3 May: La Donna e Immobile
Sitting in the basement café of the National Portrait Gallery, reviving like a flower placed in water on the basis of a surprisingly good ham and cheese quiche and a Coke. (Say what you will about the cultural imperialism of the Big Red Circle, there’s nothing like that first gulp of frosty, sugary caffeine when you’re tired and thirsty in a foreign place.) I’m also expecting the three aspirins I took a few minutes ago to kick in. I have a blister on my toe bigger than New Jersey which has turned me into the Little Mermaid – every step on sharp knives.
But enough kvetching! Other than these trifling, bothers, it’s been a famously successful day. I scored a ticket to Il trovatore at Covent Garden tonight – what Peter at the box office claims is the best seat in the house. With this business done, I hobbled down to the Portrait Gallery with a light heart – heading straight for the Tudor and Stuart Galleries like a homing pigeon – and walked spang into the larger-than-life portrait of Sir Thomas More et famille.
It was pretty swoon-inducing, seeing all these portraits I know from teeny black-and-white plates in books, large as life and in living color. Mary Tudor turns out to be a Puerto Rican blonde, Anne Boleyn is bubbling over with “I’ve got a secret” (her pregnancy with Elizabeth I), every hair of the fur sleeves on Katherine Parr’s frock has been individually drawn. Most amusing are the captions, colossal in their bland obviousness: “Henry the Eighth broke from the Catholic Church. He had six wives.” “Queen Elizabeth I called herself the Virgin Queen and reigned a very long time.” There’s a whole wall of Elizabeth’s bad boys – Catch-Me-If-You-Can Dudley, You-Know-You-Want-It Wriothsley, Hey-Sailor Raleigh. Legs become even more prominently displayed in the Jacobean room, with George Villiers leering down in his Ziggy Stardust silver hose and fuck-me pumps. Out in the Restoration gallery, the first baby portrait of the future Charles II, dressed in more white satin than Princess Di’s wedding dress, preparing to cut off the ear of an unwary spaniel. Mary of Modena, William of Orange, Jonathan Swift, Purcell with quite big hair, Alexander Pope looking as insecure as only a professional society viper can be. It went on and on until my eyes were gorged and my stomach empty.
After lunch, I headed out to the Victorians and early 20th century. I have to admit that the first group seemed kind of boring at first -- busts of 19th century finance ministers, yawn – then spang, straight into the Bronte portrait. The real portrait is so much different from any reproduction I’ve seen – the intensities of the girls’ faces. And there’s a spot where Branwell was going to paint himself in but never got around to it, so there’s just this Branwell-shaped hole in between them. Very evocative.
The early 20th century gallery was put together by folks who really know their stuff. Near the entrance was a little exhibit of Queen Mum photographs – including one of her as an infant sitting in her highchair propped up like a bag of concrete. A lot of really marvelous work – lots of Bloomsburies, lots of Bright Young Things. I caught sight of this incredible painting of a long-necked redhead in green velvet, Balthus meets the Pre-Raphaelites, when what should I discover but that it’s Elsa Lanchester – pre-Hollywood, pre-Bride of Frankenstein, pre-everything. That had to be my favorite portrait of the day (though the birdcage lady comes a close second). Many portraits were also set up to be looking at one another – Bertrand Russell nervously monitoring a truly poisonous-looking Ottoline Morrell, Dorothy Sayers cocking a cool eye at the wild and wacky Mervyn Peake. I was in such pain, but it was so wonderful. I finally limped down to the gift shoppe and discovered a fabulous thing – they have this magical kiosk that allows you to look up any image in the museum, pay a small fee, and they print up a quality, full-colour copy for you. Elsa is MINE!
Then it was time to head back Holbornwards to ransom my laundry and obtain a pain au chocolat, if one could be found within limping distance of the cleaners. And here I blush to tell it, but I ended up going into a Starbuck’s. I’m sorry, but it was the only café near the dry cleaners open after 4pm. Comme le guerre…
Fortunately for the continued health of Peter-at-the-Royal-Opera-box-office, the ticket he sold me WAS pretty much the best seat in the house. Covent Garden is exactly what you’d imagine by closing your eyes and saying “opera house” – red plush curtain with huge gold tassels, red plush seats, then everything gilt, gilt, gilt – like a very posh little jewelry box. Both men and women were in nice business suits, not what we would consider evening wear – I was quite the vamp in my little black dress. The performance was being filmed for later broadcast on the BBC.
I didn’t know much about the opera, Il trovatore, other than it’s by Verdi and it’s a tragedy. I hadn’t known that I needed to buy a program to get the whole synopsis (a nasty little habit of English performing arts – you don’t get programs for free, but have to shell out another 2-3 pounds to find out who’s who). It was interesting to watch an opera without knowing what was going to happen – other than that the lovers were going to die. They had chosen for the set design an 1840’s French communard style, which was very odd for an opera mentioning tourneys and princesses of Aragon… it rendered the swordplay a bit ludicrous, when all the combatants were carrying long-barreled rifles. Oh well. The chorus was fabulous, as was the orchestra. The chick didn’t have an enormous stage presence, but she sang very naturally, as if she always expressed her thoughts at the top of her lungs. The old gypsy actually had a more dramatic, fuller tone. Jose Curia as the hero Manrico was kind of a nonentity – well, when you’ve got to struggle against being called Manrico, and they’ve put you in a big pink shirt and coiffed you with the operatic equivalent of a sweaty mullet, I can see how you’d lose the will to live.
Dmitri Hvorostovky was magnificent as the evil count. In San Francisco, I’ve seen him as Don Giovanni, then last fall he played the evil count in Rigoletto, then before that there was that Russian opera with the red sets and all the drinking songs, where I’m pretty certain he played… an evil count. He looked trim and jaunty and ready to seduce-his-long-lost-brother’s-fiancée at the drop of a hat. His voice has matured so beautifully. At the interval, I met a woman who was by way of being a groupie of his – she’s been following his career since an appearance in the Eurovision Song Contest in the late 80’s and could recite his stats like young boys and their favorite baseball players.
The most marvelous thing about England so far is, by far, interval ice cream. Instead of the ubiquitous $8 SF intermission brownie, you get a sumptuous little tub of ice cream with a brightly colored plastic shovel to gobble it up with enough time to get to the ladies room. Not nearly enough screaming is done about English ice cream – so fresh and fluffy and creamy. A Platonic ideal of soft serve.