NIGHTS AT THE OPERA
Within the space of one week, two groups have enjoyed the experience of seeing live opera at the ENO.
The first was Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, a complex and disturbing interpretation of Henry James’s Gothic novella with its subtexts of madness, manipulation, and lost innocence. Our group of Fifth and Sixth Form pupils were able to grapple with these mature themes whilst appreciating Britten’s scoring for what is, effectively, a chamber orchestra.
A complex and disturbing interpretation of Henry James’s Gothic novella with its subtexts of madness, manipulation, and lost innocence
Thanks, however, must go to the Classics Department for the thorough grounding in linguistics that enabled our group to appreciate some of the Latin puns in the text! Miles’s mysterious aria “Malo, malo”, whilst based on a popular schoolboy mnemonic, encapsulates some of the work’s ambiguity; what starts as a plaintive motif is repeated to devastating effect by his governess, cradling his dead body at the end. Britten’s operas have a tendency to haunt the listener for a good 24 hours after one attends, so I was grateful that this trip occurred on a Friday evening.
A little less demanding was Puccini’s La Bohème, which we attended the following Thursday with a mixed-age group; it was lovely to have four pupils for whom it was their first ever experience of opera, as well as one or two who admitted they had lost count of the number of ENO visits they have attended with the School!
It was lovely to have four pupils for whom it was their first ever experience of opera!
The pupils enjoyed Jonathan Miller’s inventive, multi-level staging which added elements both of spectacle and physical comedy to Puccini’s score, and those of us in Choir (nearly all of the group) instantly recognised a distinctive theme from Act II which our Choir Director Mr Mosley uses for his warmups. All appreciated the virtuosic displays from the main characters, and were engaged until the very end by Mimi’s tragic fate.
We look forward to seeing Rigoletto with a Third Form group in November, and there will be at least two further opera trips this season. It is always wonderful to see how engaged our pupils are, especially those for whom this is their first opera, and thanks must go to the English National Opera for their extraordinarily generous subsidy of school tickets. The number of students who have attended an opera trip since extramural visits resumed after the pandemic is now approaching three digits, and I do hope we will be able to reach four!
Mr FraczekSecond in English
