Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Opera at the V&A and the Wallace Collection

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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