One cold afternoon in November, 45 of us went to see Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, performed by the Glyndebourne company at the Regent Theatre. There's a kind of Y9 pupil who will ask, not believing it possible, "do you actually like/listen to this kind of music?" and the answer of course is yes, I love it! Having asked everyone what they thought about the opera I was surprised to find that everyone enjoyed it. This surprised me because:
- not everyone likes the operatic style of singing
- it was sung in Italian, meaning that we all had to look up to read the surtitles
- there are long passages of recitative (look it up if you can't remember!)
- the plot is rather convoluted, reminding me of a Shakespeare comedy, when I prefer the simplicity of a tragedy
I allocated tickets to students who:
- study music
- play a musical instrument
- have shown an interest in such events
- have taken part in performances in school
- I thought would benefit from or even be inspired by such an event
The silliest question I was asked was "will SuBo be in it?" (you know who you are). The best was "will they be playing on A or Bb clarinets?" (Lizzie). I'm still waiting for our ace Y9 reporter to produce a full review of the opera but I'll put here some of the comments students gave me:
- the singing and orchestral playing were superb
- the conductor had great hair and facial expressions
- the sets were amazing
- some of the directing meant that there was a bit too much "stand there and sing"
- the costumes seemed to be a mixture of traditional and modern - confusing
- the bits of popular dance seemed added on in an unconvincing way, although the macarena was fun
- the man doing the explaining at the beginning was very, very good
- there was some unnecessary groping of female cast members
So a great time was had by all, what opera would you like to see next?
