My neighbour is having essential refurbishment works carried out on her house — cue hour upon hour of sawing and drilling with occasional respite for cigarette breaks (the builders’, not mine). The high-pitched whine of machinery makes me feel as if the horrific dentist scene from The Marathon Man is playing on an endless loop inside my head. One of the downsides of working from home is that, if there’s a domestic problem — a leaky roof, a power outage, building noise from next door, you have nowhere else to flee to. In terms of timing, it has happily (for my neighbour) coincided with the end of mandatory home-working so she has escaped the noise by going back to work. Happily (for me), she works for the Royal Opera House.
To compensate us for the horrible noise, she offers us free tickets for The Magic Flute.
While I wouldn’t describe myself as an opera aficionado (who would, unless actively wanting to sound pretentious?), I used to go occasionally with my late father, who adored opera and did drawings for the programme at Glyndebourne. Looking back, I can see I was too young at the age of 11 for my first, The Marriage of Figaro, but by the time I was 13 and Dad took me to see Carmen at the Edinburgh Festival, I was more than ready.
Carmen not only has music to stir your heart, making you want to leap up into the aisle to stamp your feet and curl your disdainful lip (well, it’s sexy when she does it), it also has a proper story that makes sense. This is by no means a given in opera.
The Royal Opera House is an awe-inspiring space, sumptuous and rich with velvet and gilding. But it is absolutely packed. At capacity, it seats 2,256. I haven’t been this closely gathered with so many people for over 18 months. It is at once unnerving (Everyone is exhaling so much! Am I crazy?) yet also exciting. Before Corona, my main activities involving a throng of people were going to shul (occasional, poor attendance record) and going to the cinema (often, exemplary attendance record). If we’d had to pay for them, our prime tickets for the opera would have cost £200. Each. No wonder I’m so uncultured.
It begins. I’ve only seen The Magic Flute once before and had forgotten a) how sublime the music is and, conversely, b) how preposterous the plot is, an elaborate but nonsensical mash-up of masonic rites, magic (not just the titular flute), and maternal love turned warped and crazy (don’t worry – she’s not Jewish). It opens with the hero, Prince Tamino, being attacked by a giant monster, whose presence is never explained. Tamino resolves to rescue the imprisoned Pamina (having fallen in love with her after a moment’s glance at her picture as if he’s swiped right after a two-second view on Tinder). The prince has to undergo a series of trials of his courage, fortitude and honour, the most ludicrous of which is when he and his sidekick Papageno are enjoined to remain silent (an unexpected twist in an art form dependent upon singing).
If I submitted a novel that relied on a plot with this many holes in it, my editor would bounce it back to me with a single, red word scrawled across the top: Rewrite! I used to be a book editor myself and I can imagine my own notes rampaging across the script: Why does Tamino have to undergo these tests? Why can’t he just say: ‘Thanks awfully but I’ll just rescue Pamina here and we’ll be off?’ If Sarastro is so wise, how come he can’t see how creepy his aide Monastatos is? And, if the flute is so magical, shouldn’t it make the trials of Tamino a doddle?
Still, aah, that music…It’s so long since I’ve heard live music, and not just any old music but music that makes you feel as if you have been touched by a divine presence. Even though the plot is stupid, the music wends a path into my heart as well as my mind as though we are there not just for entertainment but for a collective act of worship. The entwined voices of the three boy sopranos who lead Tamino on his quest are so beautiful I am brought to the brink of tears. Perhaps it is even more moving because we have all been separated for so long, restricted to video calls, zoom services, or, lately, family meals huddled in our coats in the garden? We are all so pent up that a comic moment where two characters bump elbows on stage instead of shaking hands almost brings the house down.
This is one of the things many of us have yearned for: being together, not just with those we know and love, but the feeling of belonging to a wider community, whether one of fellow members of the tribe, returning to work, or for other passions that unite us — a book group, a football match, a new film, reminding us that whatever we may be as individuals we also need to be together.
Claire’s latest novel, A Second-Hand Husband (Boldwood Books), is available now. Twitter: @clairecalman
