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My last involvement with Opera at Taunton School was in 1982, my penultimate year as a pupil. The production was The Gondoliers and I was in the chorus. Wars occasionally feature in Opera plots and being in a very minor role similarly involves 90% ennui waiting in the wings and 10% sheer terror when on stage. I relieved the boredom part by picking roses along the front of the school and using them as buttonholes for my next stage appearance, hoping to steal the attention of the contadine from Marco and Giuseppe. The following year, we moved to the Brewhouse Theatre for Carmen. It was not possible to sneak out of the stage door in search of municipal shrubbery, yet it did allow the flowers along the front of the school to flourish for Speech Day.
My return for Garden Opera’s Don Pasquale by Donizetti was accompanied by much uncertainty – would we get wet, how was the staging going to work, could we drink our champagne during the performance and would any of the performers adopt my pruning methods? The staging was cleverly unfolded from a wheeled trailer and this was parked with the school as backdrop. Simple and effective, it also added to the informal ambience associated with alfresco theatre. The scene was a comfortable house in an up-market part of town, somewhere in late 1970s England. Despite the deteriorating weather, the acoustics worked surprisingly well with the small orchestra setting the scene for the arrival of the cast. Well of course it all involves relationships, deception, manipulation, money……all the things we had come away from work to forget, as we delved Billy Bunter-style into our hampers. Don Pasquale was expertly portrayed as an uptight fussy bachelor by Deryck Hamon who rails at his nephew Ernesto (Robert Millner) for refusing to marry the woman Pasquale has chosen for him. Ernesto has become engaged to Norina (Sally-Ann Shepherdson) a beautiful but poor widow who has been secretly living with him downstairs in Pasquale’s house for months! An early shock is the sight of Ernesto in his underpants, a domestic illustration I could have done without, probably too much association with practical jokes in school locker rooms. Luckily Ernesto’s sartorial ability improves whilst Pasquale engages his friend Dr Malatesta (Freddie Tong) to help him find a more suitable match for his nephew. Well it all moved on, the rain started and we decamped into the marquee, conveniently there for Speech Day. The struts of outdoor atmosphere were removed and this is where the acting and music had to hold the whole thing up. It did, in particular the nomadic orchestra supporting the exquisite serenading of Norina by Ernesto. The interior lining of the marquee did not favour operatic acoustics and would have seen off less accomplished singers. Robert Millner’s voice in particular was sublime. The cast was augmented in this part by pupils from Taunton Preparatory School, a cameo role where they sang a chorus commenting on the farcical behaviour of the adults. It was clear a lot of preparation had been done for this as they rubbed shoulders with the professionals. So it all ended up happy. Keep an eye out for The Garden Opera Company. You can catch this production somewhere in the country up until 12th September. www.gardenopera.co.uk
NOT MY TASTE Do you remember when Taste of … was a producer-led, regionally defined concept whose purpose was to refocus people’s gastro-juices on their local cornucopia and challenge the supermarket credo that what matters is the price of food, not its origins? Taste of the West is (or was when I last looked) a fantastic organisation, messianic in its desire to explain and promote the West Country larder. But alongside it and other regional worthies has grown a parallel, commercial universe called Taste Festivals Ltd. Taste – the limited one – described its Bath event as “The South West’s very finest garden party” and went on to trumpet its “amazing concentration of talent…an immensely rich region for culinary produce and inspiration”. Unfortunately, it knows the region so little that it proved unable to organise signs from the A4 to its Victoria Park venue. The only car park we could discover was for exhibitors only, and the attendant – when we found him – would properly have described his English as a work in progress. When we finally located the site our mood was further dented by an entry price of £12 which included nothing beyond a finger jerked in the direction of a “bank”. If we wanted to shop at Taste of Bath, we were told, we would have to buy books of Crowns, the event’s currency. The exchange rate was £1 to a Crown but I never saw anything that cost less than four Crowns and learned from a disgruntled exhibitor that it was “just another ploy to make money”. In addition to renting their space, exhibitors paid a 10% tax on Crowns received. Our informant told us that insult had been added to injury last year because he had been made to wait three months for his money; he would not be coming again – oh, and would we mind paying cash? The exhibitors reacted as any business would in the circumstances – by putting up their prices, first of all to recoup the cost of their stand, second to offset the “crown tax” and third to make a profit. The result was to give us mug-punters a preview of what food and drink prices will look like when oil hits $200 a barrel. A bite-size portion of mini-steak, a few bootlace chips and a smear of rather bland sauce cost the equivalent of £5; a gargle of fruit juice cost £4 and a flute of non-vintage champagne – if you felt the understandable need for something stronger – a jaw-dropping £10. I would have minded less if I had felt I was supporting genuinely local producers. But so many of those hawking their wares were from outside the area – and in several cases, the country – that a Jobsworth could have had them under the Trade Descriptions Act. Of 87 exhibitors, only 15 actually came from Bath. A further 17 originated in the West Country (if you count Gloucestershire as West Country), and the balance, the great majority, represented a geographical pot-pourri, running from Lancashire to Portugal and from Ireland to Burgundy. I was frankly incensed to see Magners flaunting its cuckoo status in the heartland of traditional cider-making and utterly bemused to find a teak furniture supplier from Thailand in the mix. That the largest single exhibitor was a supermarket had me weeping tears of frustration into my over-priced thimble of Sauvignon Blanc. Taste of Bath was an opportunity to showcase one of the country’s greatest regional larders and cellars. Not only did it spurn the opportunity; by giving so much space to foreigners and outsiders, it conveyed the contrarian message that just about everybody does food and drink better than the West Country. Never again. |
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