A Singer’s Life Pt24
More great theatres
I was asked to sing in a new production of Handel’s ‘Tolomeo’ at the Halle Handel Festival in Saxony (former East Germany), just after the Iron Curtain was lifted. Handel was born in Halle in 1685 and the Festival was inaugurated in 1922, using the Opernhaus Halle as base. Built in 1866, the theatre was heavily bombed in 1945, and was restored and reopened in 1951. It’s a lovely little theatre in a fascinating town with many old buildings and the vestiges of the communist era intermingled. The Handel House, where the composer was born and which dates back to the 16th century, houses a museum, a performance space, where I sang a solo Handel recital with an early music ensemble from Leipzig, and a cafe and restaurant. It was interesting to see a country emerging from a long period of stagnation, and to spend a couple of months there. The theatre is perfect for baroque music, and there is a recording of the opera available, which we made in 1997.
A strange coincidence connects Handel with J S Bach. They were both born in the same year, and Bach spent the second half of his life in Leipzig, only 40 kms from Halle. Sadly, by this time Handel had left Halle. Apparently, they never met, although they only missed each other by a day in 1719, when Bach visited Halle a day after Handel had left!
Our theatre journey now takes us south to Geneva. I was lucky enough to sing in this beautiful Swiss city a couple of times, in ‘Manon Lescaut’ and’ Samson et Dalilah’. The Grand Theatre is a splendid edifice at the corner of a great square, with magnificent gardens on one side (with the monumental statues of Calvin, John Knox and two other great Calvinists), the Victoria Concert Hall close by and the old town on its hill overlooking the lake on another side. It was opened in 1876, and, like many European theatres, partially destroyed by fire in 1951 and reopened in 1962. Its exterior is more impressive than the interior (blame the late 50s!) but it is a very nice place to work. The auditorium is extremely wide, so you feel you have to angle your body at times, but the opera has the advantage of using the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, which is a top-notch band. I was also lucky to sing with two fantastic conductors in Armin Jordan and Michel Plasson, and the singers were very fine. Unfortunately, the Samson was a terrible production which had originated in Berlin, I think, and was filled with cattle trucks and railway lines. For a biblical story, it had unfortunate resonances! Geneva, with its views of Mont Blanc on a clear day and the lake every day, is a delightful place to work, its French slow and easy to understand, and, being a United Nations hub, it is very cosmopolitan. I was also lucky enough to coincide with my dear friend Tom Higgins who worked for the UN and had been a contemporary at St Andrews. He and his wife Sue lived in Lyon, another city where I worked often, and which will feature in another article, but Tom had a flat in Geneva, conveniently situated near both the airport and the UN. He managed to get hold of a flat in the same building on a short let for me, and many were the jolly hours spent together. I must mention Tom and Sue’s original source of income in Lyon, which was to run an English restaurant there called ‘Mister Higgins’, which specialised in brunch in the British style, and to which the French came in their droves. Tom wrote an excellent book about their experiences of this fun but exhausting enterprise. Working as a translator at the UN was a doddle by comparison!
Over the Alps and south east a bit brings us to the Daddy of all opera houses, La Scala, Milan. In 1996, after ‘The Trojans’ and ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ with Sir Colin Davis and the LSO, I was invited to reprise my role of the Ghost of Hector in Berlioz’ mammoth opera, ‘Les Troyens’ (The Trojans) at La Scala, Milan, with Colin again conducting. Astonishingly, for someone who had been for many years Musical Director of the Royal Opera and Chief Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, he had never conducted at La Scala. He made his debut there at 70 with me at 40!
La Scala is important for many reasons in the world of opera. It opened in 1776 on the site of the former church, Santa Maria alla Scala, which itself had been built in 1381 and named after Beatrice Regina della Scala, the wife of Bernabo Visconti, Lord of Milan. Consequently, the theatre was known as Teatro alla Scala and has nothing to do with stairs or staircases (‘scala’ in Italian). It opened with a performance of ‘Europa Riconosciuta’ by Mozart’s supposed nemesis, Antonio Salieri, and gave birth to many famous operas, like ‘Il Turco in Italia’ (Rossini), ‘Norma’ (Bellini), ‘Maria Stuarda’ (Donizetti), ‘Nabucco’, ‘Otello’ and ‘Falstaff’ (Verdi) and ‘Madama Butterfly’ and ‘Turandot’ (Puccini). It’s quite a list, and one arrives there with a palpable frisson of excitement. Renovated in 1907 when it acquired its present configuration with nearly 2,000 seats and restored in 1946 after bomb damage in the Second World War, it is an amazing place to work. At that time, the backstage area and the dressing rooms were rather ramshackle, but I gather it has been renovated again since 1996 with much better facilities.
The auditorium is a beautiful horseshoe with row upon row of boxes on top of each other with the royal box dead centre at Grand Circle level (unlike Covent Garden, as I mentioned in Part 20), and a gallery where the most vociferous Milanese congregate to show their joy or hatred of the singers. I was lucky not to be singing in an Italian opera (the Berlioz is in French), as the most vocal galleristi keep their shouting for their own. In addition, there was no need to worry about the famous claque, for the same reason. I’m not sure if it still exists in Milan, but I remember my friend Ian Caley telling me about an occasion in, I think, Palermo in Sicily, where he was waiting to get made up before a performance a few years before my Scala visit, when an unknown gentleman knocked on his dressing room door and announced in a slightly low voice “Ah, buona sera Signore, sono la Clacca” and proceeded to suggest a financial arrangement would be necessary to achieve a success in the theatre. Different countries, different mores!
Anyway, no such problems for me, especially as my character appears on stage for about 10 minutes out of an opera lasting several hours. However, I was almost alone on stage, as I came on to warn Aeneas to flee Troy, seek Italy and found the Roman Empire (as you do). The tenor singing Aeneas, Vladimir Bogachev, was my sole companion on this huge stage, and he had been encouraged to take up a position downstage right, famously known as the Callas spot, where apparently the acoustic, already wonderful, is perfect. I walked slowly down stage towards him, trying to get as near the Callas spot as possible, and sang my aria. Check out my recording of this moment, and my costume. Before you split your sides laughing, remember that the costumes were designed by Karl Lagerfeld!
Milan is a brilliant city to spend some time in, not only for its magnificent cathedral, its superb galleries, its famous Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci, its super- glamorous shopping streets, its world famous restaurants and its iconic football stadium, the San Siro, but it is also not far from the beautiful and serene Lake Maggiore, where one can escape the crowds and relax in lovely surroundings. It is quite an old fashioned city, with lots of splendid trams rumbling along the streets, and it never ceased to thrill me when I walked through the enormous Galleria Vittorio Emanuele 11 (Italy’s oldest shopping mall, built in 1877) and out on to the Piazza della Scala, with the famous old theatre right in front of me.
Far from Milan, one of my favourite theatres in the world is the Royal Theatre in Victoria, BC in Canada. I have mentioned the superb company Pacific Opera Victoria before, but I thought I would add a little coda about the theatre. It stands downtown in Victoria, but, compared to most North American cities, this downtown is not remotely brash. Rather the city meanders slowly down to the harbour where ferries dock from Seattle, but also where little water taxis ply their trade amongst mainly pleasure craft. The Empress Hotel dominates the bay along with the British Columbia Parliament Building and the BC Museum, with its fabulous collection of First Nation totem poles. The theatre was opened in 1913 and seats an audience of 1,416. It has a lovely acoustic, and although not suitable for the largest operas, it is perfect for shows where the audience can see the faces and actions of the cast. I sang the wordy roles of La Roche in ‘Capriccio, “Falstaff” and Bottom in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and you felt that the audience were right up close with you. Tim Vernon, the founder and music director of POV, has built up a terrific little company, and it was a pleasure to sing there. From Victoria, you can hire a car and drive up into beautiful Vancouver Island with its marvellous temperate rainforests, lofty mountains and wildlife-watching possibilities. We went up to Tofino and were taken to see black bears wandering out of the forest down to the water’s edge, and, on the other shore, looking over to the mainland and the Rockies, we watched a whole colony of sea lions playing around, making the most tremendous din. On another occasion, we took a seaplane ride from Victoria Harbour (apparently, the busiest seaplane base in Canada) over to Vancouver harbour. After lunch in Vancouver, we took a coach and then a ferry back to Victoria, cruising through the myriad small islands between the mainland and the main island. Back in Victoria, we were able to relax in the wonderful Chateau Victoria Hotel (see Part 23), and enjoy a glass of Falstaff ale, a beer brewed specially for my performance as the eponymous fat knight!
