Something of a Lulu

Good morning, Sydney Grew! Today is Holy Saturday! I should perhaps report that the music at St David's Cathedral last night was divine! To all those who survived c bach's cawl, and the night, congratulations! What a night it turned out to be! Congratulations to all! If I may slip into my mother's tongue this Easter weekend, Sydney Grew, as I am in the far west of Welsh Wales! Ein prif nod a’n braint yw addoli’r Duw a’n gwnaeth, a chyhoeddi mai Iesu yw gwaredwr a gobaith y byd. Wedi ei adeiladu ar safle mynachlog Dewi Sant yn y chweched ganrif, mae Eglwys Gadeiriol Tyddewi wedi bod yn gyrchfan pererindodau ac addoliad ers sawl canrif, ac mae hi’n parhau i fod yn eglwys sy’n gwasanaethu cymuned fyw. Cynrychiolir y gymuned hon nid yn unig gan bobl plwyf Tyddewi, ond gan bawb sy’n canfod tawelwch yn y man gweddi a defosiwn hwn.

St David's Cathedral

I should perhaps confess that although Welsh National Opera (WNO) has the potential to become one of the world's greatest opera companies, I rarely get to see a production live! In 2005, for example, WNO won the RPS Opera and Music Theatre Award for its production of 'Wozzeck'. In 2007, this artistic and critical success was repeated at the RPS Music Awards with a new opera, 'The Sacrifice', by James MacMillan. According to the FT, 'The Sacrifice' offers as many thrills as 'Tosca', as much agony as 'Peter Grimes', more violence than 'Elektra' and 'Salome' combined and a suspense quotient to rival 'Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk'. MacMillan's expertly crafted music has easy-to-identify theme tunes and gut-wrenching climaxes, with a closing tableau of which Verdi himself would have been proud. Michael Symmons Roberts has furnished an excellent libretto, built in half-rhymed couplets that leave acres of space for the music. James MacMillan sets the words gratefully, with a central duet for soprano and baritone ("Your heart is my homeland") that is more beautiful than anything in modern opera.

Wikipedia - The Sacrifice (opera)

Writing in the FT, Andrew Clark reports that the appointment 18 months ago of David Pountney as artistic director and chief executive of Welsh National Opera was a sign that the company wanted a change of direction – bolder, riskier, more international. As architect of English National Opera’s Powerhouse regime and the Bregenz Festival’s recent successes, Pountney promised experience and iconoclasm. And with his first new staging in Cardiff, WNO audiences at last get a taste of his medicine. 'Lulu' is unbelievably garish and grotesque, and you could argue that on those grounds alone, Pountney has succeeded. By refusing to please or entertain, and aiming instead to evoke the moral jungle that characterises Lulu’s world, he has been true to her creators’ vision.



The temptation with 'Lulu' is to titillate – to present Berg/Wedekind’s amoral creature as a man-eater who falls victim to social hypocrisy. Pountney quickly disabuses us of such a notion. The cast resemble house animals in a human zoo, where the idea of beauty is a fleshy, faceless doll, as distorted as a George Grosz caricature or a Francis Bacon painting. Johan Engels’ permanent set can be read two ways – a cage on which Lulu’s victims are hung out to dry, or an oil platform with a drill charting Lulu’s rise and fall according to capitalism’s exploitative whim. Andrew concludes thus:



(2 stars out of 5 stars)

FT - Lulu, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff - Two singers rise above the mess of David Pountney’s ultra-contrived staging

Meanwhile, 'The Times' leads this Easter weekend with some editorial comment on home from home, Sydney Grew. The Campaign to Protect Rural England is a fine body and Sir Andrew Motion is a fine person to head it. In an interview with 'The Times 'today, the former Poet Laureate speaks evocatively of “the great communal masterpiece which is the English landscape” which “in the foreverness of it, can never be reconstituted”. Sir Andrew is quite right to express horror that anybody should wish to “build on the field that Thomas Hardy walked across to go to William Barnes’ funeral” or wince that any are “mucking up Cider with Rosie country” in Gloucestershire. 'The Times' thunders that rural England must evolve or suffer. Those who straddle country and town often bring benefits to both. Much the same may be said for Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the rest of the world!

'The Times' also leads on with some editorial comment that the hills are alive. Lacking either the grandiloquence of the opera or the seriousness of purpose of the theatre, the musical is often seen as a frivolous younger sibling of the performance arts. The popularity of 'The Book of Mormon' shows that the public does not agree. 'The Times' thunders that the musical combines artistic quality with popular appeal. And 'West Side Story' still tops the bill!

West Side Story

Meanwhile, 'The Daily Telegraph' transmits a song of life and death and common humanity: the Easter song addresses a beeswax candle, whose flame in the dark is a powerful metaphor for Jesus Christ risen from the dead. Tonight the bee is given an honourable mention at the most solemn service of the church year. “The mother bee brought forth the wax that melts to make this precious candle,” the deacon sings as he addresses the single lit candle in the dark of the Easter Vigil. This song was old 1,200 years ago when Alcuin of York, Charlemagne’s friend, ensured it was preserved in the service books for Easter.

A song to a candle is strange. We seldom use candles except at dinner parties or in church, and those that flickered last week when snow cut off the power were mostly made of paraffin wax, not beeswax. But in all other ages, a flame from a solitary wick made every difference in the pitch dark of night. Our Anglo-Saxon forebears called the sun “world candle”. And, for Christians, the darkness that began yesterday, Good Friday, continues until this beeswax candle is lit – for, by an obvious but powerful metaphor, it stands for Jesus Christ risen from the dead.New life, spring flowers, bunny rabbits and eggs, are pleasant to celebrate. Yet the serious meaning of the candle in the dark derives only from the reality of night and death. Jesus died. Christian theology boldly declares that, just as God was born as man in Bethlehem, so God died as man at the Place of the Skull outside the walls of Jerusalem. 'The Telegraph' concludes thus:



Yet men and women will still come and go like the generations of leaves in the forest. We will still be weak and our gods, whatever they may be, Sydney Grew, remain strong and incalculable. The quality of someone matters more than their achievement; violence and recklessness will still lead to disaster, and this will fall on the innocent as well as the guilty.

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We wish you a joyful Easter, Sydney Grew, when it finally arrives! Three cheers from c bach and the gang (Holy Saturday breakfast coffee)!