The Magic Flute, Prague State Opera House

I'm now going to review all the theatre/opera/concerts I've seen since April in chronological order, we should end with Jonathan Pryce's King Lear, which I saw last month, the night my appendicitis kicked in!


Rob and I went to Prague in April, we stayed in a boatel, a boat-hotel, it was amazing, two duvets on a double bed, one each?! Why did I never think of that?! So we did lots of Prague things, saw the sights and the museums and the architecture, ate revolting meat dishes and beer but found the best food was at the opera house. Rob booked the holiday and I booked the opera. Rob had never been to the opera but seeing as he loves the film Amadeus so much, and so much of it was filmed in Prague, I thought it would be nice to see a Mozart at their state opera house! It was fab and funny and had great tunes (the other operas I've been to I found tedious, I think the trick is to see one where you already know the music is to your taste!) At the interval we had ridiculously cheap fab open sandwiches and glasses of champagne. The only downside was the theatre layout, there were no normal seats (stalls, circle, etc) it was all little compartments, each with six seats, we shared our compartment with four Americans. The mum and mum's mate adored it, the dad and teenage daughter were bored and fidgetting throughout, before the cast had even taken their bows the dad said obnoxiously "Well, you've seen a Prague opera, you can cross that off your list!" The wife should have punched him in the nuts! Anyway, they didn't bother us much and it made for a good anecdote.

Tosca by Puccini (Lyric Opera of Chicago)

Phew, at least in Chicago (where the opera house is an amazing building shaped like a chair with it's back to New York where the owner's girlfriend could not get a job as a singer- though actually, she was shite so she couldn't get a job in Chicago either...) they do opera how it was supposed to be performed.

Suzie and I saw Tosca, my grandmothers favourite opera, on Saturday night. The three sets- one for each act- were tres impressive, the church was my favourite (see photie) and the way they crammed it with people at the end was very cool, it looked like a real cathedral! The last set did look a bit like where you wait in line at Disneyland for the Pirates of the Caribbean ride- though I liked it because of that! And Scarpia's place was pretty creepy.

Yeah! What a character that Scarpia is, I was like; Woah! He's my kind of creepy bastard!!

The opera singers were really good and the translation (the subtitles) wasn't distracting at all, we already knew the story so it was quite easy to ignore the screen and just listen to the music and watch the show. This is traditional opera, it looked and sounded amazing. We wore our legwarmers with our fancy dresses on the train home- Chicago is COLD!!

Prima Donna (Opera- Manchester International Festival)

Anna and I went to see Rufus Wainwright's debut opera Prima Donna on Sunday, it was the second performance, after opening on Friday night with Rufus sitting in the audience dressed like Verdi and his boyfriend dressed like Puccini.

On Sunday Rufus was dressed like some kind of tramp. The top half was a bit like Jonathan Pryce in the film The Doctor and the Devils a mediocre Burke and Hare flick. big hobo beard, top hat with fly-fishing trunklements on the side, tweed jacket over a gross shirt, pale jeans and roman sandals. He was outside the theatre when we arrived signing autographs etc. it was possibly the highlight of the show.

twelve quid seats with restricted legroom, ah, my favourite. Though actually the legroom was a lot better than I remembered- many moons ago we saw Tommy Steele in Scrooge one Christmas, coincidentally he'll be reprising that role this panto season!- no the seats were good seats, nice view, enough legoom that we only got cramp a couple of times, yeah, fine, it was only the audience around us that were intolerable. I had a loud-eater next to me, it sounded like he was eating in my ear- shudder- Anna had three miserable gay lads who looked thouroughly disappointed throughout, and in front of us was the pièce de résistance; OCD man with theatre-shawl.

The opera we felt could do with a bit more work. Anna insists there were a few good "numbers" and I felt sure when we watched the Imagine special on BBC1 last week that there were some lovely melodies, but I only remember really enjoying the music at one point and that was near the end. I know that opera is obvious written to be performed, to be seen live, but I really thought I'd enjoy it a lot more listening to a recording in the dark. Other noises distracted me, the guy on my left for instance, but creaking sets and people coughing are never good while trying to enjoy classical music. I also found the subtitles very intrusive.

We tried to explain to mother that in the last twenty years- since technology was invented- ALL operas are subtitled (in big theatres), so it was to be expected. But really the French they were singing in was very basic so I knew what they were saying (and the story was self-explanitory anway), and with the subtitles there before the words were sung I found myself predicting the next words instead of listening to the music!! So that was very stupid. Apart from that though I didn't like the big stark set, come on think of something more original than that! The costumes were ok, but did it have to be set in the 70s? Why couldn't it be set anytime? Little bits of staging were clever, but it was only when all five characters were on the stage that it didn't look empty!

And now to the story: predictable, it's like Sunset Boulevard excpet she's not as mental, journalist comes in to interview fading opera star, she falls in love with him, the end.

I don't feel I know enough about opera to say whether the actors were good or not, they all did well- though sometimes couldn't be heard over the music (the orchestra was great by the way!)- but after watching Imagine, and being a fan of Rufus Wainwright for a long time, I have a feeling I would have much prefered listening to or watching him sing the complete score.

The Magic Flute (2006)

One night Kenneth Branagh had a dream(/nightmare) and somehow it got turned into a film.

When I was little I had an audio book for children which summarised the stories behind pieces of classical music, I remember buying the audio book in a Little Chef, hell, I can actually still see it from where I'm now typing. I loved it! I listened to it all the time, and this my friends is where my vast knowledge of classical music comes from. You want to know the story of Peer Gynt put to music by Grieg? I'll tell you!

I saw the film Amadeus (1981) a little later on in my youth, it has remained on my list of top ten films, ever since. The film is one of only two in my top ten made after 1968 (and might I add if it wasn't for The Producers then it would be one of two made after 1952!). I'm a Mozart geek. I love him. He's my favourite.

So I saw the trailers for this film when it was at the pictures and I heard the music and I thought "Wow! I can't wait to see that!" I did wait, I waited until I got a free trial from Lovefilm.com and I'm glad I did. Though the film lasts just over two hours I managed to sit through seventeen minutes of it before dying inside. I read a review from Nicholas Barber that sums up the cinematography: "It manages to look too expensive and too cheap simultaneously."

It was horrible to look at and then when the singing started, oh my god, what horrible awkward words!! I thought it was going to be in original German with subtitles like a proper opera!! Book by Stephen Fry?! He should be killed!! It was appalling! Opera should NEVER be in English. Two or three years ago Anna and I saw the English National Opera do La Bohème, it was in English!! We couldn't believe how horrible it sounded!!

Anyway, we turned it off after seventeen minutes, well, we fast-forwarded and saw all the big arias etc. (Luckily I knew where they would be thanks to my trusty audio book!) They were horrible as well. Replacing what were once to me beautiful sounds with jarring, embarrassing lyrics is sacrilegious. Remember that bit in Amadeus when Mozart says he wants to write an opera in German and everyone goes "What?! You can't!" And he does and it's The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte) and it's brilliant? Well, they should tell Kenny and Stephen Fry: You CAN'T write an opera in English. It's shit. Also, for eff's sake, the whole film looks like a horrible trip, how much money did this lose whoever was sucker enough to let Kenny B direct something that contained music (Remember his Love's Labours Lost - shudder!)!?!