Operas – Victoria & Albert Museum
and the Wallace Collection
One week, two unique opera
experiences. In the new exhibition suite at the V&A, there’s an ambitious,
multi-media exhibition devoted to the history of Opera. A little way across
London, near the crowds on Oxford Street, the Wallace Collection put on an
evening performance Goyescas by the
Spanish composer Granados. This was to accompany a small exhibition of Spanish
paintings, including a couple of Goyas, on loan from the Bowes Museum in Durham.
(It is startling, and a
little bit frightening, to emerge from the Oxford Circus tube station into the
crammed and jostling masses – it reminded me of climbing the stairs up to the
standing terraces of a 1970s football match.)
The V&A show requires the
visitor to put on headphones. There’s a handset, or neckset, which you don’t
need to fiddle with, except as to volume. I suppose it works via Bluetooth; at
any rate it picks up the relevant audio signals as you move through the
exhibition.
Tooling up with this
technology is, if not mandatory, essential, because that’s the only way to get
the music of, and the commentary on, the operas showcased. The result is that
everyone moves around in a headphone bubble, which makes for a fair amount of
bumping and blockage, especially when, on a weekday morning, the visitors are
mostly elderly. (An exception to this demographic was a rapt three-year-old
girl, gazing at, and listening to, a scene from the Marriage of Figaro.)
The V&A and its august
collaborator, the Royal Opera House, present 7 operas (plus, as a coda, a rapid
miscellany of recent ones), each representing a fundamental development of the
genre, from C17 to the C20. The chosen operas have their soundtracks, sometimes
synchronised with high quality video, and a lot of information, paintings and
other contemporary exhibits, setting the opera in a cultural and political
context.
It’s fascinating stuff –
although there’s a bit of hyperbole in play. Opera making the
political/cultural climate? (this is suggested especially of Verdi, in relation
to the to the Italian Risorgimento;
and, in a reverse sort of way, of Shostakovitch, whose Lady Macbeth of Donetsk was roundly condemned by Stalin).
There are many intriguing
features: the recreation of a contemporary Handel stage, with the mechanical
illusion of waves and ships; the unbearable video of the end of a ROH
production of Salome, with Salome
kissing the very realistic severed head of John the Baptist (did the singer
have therapy?); and the compilation of modern opera videos, at first annoying,
then compelling – Peter Grimes on the
beach in Suffolk; Einstein on the [another]
Beach; the Death of Klinghoffer..
An hour and a half spent; and
a resolution to return.
And then to the Wallace
Collection. It is housed in what was once a grand aristocratic mansion, which
has in the past spent time as an embassy for the French, and then the Spanish.
Its c19 aristocratic onwers put together a wonderful collection of paintings,
principally French, and other fine objects. (It is said that that the French
aristocracy, dispossessed or impoverished by the Revolution and subsequent
wars, were the principal sellers.)
Going to the Wallace for
evening event, after normal opening hours, creates the illusion of visiting a
great private home. The Collection deploys people to keep an eye on the guests
they negotiate the empty galleries. These guards are easily reimagined as
flunkeys welcoming and guiding us to a grand reception…
And, once we are safely
corralled in the restaurant area (a covered courtyard) we are treated grandly,
with Spanish wines and and canapés (tapas). Then, we process off again,
upstairs to a great salon, hung with masterpieces (Canaletto views of Venice in
particular).
We sit on ornate chairs, and
a quartet, four soloists and a small chorus perform the short Granados Opera
(as a static, not acted, production – which the performers are in the default
convention of evening dress).
Because of this convention,
one doesn’t have a direct sense of the “Goya” inspiration. This consisted of a
series of C18 paintings depicting Majos and
Majas. These were men and women, of
lowly birth, who nevertheless dressed and behaved finely and extravagantly.
Their lasting legacy is flamenco costumes and dance – and Goya’s famous, or
notorious painting of a naked and bold Maja.
This exuberant tradition is
not visually well served by the evening dress of a posh soiree. (Perhaps they
could have had reproductions of the relevant paintings on display, at least.)
But it was strange and enjoyable. After, a quick look at the loaned Spanish
paintings; a quick further glass and canapé; and out into Manchester Square,
and the nearby susurration of the majos and majas of the Oxford Street throng.
Nov 2017
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