Last night (31 December 2016), New Year’s Eve, was rather different from what we expected.  Last summer, i. e., in 2016, my wife and I noticed that the Comité des fêtes de Lagrasse was organizing a Reveillon de la Saint Sylvestre 2016, and the offer was for a five-course meal: foie-gras, monkfish, chicken in a cream sauce, cheese, and dessert.  The cost was €55, or about £47, with wine included, for “repas, animation, et boissons.”  “Animation” seems to mean the same thing that it does in English.  Oh, no, it doesn’t.

In fact, what we got was a disco, with short intervals for food.  The starting time was 9:00, so we had some sparkling wine punch beforehand, where, speaking to other Anglophones, we learned that the festivities last year (the first time) didn’t finish until 5:00 a. m.  We were entertained, if that’s the right word, by some very young girls showing off their dance steps – all very cute, but was it animation?  The first course was served about 11:00, and then there was “dancing” until midnight, with lots of “bonne annees” and the usual handshakes and kisses.  An hour of dancing followed, and the main course was served about 1:30.  By this time there were a lot of very bored-looking people sitting at tables, being polite and wondering what the hell was going on.  By this time, even my wife, who likes to dance was fed up, and we left, getting home to crawl gratefully into bed about 2:00 a. m., skipping the cheese course and dessert, which probably was not served until 3:00.

The “music” was, of course, very loud, so the bored people couldn’t even talk above it, without having to shout – par for the course at a disco, but not a reveillon, which usually means a feast of some sort.  Moreover, in addition to the overamplified muzak (French pop music has to be the worst in the world), there was a pounding, thump, thump, bass noise added to the cacophony, and I could feel the vibrations in my body, particularly around my heart.  The further away I got from it, the better I felt.

Fortunately, the lights dimmed when the disco started (actually, it never stopped, being noticeably in the background while we were eating), so we were able to make a quick getaway, hoping that our absence wouldn’t be too obvious.  I noticed other people doing the same.  Had something like the Trades Description Act been applied to the invitation to this event (which you might still find at http://www.lagrasse.com/actualites-canton-Lagrasse-Aude-694.html), we probably could have asked for a refund.

Many of the people there were clearly over 50, and while many of us gamely tried to dance for a short while to the disco dottiness emanating from the loudspeakers, we were most emphatically not in time or tune with the rhythm, nor capable of expending the energy, or having the requisite muscles, ligaments,  and joints, required to make the appropriate jerks and lunges associated with discos.  What sticks with me most is the helpless sense of boredom, even despair, not to mention bewilderment,  on the faces of the French who had shelled out a large sum for the evening.

On 26 September 2016, my wife and I went to the Royal Opera to see the new production of Norma, which was musically superb.   However, the word “travesty” is grossly inadequate to describe the production, which has been “updated” to some recent time – or at least a time as recent as a flat-screen television which was on stage in the second scene of the first act.  The librettist Felice Romani set the work in 50 – 100 B. C., with the Romans and the Druids on opposing side.  In this version, the Druids have become some sort of vaguely fundamentalist Christian sect, with some Christological imagery, as well as images similar to those of the Ku Klux Klan – white costumes with peaked hats, a burning cross, etc.

In a programme note the director writes (with a sense that he is revealing something we couldn’t possible have guessed, much less understand) that Norma “is no stock character but a very human figure, whose doubts and problems have an entirely contemporary resonance.”  Golly.  Fancy that.  We might never have been able to infer that by ourselves had the opera had been produced as if it were taking place in the period 50 to 100 years before Christ.

Later in his note, the producer informs us that he and his team have “chosen to create a production that chimes with current social preoccupations….  Our main intention is to encourage people to stop and think about what has to be done if we want to overcome the contradictions of the present.”  What this production “chimes with” so overpoweringly is directorial conceit, in both senses of the word.  It bespeaks  lurid journalism rather than good theatre.  Is the director suggesting that we should give up the idea of going to the theatre to be entertained and accept that we must take part in a post-modernist seminar about the ills of the modern world?  Why bother to pay £150+ for a seat to do that, when we could just around in a room and waffle aimlessly about the “contradictions of the present?”    It might come as a surprise to the director and his team that many of us, if not all of us, are capable of thinking for ourselves, and we do not need the patronizing assistance of a production that is trite, arrogant, and unaesthetic to make comparisons between human feelings and values today and the feelings and values of our human predecessors.

There were both embarrassing and risible moments in the production.  The scene with Norma and her children, set in a modern house or apartment, made one wonder why she would talk so openly with Adalagisa about her love life.  The children continue to play and ignore the conversation completely, which seems curious:  most children would probably love to eavesdrop on a parent talking about her amours.

A risible moment came when men in uniform armed with pistols, crawled underneath the timeless oaks, or, rather, a screen of hundreds of tiny crucifixes representing the sacred wood of the Druids.  The poor singers in the chorus looked distinctly uncomfortable.  It’s lucky for theatre producers that they are not subject to the Trade Descriptions Acts or the Sale of Goods Acts (to invoke a common observation).

The musical side was exceptionally good.  Maestro Pappano conducted brilliantly, making Bellini’s music sound cogent, intelligent, and moving.  I can have nothing but praise, admiration, and even a bit of awe for Sonya Yoncheva’s Norma.  She sang like a goddess, which is what a high priestess should do, with purity of tone, accurate phrasing, and a clarity that was breath-taking.  She readily made you forget the loathsome parameters in which the character of Norma was recreated.

Joseph Calleja is also a wonderful tenor, and he was on top form, though some of his acting was of the semaphore-style.  As Norma’s lover and the father of the two children, he is a bit of cad in the opera as he swithers between loving Norma and wanting Adalgisa; however, he has a thrillingly compelling voice, beautiful and sensuous, and his phrasing is sensitive.  I very much liked Brindley Sherratt’s well-sung Oroveso, but his body language had the effect of suggesting that he did not much like the characterization the director imposed on him.

It was one of those evenings at the opera when one had to ignore the inanities and banalities on the stage and listen to life-enhancing performances of the music. We left the opera house vastly impressed by the triumphant musicianship of the orchestra and the singers and soundly depressed by the egregious self-indulgence of the production.

I am an immigrant, who has lived here almost 51 years, longer than Mr. Cameron has.  I spent almost half that time in Scotland and the remainder in England, but I will never be either English or Scottish, though I do have a British passport.  As an immigrant and a foreigner, may I offer some consolation to the Remainers (of which I was one).  This outsider can see that the British, and particularly the English , are resilient, innovative, resourceful, and have the best sense of humour in the EU, if not the world.  You haven’t had an internal armed conflict since for over 300 years. How many nations in the world can say that?  You will eventually get the exit from the EU sorted out efficiently and good-naturedly.   Edmund Burke, an Irishman, said the same over 200 years ago: “revert to your old principles—seek peace and ensue it.”  It ain’t the end of the world as you know it.

In The Times today (24 July 2015), Tom Whipple writes about the middle classes “suffering crisis in alcohol abuse”; “Harmful alcohol consumption [is] defined as about a large glass and a half of wine every day for men and a large glass for women.” What size is a large glass of wine? Is it 125 ml? 250ml? 375ml (half a bottle)? None of the proscriptive assessments of the amount of wine one should drink ever give exact amounts. Nor do they take into account alcoholic strength: wine can vary from 12% to 15%. Does the alcoholic strength make a real difference? I think we should be told. Otherwise, it is difficult to take seriously these “nanny knows best” injunctions. Science is supposed to be specific. Would a doctor state that a patient should be given a “large syringe” of codeine, or would he or she prescribe a specific amount? I hope the latter. So why not be specific about glass size and alcoholic strength when it comes to booze?