An afternoon at the opera

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

The school subsidised this event completely because it was felt that such cultural enrichment was vital to pupils. And the event proved to be so popular that it has been decided to this at least once a term, ideally once a half term. So please let me know if there are any events you'd like to see, or venues you'd like to visit in the future.

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

If you feel that you were missed out, please let me know and you won't be next time.

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

If you want to remind yourselves of the production, try this link: http://glyndebourne.com/figarotour2012

So a great time was had by all, what opera would you like to see next?