The Incomplete Operagoer

A Visit to the Opera – October 2009

We bought tickets for the opera, La Traviata, in the theatre at Fermo in Italy. Cost us €57.50 each.

And so to the Performance

After our dinner we walked up the hill to the opera house and there was a red carpet in the street along the pavement, a red carpet, which as we were fully paid-up operagoers we had no qualms about walking upon and it led us under the portico that formed the entrance to the opera house, and there were people munching on plates of food.

Plates of food. Can this include us? We made our way to the rear of the porticoed area and there were trestle tables covered with white cloths and laid out with food and wine; this was the results of the catering efforts we had witnessed earlier, where the man had said he was not from these parts. Everyone going to the opera could line up and collect a plate on which he could place food from the dishes on offer and at the end of the spread he could collect for himself a glass or two of wine. All compreso: included in the price.

Having just eaten a very good dinner, we did not feel like either the food or the wine, and while from an economic perspective this might have been a poor strategy, for our personal wellbeing it was the reverse, for otherwise we would have needed to rest there on one leg, feeling rather alone, with a not-very satisfactory repast and a worry about being buffeted by the self-appointed great and good. In fact the free nibbles looked rather dull, and we felt more privileged to be able to watch than to partake.

The poor old carabiniere looks like he’d rather be abusing motorists doesn’t he?

Behind the carabiniere, the complete operagoer’s leg.

To the Auditorium

We made our way into the auditorium and were astonished to find that, standing on either side of the entrance from the vestibule, were two carabinieri in full ceremonial uniform complete with plume and sword (see photo).

We were shown to our seats by a charming though short-of-stature dark-haired woman in probably her 40s and with a smiley countenance. We came to discover that our helper had, in fact, a Very Important Job (see below).

Speeches

It took some time for the auditorium to fill up, but at length it more-or-less did, and there then arrived down the central aisle an entourage, to much applause. The key figure in this procession turned out to be the mayor of Fermo, who, once his party was assembled facing the audience at the front, proceeded to make a speech, quite a long speech.

Another man from the party then gave a speech, and introduced a woman, in her seventies perhaps, who, from what we could gather, had sung here in this opera house when she was a teenager in the 1950s. How famous or distinguished she had subsequently become was beyond the grasp of our Italian at that particular moment.

The elderly diva gave a very, very long speech that seemed to include a fair amount of reminiscence, some of her anecdotes were greeted with appropriate if unconvincing-sounding laughter from the audience and at length (length being the word for it) she blew kisses to us all, was presented with a bunch of red roses, and to our, and we suspect to others’ relief walked with the mayor and their respective admirers from the auditorium so that the performance could begin.

The Dignitaries

Having looked it up on the web later, we find that the dignitaries included the undersecretary of the Ministry of the Interior: Nitto Francesco Palma, the mayor of Fermo: Saturnino Di Ruscio, and the prefect of Fermo: Emilia Zarrilli. The ageing diva, who it turns out had made her debut in this opera house in 1958, was the soprano (or a soprano from our perspective), Elvidia Ferracuti, known, we learn, as ‘La Rosina delle Marche’ (the Little Rose of the Marche, for she was indeed quite small).

The Performance Begins

Our diminutive usherette’s main job, before each act begun, was to go and open the gate to the orchestra pit. The conductor – a young serious-looking man – then emerged from the wings of the stalls, to great applause of course, and entered the pit, whereupon the short well-groomed lady closed the gate and returned to her position at the wall of the stalls.

The Scenery

This performance of Traviata was ‘the famous’ Traviata degli specchi (of the mirrors) – I put ‘the famous’ in quotes as that’s what it said on the publicity, though it was not so famous that we had ever heard of it.

Degli specchi in fact meant that the whole performance took place with a backdrop that consisted of a 45° mirror, or more precisely set of mirrored panels. This is quite a clever wheeze in a way, for it means that the scenery is made as a carpet that reflects from the mirror to the audience, it means that in order to do a scene-change the technicians only have to roll back the carpet, usually with the aid of strings so you do not see them doing it, to reveal another carpet underneath comprising the backdrop for the subsequent scene. Quite often this was most effective.

The wheeze works better, though, on some scenes than on others, for of course you not only see the reflection of the carpet, but also of the performers standing upon it, or, as this is an opera, as often as not lying prone upon it in a supposed state of distress. It can look quite dramatic in a crowd scene, but at the beginning of the third act, I think it is, when Alfredo is being remorseful and rolling about the floor, to the backdrop of the front view of a house, it made him look to we cynics as if he were Father Christmas attempting an entry into the first-floor window, but then of course we are not easy suspenders of belief, on the whole.

Bravo!

Italian operagoers are more demonstrative than British ones, so the arias can be followed by considerable ‘bravo’ing. This gives the whole thing a jollier feel. The bravos are not dispensed willy-nilly however, a good piece of singing is duly appreciated. The baritone taking the part of Giorgio Germont, the father, was especially well-received, and rightly so, for his singing on ‘di Provenza il mar il suol’, Germont’s key aria from Traviata, was captivating. And when we find the programme again I shall update this page with his name.

The Setting

The chap is looking around to see if there’s anyone else in a pullover.

The cliff of boxes.

The theatre at Fermo, the Teatro dell’Aquila is one of those theatres you find in Italy that is a kind of pot shape, with steep-cliff sides that are lined with boxes. By paying €57.50 we had a seat in the stalls and so could look around at these cliffs of boxes and see whether we could detect what the people might be doing therein (a photo of me doing exactly that is alongside). What the people seemed to be doing, predominantly during the intervals (which was of course the only time we could really see) was yawning. We often wonder whether Italians ever sleep, so late at night do they seem to us to stay up. It looks like perhaps they do, or at least feel like doing so.

Dress Code

To go to the opera, you dress up. If you are a man you wear a grey lounge suit and a shirt and tie, and if a woman you wear something dressy, often something that looks rather ridiculous, though I suppose that, like beauty, ridiculousness is in the eye of the beholder and it’s a matter of perception.

We were not dressed to quite the same degree of convention. In particular I was wearing dark cord fitted jeans and an open-neck shirt and a very British pullover (ie a wool pullover that looks like wool). I looked around to see whether anyone else was so moderately and modernly attired. Yes, there were a few.

At the end of the performance the sheet of mirrors is lifted to 90 degrees, to show the audience to themselves. Excellent fun.

And then we left, we made our way out through the vestibule where it was clear that each female member of the audience was being given a goody bag. And since we were fortunate in consisting in part of a female member of the audience in the shape of Hilary, we, or I should say she, was one of the recipients. The goody bag held a steel, or possibly it was polished aluminium, brooch in the shape of a dragonfly.

We drove back home in the, for us, early hours (the performance finished at about 00.45am), being surprised at the volume of traffic on the road, though equally surprised how quick the journey home was, for we are used to this journey when there are stops and starts, which at 1am there were none of.

A very different experience from going to the opera in the UK.