English National Opera

5th June 2008

This is just such a cool opera. It starts with these 2 girls in bed having an orgasm and you kind of feel things just couldn’t get any better after that. But somehow it does get better or at least it doesn’t get worse. The opera is just really funny, it has some really cool characters. After that bit there’s some more lesbian stuff and a bit of fighting and cross-dressimg and it’s got some really great music as well. Okay yeah so parts of it are a bit of a slush fest but I can live with that when it’s got all the other stuff too. It’s got something for everyone, Der Rosenkavalier.

The only problem with it is that it’s a really long opera and I had to sit in the balcony and it was a bit squashed but I didn’t really notice it because I was so into the performance. David McVicar has done a really fun production with lots of visual jokes, I think it would have been quite easy to follow if you didn’t know the story already. Some of the music is quite sexy like the plot and Edward Gardner who was conducting put that over quite well. He milked the slushy bits a bit but I think that’s fair enough really, it’s an important part of the opera.

Sarah Connolly was Octavian, she was seriously good. She didn’t just sing it really well, she really has this cool teenage walk thing going on which was annoying in a way because a lot of the time I forgot she was a girl so I couldn’t get excited about the lesbian stuff but that’s a good thing really I suppose as you’re not supposed to think she’s a lesbian. Do you know something though, Octavian’s the same age as me and he’s pulled the Marschallin who’s in her thirties! My mates were really impressed I’d pulled Sophie (that’s my girlfriend, not the character in Der Rosenkavalier) who’s 3 years older than me and I thought it was quite good going really even though she does go for younger guys but seriously if I could pull some hot babe in her thirties like Octavian did that would be very cool. If Sophie’s reading this obviously I’m joking.

But yeah brilliant performance from Sarah and one really interesting bit about this production was that Octavian wanted to go back to the Marschallin but she was pushing him at Sophie (that’s Sophie in the opera). They didn’t change the words I don’t think, they just showed her walking off to leave them along together and him trying to follow her. I can understand in a way, if I was with some hot older woman and she dumped me and tried to fix me up with some 15 year old I’d be like hang on a minute, it’s up to me who I go out with. Octavian’s a bit pathetic though and he stayed with Sophie but it would have been a bit difficult for him to do anything else really when he had more words to sing. But you could tell even though he really fancied her and kept kissing her (yes more lesbian stuff!) he wasn’t very happy with how things turned out.

Sarah Connolly also got to kiss Baron Ochs and the conductor so she really got around a bit! The scenes where Octavian pretends to be a girl and goes on a date with Baron Ochs, that was so cool. Sarah did the weird voice but I could still understand what she was singing. It’s stupid she’s never sung at the ROH. She’s sung at the Met though.

Sarah Tynan was Sophie, she was wearing a weird dress that stuck out so if Octavian had tried to put his arm round her I don’t reckon he’d have been able to reach properly. Sometimes it sounded like Sarah was pushing her voice a bit to get through the orchestration which I don’t think she should do, they should just play quieter but she’s a total babe and a brilliant singer. Sophie’s a bit fake though, she acts all innocent but when she kissed Octavian it looked like she’d done that before. Seriously though, dumb blonde is not the word!

The Marschallin was Janice Watson, some crits haven’t been that sure about her but I really liked her. She made the Marschallin seem a lot more human than she usually is. She is a bit girly especially in bed and she’s sexy in a posh sort of way. Some people think she was a bit emotionless but I’d say she was too emotional if anything, she was almost like clingy in the first scene. But major respect to her for letting Octavian go like that, how many girls would react like that if they caught their boyfriend with another girl? She should be an inspiration to girls everywhere.

Baron Ochs was John Tomlinson, he is just so funny, even his first line which was offstage was really clear. What a total prat though! He’s got this dance he does when he thinks he’s pulled, it’s just like so hilarious! He just totally fills the stage with his personality but at the same time he’s like really really pathetic.

Andrew Shore is one of those people who’s always going on about how the ENO shouldn’t have surtitles. I get his point, it’s really annoying when you can’t understand people and it’s not like the surtitles spoil the jokes, if it’s a funny bit they like wait till the last word of the joke before putting it up on the surtitles most of the time. He is right though that they should try to improve people’s diction, maybe one day there won’t be any surtitles at all and it won’t matter but I think they need to have surtitles when they’re getting all the improvements sorted out. Maybe what they could do (this would be really mean though) is to get people at the first night to vote on which singers need surtitles and then they could set the surtitles up so they only work when someone with crap diction is singing. It would be mean but if singers thought that was going to happen they might be more likely to try to have perfect diction. In case you’re wondering Andrew’s diction is brilliant. His character von Faninal is another prat but he’s a nice guy, just totally useless.

Barry Banks was the Italian Tenor, it was supposed to be Dwayne Jones from the Young Singers programme but they had Barry at some performances and Alfie Boe at other performances. I don’t know why Dwayne couldn’t do it but if Barry Banks is in a production you don’t complain about it! The only thing I didn’t like about his performance was that it was so good, it really pissed me off when Baron Ochs interrupted him and wouldn’t let him finish. I know it’s a slushy song but when you get a really good tenor like that you want to hear him don’t you? Baron Ochs should just like shut up for 5 minutes then do his bit. But Baron Ochs wouldn’t shut up for 5 seconds, no way 5 mins.

Madeleine Shaw from the Young Singers programme sang all her stuff though, she’s good. She sang Annina, that’s a character that doesn’t usually make much impression on me really but even when Madeleine’s not singing there was just something so obviously dodgy about Annina, she was all kind of skulking around the stage, it was brilliant. Hairy said she showed a Scottish commitment to getting her money or something, Annina is actually Italian though Hairy! She even had more stage presence than Stuart Kale who was Valzacchi, the other dodgy one and he’s good.

There was only one person in the cast that wasn’t brilliant, I think he/she was maybe trying too hard to put lots of character into his/her voice and it didn’t work for me. I’m not saying who it was though, that would be mean. And I think the ending’s a bit crap, they should think up something else to do in the last bit. I mean like, Sophie drops her handkerchief and sends this little boy or servant guy in to get it, so what? What’s so dramatic about that? Then you have to put up with the servant doing this stupid pose like he’s the star of the opera. Total anti-climax. What I’d want to do is as they’re still in the hotel where Octavian was on his date with Baron Ochs and there’s a bloody great bed there (that’s what Octavian called it, really good line that, it’s always well funny when people swear in the middle of an opera) maybe it should finish how it starts with 2 women in bed together only Octavian and Sophie this time. That would be a much better ending.

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