A Singer’s Life Pt2
You will be glad, no doubt, that delusions of grandeur have abated and I feel I can safely return to writing in the first person.
When I left off last week, I had just won the Decca Kathleen Ferrier Prize, and was completing my final year at the GSMD in London. The Semi-Final was, I think, on a Friday with the Final to follow on the Saturday. Just before I went to the Wigmore for the Semi, I was contacted by the Guildhall to say that they were not able to let me off rehearsals that day (receive an NA, in professional parlance) in order to compete. I pointed out that this was perhaps the most prestigious competition in Britain at the time, and that I was paying them to be at the School and not the other way round. Consequently, I would be attending the Wigmore and hoped to progress further. I also pointed out that if I did win, there might be some prestige attaching to the School where I studied.
Prohibition ended! Astonishingly, I did win the Decca Prize and the School was happy to receive plaudits. I sang Claggart’s monologue from Britten’s Billy Budd, which seemed to sway the judges, and looked forward to singing many Claggarts in the future. 39 years later, I’m still waiting…….
The same year, the BBC broadcast the Elisabeth Schwarzkopf Masterclasses from the previous year’s Edinburgh Festival, and, very briefly, I became a sort of celebrity, in a firmly non celebrity era. I’ll never forget, at a swanky restaurant in London, when a very distinguished fellow came over to my table, and said “I say, aren’t you the chap from the TV Masterclass? Jolly good!” God knows what it must be like to be famous now, but I rather enjoyed my brief flirtation with fame then!
As a result of these two events, somehow an agent picked me up, and I found myself that autumn flying to Venice to make my professional operatic debut at the world famous Teatro La Fenice in Venice. I was cast as a Magus in the world premiere of Niccolo Castiglioni’s Oberon, a modern opera based on Ben Johnson’s 17th century masque. This was terribly exciting, to be part of a world premiere at one of the world’s most wonderful theatres, built in 1792. Destroyed by fire in 1836, it was immediately rebuilt, reflecting its name “The Phoenix”, rising as it did from the ashes. Since the opera was in English, and performed in tandem with another composition by Castiglioni, The Lord’s Masque (also by Johnson), the management of the Fenice had cast almost exclusively British singers, and I was destined to meet and work with such titans as Ian Caley, Philip Doghan, Malcolm Rivers, Nigel Robson, Justin Lavender and Peter Savidge.
Unfortunately, Castiglioni spoke no English, as became apparent as we began rehearsals, and we were sustained in sanity over the next few weeks only by British humour and a lot of wine, as we tried to make some sense of the hopeless word setting and the crazy production. The show began with two tenor satyrs, or they may have been nymphs, who spoke/sang “Chromis, Mnacil, none appears!”, dressed as tubby cabbages. The production descended further into farce until Peter and I appeared as Gandalf figures singing syllabic nonsense.
This was also a volatile period in Italian history (another one), and we were forever fearful of strikes by the orchestra, the stage crew or indeed anyone near the theatre. The first night was cancelled for a strike, but we did eventually put on one performance, astonishingly recorded by Italian radio, which found critical acclaim (the reviewers were similarly handicapped in their understanding of the English language!).
Here I was able to make my casting worthwhile, as I noted in passing to my colleagues that the poster for the show mentioned that it was “in collaboration with RAI”( the Italian radio company), and didn’t that mean that we were due an extra recording fee? My senior friends duly contacted the management who denied all knowledge of a fee and dismissed our concerns with a sly laugh and many hand gestures. When my colleagues insisted that they pay us a fee or we would ourselves go on strike, the wrath of God and the Italian establishment prepared to descend on us. We would never work in an Italian theatre again and would be forever blacklisted. My friends persisted, and amazingly the extra fee appeared, already prepared in brown envelopes with each of our names on the front. Honour satisfied and bartering achieved, we sang the show and departed Venice clutching, not only the brown envelopes with the recording fee, but larger, much larger, envelopes containing our full fees in cash, in millions of Italian Lire. As we were at that time only allowed to bring £32 of foreign currency into Britain, the return home involved a lot of sock and underwear stuffing. We had paid Italian Tax, so there was no real problem, but it all felt a bit dodgy. However, we had an amazing experience to look back on, an autumn in Venice, staying on the Lido, and commuting to work each day by Vaporetto. 15 years later, the Fenice burned down again, this time caused by arson for the insurance money! You couldn’t make it up. It was rebuilt but we were privileged to sing in the old building. It was astonishingly beautiful.
Even more astonishing was the fact that our one performance had attracted the attention of the Rome Opera House, and we were invited to Rome the following year to repeat the exercise. This was despite the fact that Oberon, in my opinion, was a truly terrible work, and hardly deserved to see the light of day again, anywhere.
However, we all convened in 1982 in Rome, where we put on several more performances, and had a wonderful time in the Eternal City. It wasn’t too hot (it was spring) and we had plenty of time to explore the wonders of that great place, and to eat very well and drink lots more wine!
Three things stand out:
We performed in the Teatro al’Opera di Roma which was an immensely ugly Fascist temple built by Mussolini and his crew, but which had a decent acoustic.
I met very briefly, and not really realising at the time, one of my all time favourite Wagner and Strauss tenors, James King, after a show. He knew my fellow Magus (Peter Savidge was unavailable and an American living in Rome took his place) and came to the performance. History does not relate if he liked it. My guess is NOT!
During rehearsals, one of our Italian colleagues rushed up to us in a state of agitation, shouting “It’s War, it’s war. England against Argentina in the Malvinas!!!” (England meaning Great Britain, as usual, by the way!) We assumed he was referring to some football match but gradually realised that our quiet post-WW2 existence had been shattered by a War. We had not been brought up to expect this, as our generation had been afraid of the Russians and Nuclear Annihilation but not a conventional naval conflict on the other side of the world. It seems extraordinary now, after all the regional wars and skirmishes of the last 40 years, but this came as a profound shock to us. Harold Wilson had cleverly kept us out of Vietnam but suddenly, our country was at war. Needless to say, we carried on manfully eating, drinking and singing but the realisation of what Mrs Thatcher and Galtieri had done began to sink in. It all seems a long time ago.
Next week: BBS, Benjamin Britten and France.
