“Opera Oasis” Poem 4 from “A slur of tense”
Going to the Opera during a pandemic is a strange affair.
I have a season ticket for the Liceu in Barcelona, and at the beginning of the strict lockdown the programme was simply abandoned. The Liceu invested in new safety measures and installed a new air conditioning system to cope with the virus. We were informed that our season tickets (giving us ‘our’ specific seat for each performance) were now invalid – we would be issued with new digital tickets for each performance that was deemed possible and safe. Numbers were cut down and only 50% of the audience was allowed to attend.
To go to the Opera today, you are given a timed slot during which you should arrive and then after showing your digital ticket and washing your hands you go to your seat allotted for the performance and sit, surrounded by empty chairs around you. You have to wear your mask at all times. There are no programmes other than digital ones. There are no refreshments. There is no cloakroom for coats. You are urged to stay put. The intervals are shorter.
In a bad situation, the Liceu does its best to carry on some form of programming.
The Opera I saw during Holy Week was Otello by Verdi. In the Shakespeare play Iago’s reasons for destroying Othello are ambiguous, they do not seem sufficient for his actions and the play ends with the audience having been given no real explanation to justify his ‘motiveless malignancy’ as Coleridge put it.
In Otello we have a musical answer: Iago’s Credo in a cruel god! It is a part of the opera that never fails to excite, with the sheer horror of what Iago is saying.
During something as difficult as a pandemic, with loss of life and livelihood, it is hardly surprising if difficult circumstances prompted the heartfelt question, “Why?”
I sit in the stalls in the Liceu and my ticket is expensive. There is, after all, no cheap way to produce opera. Even with the high price I pay to get in, I am conscious that my ticket is still subsidised: Opera is high culture and it is state sponsored as well as being generously supported by wealthy individuals and large companies. It is an elitist form of entertainment, though the music can reach anybody. During a pandemic, the dislocate between a lavish production of Otello and what is going on in the world is uncomfortable. There is always a feeling of privileged guilt over my opera jaunts, even though I passionately believe that it is part of the sort of culture that makes us human.
At the end of the day, it is a balancing act of things intangible and very concrete.
Day 4 Wednesday
Opera Oasis
I have my ticket (digital) to show police,
if I am asked, my reason to be here,
outside my town, in central BCN.
I drive, alone, on free, uncluttered roads,
and make good time to dip beneath Las Ramblas
to constricted space to park the car.
The walk along the surface
is quite strangely jostle free:
pedestrians keep their perimeters.
Almost.
I keep to my allotted slot,
my phone is scanned, and I am through.
Devout and cowed I stretch my hand
towards the holy water stoup,
am blessed with Gel Ubiquitous,
process my way inside.
I walk through temperature control
and disinfected space
while breathing ever-filtered air
to mark the safety difference engineered
for well-heeled, mostly older folk,
(at least around me in the stalls)
compared with what is going on elsewhere:
illicit parties (we are told) and blatant flouting of The Rules
(though what they are, we’re not quite sure)
But here, on iron thrones of plush,
we sit in civilized companionship,
together, but not too near.
Islanded by empty seats, and masked,
five rows behind my customary place,
the full half-empty Opera House
is hushed to black
at curtain rise,
orchestral storm; dark chorus singing lustily,
and Desdemona - pensive, in her square of stage.
All well and good.
But, the early action is, for me
just prologue to the crux of this great piece:
Iago’s nihilistic lash,
his Credo to a vicious God.[1]
Statistics are just numbers after all,
but the obnoxious toll
of misery each life-lost costs,
should force at least some questioning.
Iago has the answers!
We’re bad because we’re human stuff;[2]
Fate has it in for all of us;[3]
The ‘best’, are all just hypocrites;[4]
Death is The End and there’s no heaven.[5]
We watch, applaud the dead
who rise to take their curtain calls,
and merge with musos of the band
who make their way to scooters and to bikes
to expedite their getaways:
toque de queda[6] matches curtain fall.
And as I walk down to the car
I muse: my ticket’s price
could buy some fifty
AZ vaccine shots.
And then I drive away
back home.
[1] Credo in un Dio crudel (I believe in a cruel God) Atto Secondo/Act Two
All quotations from the libretto of Otello (1887) and the translations into English are taken from http://www.murashev.com/opera/Otello_libretto_English_Italian
[2] Son scellerato perchè son uomo (I am a wretch/villain because I am a man) ibid.
[3] Che il mal ch’io penso che da me procede per mio destino adempio (the evil I think and that which I perform I think and do by destiny’s decree) ibid.
[4] Credo che il guisto è un istrion beffardo (I believe the just man to be a mocking actor) ibid.
[5] La Morte è il Nulla, é vecchia fola il Ciel (Death is nothingness, heaven an old wives’ tale) ibid.
[6] Curfew
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