are opera videos where the problem is not remotely subjective. We’re talking age. I am extremely fond of the Opera Australia 1993 video of La Bohème starring Cheryl Barker and David Hobson. A friend who, unlike me, understands music isn’t very keen on it: there are recordings by better singers. But I’m captured by the fact that they’re both relatively young, and consequently are believable as two youthful bohemians. They look the part. And finally there’s Madama Butterfly, the tragedy of the fifteen year old exploited by the paedophile Pinkerton. I bought the Blu Ray starring Ermonela Jaho.  Beautiful singing, great acting - I wept as the opera ended. But the close-ups of the 43 year old singer completely undermined the credibility of her playing a 15 year old. The answer to the problem? Obviously it wouldn’t be having fifteen year olds singing the rôle. The opera was written to be seen in a theatre, not on a television set, and watched from a distance Miss Jaho would be perfectly plausible playing a teenager. The solution, surely, would be to avoid recording close-ups in operas where they would undermine its credibility. In many they don’t. The close ups of Stefania Bonfadelli in La Traviata add to the viewer’s emotional involvement. But in this opera we’re not being continually told that the protagonist is a child or that she’s outstandingly beautiful. Just an attractive young woman who’s destroyed by the twisted morality of her lover’s father.

Notes from the asylum

Yesterday Brexiteers demonstrated outside a Parliament busy ‘betraying’ them by rejecting Theresa May’s deal for the third time. A journalist asked people what motivated them to attend. ‘ “I am here fighting for freedom,” said one man from Hampshire. A no-deal Brexit might well lead to economic hardship but “freedom is more important than economics” ’ Freedom to do what, one might ask.

   While the demonstration was taking place, ‘thousands of passengers had their travel plans thrown into chaos after Eurostar cancelled all services to and from St Pancras when a trespasser was caught brandishing a St George’s flag. The 44-year-old spent the night on the roof of a tunnel leading away from the central London station, bringing Eurostar services to a halt before he was arrested by police on Saturday morning. One of those affected described to a journalist how she was left hundreds of pounds out of pocket by the cancellations. She’d organised a weekend break for her mother in Lille, France, but the pair were eventually forced to scrap their plans. They spent four hours waiting in a lounge at St Pancras on Friday evening before finding out their train had been cancelled.  She and her mother had to spend £125 for a hotel in the capital before rising with just three hours’ sleep for a rebooked train, only to find out they could not travel on Saturday morning either because of further cancellations. Although she had already spent £450 for accommodation in Lille, she and her mother were forced to scrap their plans to go to the continent and are going to spend the weekend in Brighton instead.’

   So one man demonstrates his support for ‘freedom’  by causing thousands of others to lose a great deal of time and money and their freedom to travel to their chosen destinations. Replace the man on the roof exercising his freedom to behave like a moron with David Cameron, and thousands of people with sixty million, and you’ve got our present situation in a nutshell. 

The List of Shame

Oh sovra tutte mal creata plebe

che stai nel loco onde parlare è duro, 

mei foste state qui pecore o zebe!

Inferno XXXII, 13-15

An article in today’s Guardian contains a list of how MPs voted in yesterday’s indicative vote. None of the measures passed. However, while the proposal to revoke Article 50 was heavily defeated by a margin of 109, the motion in favour of confirming any Brexit deal with a public vote was lost by only 27. Forty-eight Labour MPs failed to support the measure: twenty-four women and twenty-four men. Of these, twelve women and five men abstained, the others voted against. While the overwhelming majority represented constituencies which had voted to leave the European Union, two members from Remain constituencies - Kate Hoey and Jim Fitzpatrick - voted against the measure, and one - Mike Kane - abstained.

  So a chance for people to reconsider their options, in the light of reality rather than the fanciful promises made in 2016, was blocked by forty-eight Labour MPs. If they had voted in accordance with party policy the motion would have passed.

The British Loony-Bin?

Last Thursday, Sette - one of the  Corriere della Sera’s weekly supplements -  published an article by Beppe Severgnini, a journalist who lived in London in the nineties working for the Economist. Having spent the previous weekend in the UK visiting friends and former colleagues he came to the conclusion that ‘Brexit è uno psicodramma. È piombato sulla nazione più stabile d’Europa e l’ha trasformata in un manicomio democratico’ [Brexit is a psychodrama. It pounced  on Europe’s most stable country and turned it  into a democratic loony-bin]. 

   The Brexit mindset was exemplified last Friday: Brexit Direct Action planned major disruptions to the nation’s road network as a protest against the March 29th leaving date's being postponed. The Mirror reported that ‘One driver taking part said: “We can and will bring the country to its knees”. ’ In other words, I don’t care how much inconvenience I cause to others, because all that matters is what I want. Few people took part and the effect on traffic was negligible.

   In contrast, around a million people took part  in the People’s Vote march in London the following day, my younger daughter and her son - on the right in the photo -  amongst them. 

Rather than seeking to inconvenience others, or force their opinions on them, they simply asked that the country should be given the opportunity to accept or reject  Theresa May’s Brexit deal or, alternatively, rescind article 50. When  the Commons rejected her deal by a crushing majority in January the Prime Minister brought it back for another vote on the 13th March. Once again it failed to pass. However, rather than accepting defeat she was planning to bring it before the House a third time if the proposal hadn’t been ruled unconstitutional by the Speaker. Despite this, she  has rejected suggestions that the UK should vote in a second referendum, saying that the public has already made its decision. One rule for you, another for me.

   Most political commentators consider the majority of MPs voted  to remain in the EU in the 2016 referendum. The same commentators believe it highly unlikely that a motion to rescind article 50 would command a majority in Parliament. MPs of leave-voting constituencies, frightened that they would lose their seats if they supported revoking Brexit,  put their own interests in front of their country's. Brexit is also supported by the USA, Russia and China. Any measures that weaken the EU are in their economic interest: it would be much easier to impose advantageous trading conditions on individual European states than it is on a trading bloc of over 512 million people. And, finally, Brexit is in the interests of the very wealthy, opening the possibility of deregulating financial institutions  and watering down the employment rights enjoyed by  workers under current European legislation. For everyone else Brexit is a disaster inflicted by a misinformed 27.55 percentage of the British population*  not only on their fellow countrymen but on themselves as well. So it's easy  to see why Beppe Severgnini thinks the inmates are running the asylum. In reality, of course, they are simply being manipulated by their warders: foreign governments promoting their countries' economic interests, and  rational but utterly immoral British plutocrats. 

   

*Although 52% of those who voted in the referendum opted to leave the European Union, only  37% of the total electorate did so. Minors, who are going to have to live with the consequences long after the majority of those who voted Leave are dead, had no say in the decision.  Assuming they like their elders are 'people', the Will of the People was decided by just 27.55% of the UK's total population. In the Scottish and Welsh devolution referenda in 1979 as well as a majority 'yes' vote, a 40% majority of the electorate was needed for parliament to implement the devolution legislation.  In Scotland, on a 64% turnout, 33% of the electorate voted for devolution while 31% voted against. The government did not proceed with devolution even though a majority had voted for it. In Italy  the result of a legislative referendum is only valid if at least a majority of all eligible voters go to the polling station and cast their ballot. If this quorum is not met, the referendum is invalid. A case can be made for saying that an Italian referendum does express the will of its people, to a lesser extent the same holds true of the 1979 devolution referenda. But, not I think, for the Uk wide one held in June 216. 

   A final reflection: enacting 'the will of the people' is not a moral imperative: in the 1933 general election in Germany the Nazis won 43.9 percent of the vote and with their coalition partner, the German National People's Party obtained a working majority in the Reichstag. One assumes the 'will of the people'  didn't include demanding the deaths of fifteen million armed servicemen and women and forty-five million civilians. Ordinary people suffered; big business made a fortune. Does something ring a bell?  

Italy today

With Count-for-nothing at the helm, cotrolled by Putin’s podgy poodle and the pea-brained panda, one can only echo Dante:

Ahi serva Italia, di dolore ostello,

nave sanza nocchiere in gran tempesta,

        non donna di province, ma bordello!1

The People’s Advocate and the People’s Parties.

If the M5S and the Lega embody two different faces of Italian populism, their choice of Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, the self-dubbed People’s Advocate, represents their common denominator: the apotheosis of the common man. 

  Grillo’s movement articulated Italy’s widespread disenchantment with the traditional parties of left and right, seen as self-serving oligarchies. If they were swept away and ‘the people’ could express their ‘will’ online all would be well. For the past two years the patent absurdity of this ingenuous belief has been conclusively demonstrated by the ever-increasing mounds of refuse, potholed streets and self-combusting buses presided over by Rome’s inept  M5S administration. Like Trump’s electoral base, though, the Five Star Movement’s supporters remain unmoved by their idol’s incompetence. Their commitment is based on faith not reason. 

   While the M5S reflects a naive optimism- if only the corrupt politicians are swept way, all will be well, no need for experience, expertise or competence - Salvini’s Lega represents the darker face of populism: the belief that ordinary Italians have two concrete enemies seeking to destroy their identity: the European Union undermining their ability to decide their own destiny, and  non-Caucasians polluting their ethnic identity. Although a moment’s reflection reveals the inherent absurdity of believing an ordinary Italian’s economic woes will  trouble an Italian billionaire simply because they share a passport and skin colour,  the misconception serves to deflect people’s attention from the real cause of their distress: the increasing weakness of Europe’s individual national governments in relation to global companies. The European Union, on the other hand, has had some success in calling them to heel. It also attempted to mitigate Italy’s immigration crisis by seeking to distribute the newcomers across the Union rather than leaving Italy to fend for itself. It was the other member states who opposed the move. A cynic might wonder whether, rather than the product of naivety,  Salvini’s policies are actually aimed at promoting the interests of the one percent by targeting the  institution capable of  championing the common man against international finance and globalised companies, and reducing the profitable pool of immigrant workers available for gangmasters to exploit in southern Italy. The far right’s love affair with Putin - a strong EU would limit Russia’s political influence in the continent, used to promote the  European financial operations of Russian oligarchs - gives the theory additional weight.

   And then there’s Conte. Unlike Mario Monti, for example, he’s clearly been plucked from the second division of technical experts, and as such we common folk recognise one of our own. A Monti or a Prodi has no need to primp his cv - we do. When I was applying to university in the early sixties I numbered my membership of the school athletics team amongst my achievements. I didn’t feel it necessary to add that I owed my place to a flu epidemic which laid low all the school’s decent athletes, that it had happened five years previously, and that my place lasted for just one match. If I were suddenly plucked from obscurity to be offered the post of Prime  Minister I would probably refer to my experience teaching undergraduates - and feel it unnecessary to mention I did so at an FE college,  rather than at Oxford or Harvard. I might allude to my managerial role as Head of Humanities and Course Director of the BA degree, without revealing that the Humanities section consisted of fewer than a dozen staff, and the undergraduate degree had only twenty students. However, I hope I would have the good sense to reject the offer and suggest they seek someone with outstanding achievements and proven competence.

    I’m not suggesting that I’m in the same league as Conte: if he’s in the Championship, I belong in the second division of the Southern League. He may prove to have exceptional political skills but someone from the Premiership would be a safer bet.  But, if his role is merely to provide a mask for Salvini and Di Maio, who better than someone whose very mediocrity embodies populism’s rejection of  ‘elites’ and ‘experts’?

Kiss Good-bye to the English NHS

Although my heart quite liked the idea of Scottish independence, my head told me it would be disastrous for the interests of the ordinary Englishman or Englishwoman. Without its Scottish contingent Labour would never have sufficient MPs to form a Westminster government. 

    A few months ago some political commentators claimed that Assad quietly supported Islamic State terrorists infiltrating the Syrian opposition forces, counting on their presence to weaken American opposition to his regime. The volte-face has occurred, whether or not Assad was actually engaged in the machiavellian manoeuvres attributed to him. I naively wondered whether Cameron had a similar strategy: secretly working for Scottish independence, whilst publicly opposing it, in order to ensure a permanent Tory majority at Westminster. 

    His speech, this morning, welcoming the Scottish voters' rejection of independence, stripped the wool from my eyes as I realised that he was playing a far deeper game. One which involved Labour and the Lib Dems as his unwitting stooges. As part of the attempt to persuade the Scots to say no to independence, all three English parliamentary parties promised greater devolution of powers to Edinburgh. And the logical quid pro quo? Cameron revealed it this morning: acting to settle the West Lothian question. If the Scots are to control their internal affairs without English interference, justice requires that they can't interfere in ours. The undercover privatisation of the English NHS can continue apace without the Tories having to worry about Labour having sufficient English MPs to resist the process - ever. 

   My despair was complete when the BBC followed their broadcast of Cameron's speech by interviewing Farage, the leader of the "Turkeys, Vote for Christmas" party. My sole consolation: as it's still part of the UK, the English can always protect themselves from Dave and Nick's Brave New World by moving to Scotland.