Roses, Opera and Bells
My first roses are out—Fru Dagmar Hastrup*—and it’s still April. I’ll try to get a photo tomorrow; I noticed too late today, and she closes up at twilight, like a daisy or a tulip. I’ve been watching Old Blush, whose buds are starting to crack, and Agnes, who used to be my earliest ‘proper’ rose** at the old house, and forgot that in my little town gardens Fru usually gets there first. But April?
I could have been out in the garden yesterday afternoon instead of going to see that stupid flapdoodling opera. Good grief. I am not the world’s biggest Richard Strauss fan—I fail to adore Der Rosenkavalier which I realise is a hanging offense in some counties; I put up with it (ahem) for some of that creamy, swoony music but the plot makes me tired and the whole third act is repulsive, despite the undoubted gloriousness of the final trio. This is probably heresy also, but Strauss seems to me to write such great tunes: you want to leave the theatre humming.***
I knew what CAPRICCIO was about, of course: it’s about a bunch of wealthy spoilt brats flouncing at each other. It’s a lot more annoying when you have to look at them. Also . . . there are times when you’re much better off not knowing too precisely what they’re saying: it’s one thing to read the synopsis and then stick the CD in and go about your business† enjoying the tunes. It’s another thing entirely to be trapped in a small theatre†† watching these people pouting and having tantrums. There is a good deal of humour and satire in it—gods forbid some worshipping producer doing the whole thing straight—but I believe we are supposed to be taking the central question of Whether Words or Music Is More Important seriously. The famous final twenty minutes of the Countess alone on stage failing to decide between her two suitors—the poet and the composer—is presumably the answer.††† Bleaaaaaugh.
The airless fatuity of the whole shebang takes a painful turn for the intolerable when this ragbag of narcissists comes up with the charming notion of writing an opera about what is going on right here right now. The opportunity for limitless and interminable nudge-nudge-wink-wink from this point onward is relentlessly seized. And Renee Fleming as the Countess . . . Fleming does the self-adoration thing way too well anyway, and that last twenty minutes of her (s)wanking around the stage with a Single Perfect Red Rose was gruesome. I was telling myself that probably the face-fondling in front of the invisible mirror—the mirror is hanging on the fourth wall—works better if you’re in the proper live audience than watching a wonders-of-modern-technology close-up in a cinema x thousand miles away.‡ But the Met Live is now an established means of transmitting opera to a wider audience—they’d better start thinking about how stuff looks in close up.
At least CAPRICCIO is short. But they ran it without an intermission—so I didn’t get any knitting done.‡‡
I didn’t sleep yet frelling again last night‡‡‡ which means service ring this morning was less than brilliant. There were seven of us and one of us was a beginner so we rang a lot of call changes leaving the number two bell out—which harmonically makes sense, but it means that bell three is bell two and what is usually bell four is three, and so on. You would not believe how confusing this is§ (especially on no sleep). And then, it being Easter, Niall and Penelope and I had a second service to ring at another church short of locals:§§ Sox Episcopi§§§, to be precise, where the bells are flower-pots and the wheels are about six inches across andeverythinghappensincrediblyfast. Dingdingdingdingdingdingding. Colin’s true flower-pot# mini-ring you at least ring in an adapted manner in deference to the fact that there’s nothing really there to pull. Sox Episcopi you’re still ringing with both hands as if they were proper bells while trying to get your hands to move fast enough and your arms not to pull too hard and yank the poor little thing right out of its tiny clangy tower. I suppose this is kind of flattering, because everybody who isn’t used to them has trouble with these bells because they’re so small but Amy put me on the treble, which is to say the littlest bittiest of the little bitty bells and . . . the ropes are not much thicker than, um, yarn, and little-bitty gauge yarn at that, say twenty-two stitches for four inches, and my left hand—the one on the tail end: the handstroke is at least round the sally, which is a big(ger) fluffy handle thing—kept cramping trying to keep hold, and the rope nonetheless started creeping through leaving me with less and less tail end and the perishing bell whips around so fast on its infinitesimal wheel that I was failing to have time to crawl back up the rope again. GAAAAAAAH. Penelope, who hadn’t rung there before, was on the five, lucky sod, and Amy’s beginner was on the six (tenor), which is nearly a real bell. Niall was on the three and when I was whining afterward about my trials he said I’m glad she didn’t put me on the treble. . . .
And I did spend this afternoon in the garden.
* * *
* http://www.davidaustinroses.com/english/showrose.asp?showr=374 Not a brilliant photo but Peter Beales’ is worse. This is another one however like my lavender-white pansy that you can’t really catch the almost etherealness of the colour—it’s both a shiny and a misty silver-pink—in a photo. Also she doesn’t have no scent, as declared here, although she doesn’t have much. Her great virtues are first her beauty—I like singles anyway, and her silver-pink is fabulous—and second she is genuinely tough, healthy and generally bomb-proof. A lot of roses with claims for robustness are merely less whimsical and diva-ish than their colleagues. I don’t agree that roses are a sport for masochists, but they do have their little ways. Not Fru. Fru is always in a good mood. And she flowers early, she flowers late, and she flowers pretty steadily in between too.
** Some of the so-called ‘species’ are earlier. I’ll have to check on cantabrigiensis^ at Third House tomorrow.
^^ http://www.davidaustinroses.com/english/showrose.asp?showr=148 This is a terrible photo. But Peter Beales’ is still worse.
*** If you can. They’re not exactly three-basic-chord thumpers.^
^ I have a similar reaction to Stephen Sondheim. It took me a good half-dozen SWEENEYs before I was leaving the theatre humming relatively accurately. Eventually it occurred to me to buy the recording.
† Possibly knitting. Knitting while listening to music is excellent.
†† Or even a large theatre
††† I think it varies, myself. And in opera the music is clearly the more important. The vast majority of libretti are pathetic, embarrassing, or both, and as a story-teller who loves the noise I’ve learnt to put my professional eye/ear firmly aside for the duration. Peter can’t do this, which is a big reason why he doesn’t go to many operas, and I don’t try to make him.
‡ Just as the Biggest Snot I Have Ever Seen hanging out of a famous tenor’s nose earlier this season wouldn’t have been visible even from the front row of the live audience. Well. Maybe the front row. It was amazingly enormous.
‡‡ I did however have fabulous feet.
Excellent feet
‡‡‡ Due possibly to a surfeit of asininity. I tell myself, hey, it’s not all bad: at least I know I never want to see this opera again.
§ Call changes are, erm, called. There’s no set pattern: the conductor says things like ‘three to four’ and ‘five to seven’, which means bell three should start following bell four and bell five should follow bell seven. That means bell three has to know it is bell three and not be in an insomniac haze having reverted to believing it’s bell four, which it usually is.
§§ This happens every year at the high holy seasons, Christmas and Easter, because too many people, including ringers, are elsewhere on holiday and every church, understandably, wants its bells rung. We could probably have rung at half a dozen churches today which were short of ringers, barring the pesky business that most services are held some time within the same two- or three-hour period.
§§§ And yes—as per some thread on the forum—I am going to give you the thus-far list of Hampshire (and a few Environs) According to McKinley the next time I want a fast entry to plug in. I’m leaving the actual map up to you however.
# All right, they’re not really flower pots. But as buckets go, they’re little buckets.
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