58. Back at last

When we got home last weekend, I found that the pot that contains my bay tree also contains snapdragons, forget-me-nots, pansies, daisies and alyssum. I think this is quite impressive. I did actually plant the forget-me-nots and pansies in the early spring, then they died back in summer and now they’ve self-seeded in there. The snapdragons and alyssum and daisies are just bonuses. We also have a viola flowering from between the cracks in our wall.

Yesterday the mail arrived with a copy of the latest Revue de musicologie, containing my big article on the première of Ravel’s opera L’Heure espagnole. It felt extremely good to see it at last, more than four years after Roy asked me to look at this interesting score he had and do some research on its background…

Coincidentally, last night we went to see L’Heure espagnole (and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi) at Covent Garden. Coming out of the Tube at Embankment, we overheard two men in conversation behind us:

‘I feel like going for a pint’

‘I’ll have a glass of red wine – it’s more manly.’

As they walked past us up Villiers St we had to stifle our giggles, since two, well, less ‘manly’ walks would be hard to imagine.

The Upper Amphitheatre in Covent Garden is vertiginously steep, with terrifyingly narrow rows. In the ten minutes or so before the opera begins you can watch a sort of dance going on all around the upper reaches of the theatre as row after row of people stands up to let newcomers shuffle cautiously past. The dance can become a kind of Mexican wave: just as the most recent arrivals have taken their seats the next lot arrives, so one end of the row stands up again just as the other is thankfully seating itself. The seats in the Upper Amphitheatre are also pretty narrow; last night we were hemmed in from both sides by overflowing ladies. One read the synopsis of L’Heure espagnole aloud to her companion:

‘Concepcion eagerly awaits the one day each week when her elderly clockmaker husband Torquemada goes out to wind the municipal clocks, leaving her free to entertain her lovers. On this particular morning, the arrival of the muleteer Ramiro, who wants Torquemada to fix his watch, disturbs Concepcion’s plans and she has the ingenious idea of hiding her two lovers – the poet Gonzalve and the banker Don Inigo – in clocks and employing Ramiro to carry them up to the bedroom for her. Eventually she becomes frustrated by Gonzalve’s self-absorption and Inigo’s incompetence but, impressed by Ramiro’s great strength and helpfulness, she invites the muleteer upstairs “without a clock”.’

‘Humph’, sniffed the lady on my right, disapprovingly. ‘That’s… different!’

Anyway, L’Heure espagnole was a delight, and Gianni Schicchi was great fun too – lovely to see a very French farce (not a ‘Spanish’ hour at all really) followed by a very Italian one. But there is no wittier opera in the repertoire than L’Heure, no opera where every note of the music underlines some little comic point or tender moment quite so perfectly. I fell in love with Ravel again.

Going back into the Tube, my Oyster card malfunctioned and didn’t let me through the barrier. ‘Put some fucking money on it!’ muttered the bloke crowding behind me.

Ah, London courtesy.