Don’t Do It Again Matilda

An Analysis of the Language Used by Harry Champion in Don’t Do It Again Matilda

YouTube link

This page gives my comments on some of the language and intonation used on Harry Champion’s May 1910 recording of Don’t Do It Again Matilda, a song attributed, words and music, to Fred Murray.

My grandparents were born in the 1880s and a lot of the expressions and phrasing in the way they spoke were very similar to those used by Harry Champion. My parents, born in 1913 and 1914 also in London, were of a subsequent generation, with a few throwbacks in their language. They only spoke a little bit like Harry Champion

Lyric	Comment
Matilda, a lady I’ve known many years, She’s a beauty, a bit of alright. Last night in her parlour, I sat on a chair And I had such a terrible fright. I thought that her poodle had bit me, I did, When I rolled meself up in a knot, When she said that her beautiful set of false teeth She had laid on the chair, I said: ‘What!’	A bit of alright to describe a woman (or lady, Harry Champion would never have said: ‘a woman I’ve known many years’ as that would have seemed pompous and disrespectful) is a classic phrase. Very evocative for me, though I think it will have pretty-much died out with my grandparents. Possibly it would be used a bit by my parents’ generation (those born in the 1910s-1920s) but seeming rather dated by then I think. The use of the word parlour is of its time. The parlour was the sitting room, the best room. The full set of false teeth for a lady with a parlour would have been a relatively recent invention by 1910, since gas in the form of ether or chloroform or nitrous oxide as an anesthetic was only being pioneered in the 1840s. Probably this song is referring to something of a fashion. I said ‘What!’ sounds very familiar to me. Still in use in London as an expression well into the 1960s.
Don’t do it again, Matilda, Don’t do it again! Your beautiful teeth they are most unkind, Never bit me before, but they bit me behind. Wow, wow! They’re biting me now, And I cannot locate the pain. Pull them out of me south Put ’em into yer mouth, And don’t do it again!	Never bit me before but they bit me behind, very clever, slightly risqué. Get ’em out of me south. South as a word for backside has probably died out now. Used to be quite widespread.
Matilda and I went to Brighton one day And she stood on the beach long-a me. The wind it was windy, got under her clothes And it blew her right out in the sea. I saw her come up with a smile on her face, And she looked like a drownded old pup. She came up again to the top of the foam, And I said that’s yer second time up!	She stood on the beach long-a me, ie she stood on the beach beside me. The expression ‘long-a me’ was widely used in the period and later, and you would hear old fellers say it all the time. Died out now I think. Everyone at the time would understand what a ‘drownded old pup’ was, for drowning puppies when there got to be too many was a widespread practice, or said to be. I’ve never seen it done but I heard my uncles talk about the most effective methods, though whether they themselves every put puppies in a bag with rocks and slung them in the canal, who knows? They might have. Notice how there’s a cymbal crash to coincide with the exclamation mark. It happens a few times on the recording.
Ah, don’t do it again, Matilda, Never you do it again. You’ve done it now twice and number three You’ll find it unlucky – just take it from me. Don’t throw that under your nose, But swallow the Raging Main. Drink up all the lot, When you get to the bot’ Then never come up again!	Never you do it again, an admonition. Usually in English we make an imperative negative by putting ‘do not’ in front of it, as in ‘don’t do it again’, and we make this firmer by including ‘you’ as in ‘don’t you do it again’. Harry Champion makes it firmer still by using ‘never you’, as did my grandparents and older uncles and aunts, when they were being really, really firm. I think this form of expression may have died out now. Just take it from me is another typical firm admonition of the time. It often meant: I know what I’m talking about and you don’t. Possibly also died out though once widely used. I cannot quite make out what Harry Champion sings where I’ve written ‘Don’t throw that under your nose’ I think that’s what he says, and it would just about make sense. The Raging Main is a bit imaginative for Brighton. The Raging Main is what Neptune is the ruler of. I think it would be considered a bit posy now, though it sounds familiar from what I remember of the time, or rather from the speech of people who were alive at the time. When you get to the bot’, or Harry Champion might even say bottom with the final syllable mumbled. Bot was used as an abbreviation for bottom in the sense of someone’s bottom. I don’t think I ever heard it used in relation to the sea, but then again this may be an innuendo.
Matilda she went to a fancy dress ball And she played an original part. She rubbed herself over with raspberry jam And she went as a raspberry tart. I went up to hug her and give her a kiss, Well the jam went all over me kite. I know she’s a sticker, But Lor’ what a licker! I shouted: ‘you’ve done it tonight!’	Played an original part, playing an original part is what someone did if they did something out of the ordinary, especially if it was considered somewhat risky or rude. If my grandfather had seen someone walking along the road with their breast or penis exposed, he would definitely have described them as playing an original part. Not that he ever did see those particular things I should think, but it was that type of thing. Notice how Harry Champion slightly rolls his r’s in this verse, when he pronounces ‘raspberry’ in particular. This is accurate – well of course it’s accurate, for he was of the time. I mean that was how many people in London at the time spoke. When I was young, to have rolled the r on raspberry would have sounded very old-fashioned and uncool. In north London by the 1950s we pronounced raspberry sounding something like ooaarsboowee. Still do sometimes. A raspberry tart is a fart, rhyming slang, as in blow a raspberry or ‘who just rasped?’ This verse is not as straightforward as it seems. The Oxford English Dictionary and Partridge in his book Historical Slang both say that kite means belly, and people point to Harry Champion’s song Boiled Beef and Carrots where he sings: From morn til night you blow out your kite as an indication that it means belly. But I don’t think that’s right, or rather I don’t think that that’s what Harry Champion means, I think he means face. I always understood kite to mean face, and I understood ‘blow out your kite’ to mean the same as ‘fill your face’. I have a page about the use of the word kite in London slang at Kite You Are. I know she’ a sticker but Lor’ what a licker – I think that’s what he sings, though it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I don’t get this phrase at all. Lor’ is short for Lord, and that was a widely-used expression of the time, oh Lor’ oh lumme. You’ve done it tonight! Now you’ve done it! You still hear this expression a bit I think. Sounds a bit Laurel and Hardy.
Ah, don’t do it again, Matilda Don’t do it again! That raspberry jam was made of glue It cannot be helped but I’m sticking to you. My luck, our noses are stuck and I’m starting to lose me train. I can’t walk about with you stuck on me snout, So don’t do it again!	It cannot be helped, a typical expression of that period and of the next generation too. It’s fatalistic, expressed in the passive voice, so is also an expression of the time. Of course Harry Champion is simply using a well-known phrase, I don’t suppose he analysed it for a moment. I’m starting to lose me train presumably means ‘train of thought’, that’s if Harry Champion actually does say train, it’s a bit hard to be sure. I can’t walk about. Very typical. Some of my older uncles, especially the Tottenham and Edmonton lot (Harry Champion lived in Tottenham) would say ‘You can’t walk about like that!’, which means: ‘I can’t . . .’: passive distancing to boot. Another Harry Champion song has ‘walk about’ used in this sense: Ginger, You’re Barmy. ‘Don’t walk about without your cady on, Ginger, you’re barmy!’ (And as an aside, I don’t know about the word: cady. Obviously means a hat but no one seems to know why. Not a word I ever heard I think.) With you stuck on me snout. Snout as a word for nose, typical London and maybe still used a bit.
I shall never forget, on the day I got wed Well, there’s only yer ’umble to blame. Matilda insisted on washing me shirt and I’ve only one shirt to me name. She sent it along and when I put it on I discovered that I was a jay, She’d starched it all over from bottom to top So I wrote her a letter to say . . .	Yer ’umble is your humble servant, or your humble self. Your humble servant would be a social filtering down of the formal sign-off: I remain, Sir, your humble servant; your humble self is something people sometimes said. The humble servant idea must have been becoming archaic even in 1910 so the expression would probably have been seen as something of a joke. The humble self is a passive distancing structure, because really it means not your humble self, but my humble self. I guess that Harry Champion used yer ’umble as an colloquial expression, I don’t suppose he analysed it at all. I’ve only one shirt to me name. The expression lasted well into the 1950s, having only one of something to your name. Quite a charming one, that one. I discovered that I was a jay. There are various references on the web to jay being mid-western American slang for a fool, hence the origin of the word ‘jaywalker’. Eric Partridge gives a number of references to it in UK slang of the 1880s as a fool or simpleton. She’d starched it all over from bottom to top. Starching of shirts, or more especially collars and cuffs, was what you did in them days, to make them stiff and believed-to-be smart-looking.
Don’t do it again, Matilda Don’t do it again! The dicky’s as stiff as a rusty nail And the back of it’s wagging about like a tail. My shirt, oh doesn’t it hurt, Just toddle around and explain. It’s a stiff as a pin and I can't tuck it in, So don’t do it again!	The dicky is the dicky dirt, shirt, rhyming slang. Stiff as a rusty nail, lovely simile, quite widely-used though it may be that this song was the origin of it, could be. I think that Harry Champion sings: just toddle around, sounds like it’s probably toddle, and that would fit. Toddle around or toddle off was used a fair bit, it goes for me with slope off, which always gave me the amusing image of someone departing on a lean.

So there we are, that’s some of the reasons why I love this song so much, it’s the wealth of language. She also my analysis of:

Never Let Your Braces Dangle.

Kite You Are

The OED Has Got It Wrong, So Has Partridge.

The page concerns the origin and meaning of the 19th-century London slang word: kite. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and Eric Partidge’s Dictionary of Historical Slang both define it as meaning stomach, though that is different from both my understanding and, it appears, the evidence.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, vol. VIII, p. 471, ‘kite’ (also ‘kyte’), a dialect word, originally derived from an old English word for the womb, which – by extension – came to mean the belly. What a load of old toffee!

The idea that kite refers to stomach comes from the song sung by Harry Champion, Boiled Beef and Carrots, where he sings: ‘From morn til night blow out yer kite, on boiled beef and carrots.’

The deepus thinkers assume that ‘Blow out yer kite’ means fill your stomach (though without any backup evidence so far as I can make out) on the basis that it seems obvious. These academics, they are a laugh, cor blimey wot a laugh.

From the song you might surmise that kite refers to stomach, but I don’t think it does, I think it quite simply means what it says, it’s an allegory. When a kite fills out in the sky it fills out, though this particular kite is perhaps the nautical version, it’s a type of sail used in light winds, apparently. Blow out yer kite means, well, blow out yer kite. The words don’t need taking literally, only a non-artist who cracks nuts in their teeth would do that.

There is another slang meaning of kite, which seems to have escaped the folks who compile the OED, which is to do with the face, and it could be more plausible to translate ‘Blow out yer kite’ as ‘Fill yer face’.

That is how I remember the word being used in my childhood in London, and the following would tend to back me up:

1. On a site called A Cockney Rhyming Slang Dictionary someone asks the meaning of ‘kite’, and a reply comes thus:

<< Tony adds: “Kite” is a reference to “nose”. I have no idea why it does, but my dad has used that term all my life “You’ve got a snotty kite”, “get you finger out of your kite” or “wipe your kite”. I was a very grubby boy. >>

Could be nose, though could also be face.

2. In another song sung by Harry Champion, Don’t Do It Again Matilda, he sings:

Matilda she went to a fancy dress ball

And she played an original part.

She rubbed herself over with raspberry jam

And she went as a raspberry tart.

I went up to hug her and give her a kiss,

Well the jam went all over me kite.

I know she’s a sticker,

But Lor’ what a licker!

I shouted: ‘you’ve done it tonight!’

Ah, don’t do it again, Matilda

Don’t do it again!

That raspberry jam was made of glue

It cannot be helped but I’m sticking to you.

My luck, our noses are stuck and I’m starting to lose me train.

I can’t walk about with you stuck on me snout,

So don’t do it again!

Their noses would logically be stuck if kite means face (or even nose), but not if it means belly. Not at all.

3. My mother would use the phrase ‘face a long as a kite’ to mean you look glum. This is also used in a Harry Champion song: The Old Dun Cow, where he sings:

Some pals and I in a public house were playing dominoes last night,

When all of a sudden in the potman runs with a face just like a kite.

Incidentally the lyrics to these three songs were not all written by the same person, being respectively Charles Collins, Fred Murray and Harry Wincott, I think that’s right.

So all in all, I think that the OED has it wrong. What they have written just doesn’t ring true.

But we won’t tell them, we’ll keep it to ourselves.

I have another page where I think the dictionary-compliers have missed the bleedin’ obvious with regard to a word, this time the word hassle. See These Academics They Are a Funny Lot.

There’s also the way that places are announced on London Buses. See London’s Talking Buses.

There’s an analysis of the language used in Don’t Do It Again Matilda on my page Don’t Do It Again Matilda and another on Boiled Beef and Carrots.

Boiled Beef and Carrots

An Analysis of the Language Used by Harry Champion in Boiled Beef and Carrots

YouTube link

This page gives my comments on some of the language and intonation used on Harry Champion’s January 1910 recording of Boiled Beef and Carrots, a song by Charles Collins and either Fred Murray or Bert Lee.

I am especially interested in looking at the language of the old London music hall songs, as that is the language of my grandparents.

Lyric	Comment
When I was a nipper only six months old, Me mother and me father too, They didn’t know what to wean me on, They were in a dreadful stew. They thought of tripe, they thought of steak, And a little bit of old cod’s roe, I said, ‘Pop round to the old cookshop, And I’ll tell you what’ll make me grow:’ Boiled beef and carrots, boiled beef and carrots, That’s the stuff for your Darby Kell. Makes you fat and it keeps you well, Don’t live like vegetarians, On food they give to parrots. Blow out your kite, from morn til night, On boiled beef and carrots.	Nipper. I think this comes from the Italian-influenced lingua-franca: nipotino, literally meaning grandchild but coming to mean any small child. That seems likely to me to be the origin. It’s one of many London words of that provenance such as scarper (scappare) and billydoo (biglietto), I think. (Note that many people say that billydoo is an anglicising of the French, billet doux, though there doesn’t seem to be any evidence for that, and since a billet doux is a love letter and a billydoo a ticket or small piece of paper, exactly corresponding to the meaning of biglietto, I believe my guess to be a more credible-sounding one). Getting down to the old cook shop refers to something that no longer exist. Cook shops. A little bit of old cod’s roe. My grandparents would say, when offering you something to eat, ‘I got a bit of jam’. A bit of is of the period. Darby Kell is Darby Kelly, rhyming slang for belly. There’s an old Irish song that refers to a drummer in the Napoleonic wars called Darby Kelly: ‘My grandsire beat a drum so neat. His name was Darby Kelly-o’, see the Bodleian Library entry. But that sounds a bit obscure to be adopted as rhyming slang. I wonder if it was a racehorse, named after that Darby Kelly, that caused it to catch on. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was. Darby Kelly as slang for belly appears in at least one other song song by Harry Champion: Any Old Iron, where he sings: ‘I put it on, across me Darby Kell‘. maybe some others, I shall keep an ear cocked. Blow Out Yer Kite. My interpretation is that this means, ‘Fill Your Face’. See Kite You Are for the reasons why I am convinced of that.
When I got married to Matilda Brown, A funny little girl next door. We went to Brighton for the week, Then both toddled home once more. My mates all met me in the pub Said a feller to me ‘What’s your bread?’ Said, ‘What did you have for your honeymoon?’, So just for a lark I said: Boiled beef and carrots, boiled beef and carrots. That’s the stuff for your Darby Kell. Makes you fat and it keeps you well, Don’t live like vegetarians, On food they give to parrots. The wife of mine, looks fat and fine, On boiled beef and carrots.	‘Both toddled home once more’. In a number of songs of the period people are toddling. For example see Don’t Do It Again Matilda. A common expression right up until the 1950s or 1960s. What’s Your Bread?’ What will you have to drink. Just for a lark I said Many music hall songs have things being done for a lark, for example see the final verse of Never Let Your Braces Dangle. The expression of doing things for a lark persisted well into the 1940s and 1950s.
Now we’ve got a lodger, he’s an artful cove, ‘I’m very, very queer’, he said. We called for the doctor, he came round, And told him to jump in bed. The poor chap said, ‘I do feel queer’, then mother with a tear replied, Said, ‘What would you like for a pick-me-up?’, And he jumped out of bed and cried: Boiled beef and carrots, boiled beef and carrots,. That’s the stuff for your Darby Kell. Makes you fat and it keeps you well, Don’t live like vegetarians, On food they give to parrots. Blow out yer kite from morn til night, On boiled beef and carrots.	Quite a few music hall songs refer to lodgers, for taking in a lodger to help pay the rent was widespread. An artful cove is an expression that has now died out. My grandparents would use the word ‘artful’, to mean cleverly devious, they used it all the time. As children we would get called artful if we were doing something that they thought was a bit underhand as they saw it. Artful presumably means creative, and at that time creativity was generally seen to be a bad thing. Following convention was noble. A cove is a slang word for a man, according to the Oxford English Dictionary it was a low-class or thieves slang word for a man dating from way back to the 16th century. That it was still current in the late 19th century and right up into the 1930s or 40s was possibly more due to the adoption of the Romani word ‘cova’ or ‘covo’ which, according to Partidge, means ‘that man’. Quite a number of Romani words found their way into London slang, drum coming to mean a house for example, and more recently chav. Chap (used later on the the verse) is also a slang word for man. The dictionaries tell us that it was a chapman, a 16th century word for a customer, that in the early 18th century got shortened to chap as a word for a friend, and subsequently came to mean a man of any sort. I cannot remember my grandparents using the word ‘cove’, though they did use chap. Until publicly usurped by homosexual men in the 1960s, queer meant unwell or strange. In music hall songs the word queer appears frequently.
I’m proud to be the father of a lovely pair, Of nippers and they’re nice fat boys. They’re twins, you can’t tell which is which, Lake a pair of saveloys. We got them Christened in the week, the parson took them on his knee, I said as they’ve both got ginger hair, I want their names to be: Boiled beef and carrots, boiled beef and carrots,. That’s the stuff for your Darby Kell. Makes you fat and it keeps you well, Don’t live like vegetarians, On food they give to parrots. Gentiles and Yids bring up your Kids, On boiled beef and carrots.	Saveloys are bright red sausages. I believe that the red colour comes from the saltpetre that was put in them. Can you still get saveloys? I must try and get a photo. We got them Christened in the week is an odd way of putting ‘this week’ isn’t it? Was very common and could still be. Gentiles and Yids – never get away with that now, though I’m not sure it was intended to be offensive at all at the time, simply amusing, I think.

Some of the reasons why I love this song so much, it’s the wealth of language. She also my analyses of:

Never Let Your Braces Dangle

Don’t Do It Again Matilda

Never Let Your Braces Dangle

An Analysis of the Language Used by Harry Champion in Never Let Your Braces Dangle

YouTube link

This page gives my comments on some of the language and intonation used on Harry Champion’s August 1910 recording of Never Let Your Braces Dangle, written by Fred J. Barnes and R. P. Weston.

I am especially interested in looking at the language of the old London music hall songs, as that is the language of my grandparents.

Lyric	Comment
I was one of eighteen boys, And we all wore corduroys. I was the roughest of the gang, ’Cos my braces used to hang. Dangling all around my feet, my mother used to bawl, Pointing to a textoleet she’d hung upon the wall, Never let your braces dangle, dingle, dingle, dangle. Never thieve, don’t deceive, never row or wrangle. Stick to the right, keep away from the bad. Don’t get tight like your poor old dad. But the greatest motto of the lot, my lad, Never let your braces dangle.	Corduroys appear in a number of music hall songs and surely always refer to being working men’s trousers. ’Cos my braces used to hang. Letting your braces (suspenders in American) hang, rather than putting them on your shoulders; there’s an archetypal image of the man who has left his braces hanging, he looks down-market, though it sounds like this might have been something of a fashion statement by certain working-class young men at the end of the 19th century. A textoleet. This is a good one. I can find no reference anywhere to this slang word, it is as if the dictionary compilers have never listened to Harry Champion sing the song. A textoleet is a notice in capital letters. Something written in ‘text letter’ is something in capital letters. Even when I was at primary school in the 1950s you could still hear reference to text letters, meaning capital letters. The leet part is a Cockney version of letter, pronounced leeter, so a textoleet is a notice in capital letters. Simple when you know, harder to work out if you don’t know, as it’s ignored by the etymologists of the world, by some despicable omission. Tight meaning drunk was very widespread and it appears in a number of songs of the period. Possibly has died out now. The Oxford English Dictionary refers to tight meaning drunk appearing in a Dickens essay in 1853, so it will be a bit older than that. It may be nautical, as for me it goes with ‘Three sheets to the wind’, which is of nautical origin (strictly three sheets in the wind), there’s an interesting writeup on that phrase at The Phrase Finder.
Mrs Murphy’s got a mat, ??? the skin of some tomcat. On the floor it looks no doubt, Like a man been flattened out. I said to her, ‘Mary Ann, your carpet does look queer’, She said, ‘ That’s my first old man’ and whispered in my ear, Never let your braces dangle, dingle, dingle, dangle. Poor old sport, he got caught, and dragged right through the mangle. Over the rollers he rolled ’til he come, Out like a yard of linoleum, You may wipe your feet on his rum, tum, tum, Never let your braces dangle.	I can’t quite make out what Harry Champion sings before skin of some tomcat. Sounds like Tanks. I must get what this says at some point. Harry Champion sings Like a man sounding a bit like, Like a main. The good old London dipthong. Up until the 1960s was very widespread. I think people’s language might have changed a bit after that. Your carpet does look queer. Until usurped by homosexual men in the 1960s, queer meant unwell or strange. In music hall songs the word queer appears frequently. Dragged right through the mangle. Most homes will have had, or had access to, a mangle, used for drying the washing by squeezing it between rollers. Over the rollers he rolled ’til he come. Excellent, the London present-tense past. This is still in use in 2009, see The Public’s Reaction to the T-Mobile Dance on YouTube, the young woman on the right of the threesome uses the present-tense past when she says: ‘It was just one person, weren’t it? And then, like, slowly more and more come.’ I hope this YouTube clip never gets taken down as not only is there the London present-tense past, but also the London subjunctive: . . . just one person, weren’t it . . . Out like a yard of linoleum. Ah, yes, a yard of linoleum. Linoleum, or lino, was bought by the yard, I remember that, so the width of a piece of linoleum was presumably standard. See for example Old Bailey Proceedings, March 1903 where four men are charged with ‘stealing twenty yards of linoleum . . .’.
On one foggy afternoon, Once we had to shoot the moon. On the barrow I had got, Betsy’s chairs and all the lot. But I stuck it with a will, though people in the road, Shouted as I bided til I dragged my little load, Never let your braces dangle, dingle, dingle, dangle. Up that hill I stuck it ’til my legs got in a tangle. Get to the top, said a chappie, ‘here we are’, Undid me braces and murmured, ‘ta’. I’d been pulling up a tramway car, Never let your braces dangle.	Shooting the moon is leaving without having paid the rent. I don’t exactly get the ‘bided til I dragged my little load’, doesn’t quite make sense unless Harry Champion is using the verb to bide to mean something different from wait or stay, it could mean stay in the sense of sticking with it, possibly, sounds slightly familiar, and perhaps he isn’t saying ‘til’. Not sure. Ta is thank you. Old London and possibly elsewhere too. The tramway car is the old London trams. Highgate Hill had a cable tram from 1884 to 1909, i.e. it was drawn up the hill from Archway by cable. After that the technology was advanced enough to get an electric tram up there so the route could be extended along Holloway Road (for nerds, this was route 9 until 1914, and then route 11 which became trolleybus 611 and then in 1961 bus route 271, which pretty-much still follows the old tram route 11. There were other steepish hills with trams on too, notably Herne Hill in south London.
One day fishing in the brook, With a worm upon me hook. I turned round as in a dream, Braces dangled in the stream. Some old shark came sailing by so quietly underneath, Nipped my braces, winked his eye, and whispered through his teeth, Never let your braces dangle, dingle, dingle, dangle. That old shark out for a lark, said I’ll teach you to angle. He gave a tug, I was into his jaw, into his tum and I said, Oh Lor! As he pushed me out of his little back door, Never let your braces dangle.	I don’t like this verse. Most music hall songs have stupid words, but this verse I think is juvenile stupid, it’s also a bit lavatorial, which is rather unusual for the music hall. The language in the verse is less interesting than often, too. I’ll teach you to angle is perhaps the only noteworthy phrase. I’ll teach you to . . . is a classic London admonition, meaning something like: ‘Do not!’ Do anglers angle? Possibly turning the gerund, angling, into a verb is either slang or a conscious joke. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it used like that anywhere else.

So there we are, that’s some of the reasons why I love this song so much, it’s the wealth of language. She also my analysis of:

Boiled Beef and Carrots.

Don’t Do It Again Matilda.

From the Bizarre to the Bizarrer

Promotional Posters in Italy – September 2011

I took this photo in Santa Vittoria in Matenano on 16th September 2011, posters advertising events almost a month gone by – nothing too unusual about that.

Petritoli (which is pronounced to sound like Petr-Italy) is a town about half an hour’s drive away from Santa Vittoria.

The band in the left poster is called I Cugini di Campagna which means Country Cousins. (!)

It’s not clear to me what Wellness Village has to do with it, as that is a health club just outside Rome.

And what do these men in wigs and rainbow trousers, one with a music-hall moustache and another looking like Colonel Ghaddafi, do? Well I looked it up on the web and they seem to be quite well-known. The lead singer uses a falsetto voice and they make a point of looking camp and dressing in outrageous clothes. That’s a relief.

By contrast, the other band, Danilo’s Band, are more classically Italian summer concerts, complete with accordionists and girls in slightly too-tight dresses. Quite why the typeface is crumbling rock is less clear, it appears to be their logo typeface.

Both these bands have websites and videos on YouTube, and it turns out that Danilo’s is in fact the more amusing:

Promo Video. I guess that this is not intended to be funny, which in a way makes it even more hilarious.

Danilo is playing an organetto in this video, which is a traditional instrument especially for the Marche region of Italy.

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.

Festa Time in Italy

Street Music in the Marche, August 2009

It’s festa time in Italy which means there’s lots of music in the streets. Best so far has been a sextet of soprano sax, alto, two tenors a baritone and a bass – all saxes that is – who played in the park by the chapel at the top of the hill, with all the paths lit with candles. Mixture of stuff, from West Side Story to very modern.

Worst street music so far this year – and there’s stiff competition for this – is probably a Bob Dylan tribute band: that was last night, they were due to start at 9.30 and still weren’t on stage at quarter past ten. Terrible, especially the drummer who seemed to think that bashing the drums was what he was supposed to do, rhythm being someone else’s job.

But the odd thing is that there are all these white moulded plastic chairs and the old folks sit patiently on them, quite impassively, some with their hats on, and watch the show through to the end at about 1am. They did that the previous evening too when there was a nearly-as-bad band consisting of a man playing the electric accordion and working the drums-and-bass synthesizer, while three young girls, probably not 20-years-old, dressed in white high-heel ankle boots, sparkly silver short skirts, and low-cut v-neck tops and bare midriffs, jigged about and sang things like YMCA. And I mustn’t forget the smoke machine that hissed out steam when the synthesizer man got enthusiastic. Again the old folks sat through this rubbish – they always do. Some of it has a distinct feel of Hoxton-pub, 1963.

My pic shows the not so old folks, who tend to sit around for a while towards the beginning. One of my missions for a future trip is to get a good pics of the oldies in their hats.

The old folks – not all the old folks from the town but a contingent of them – sit it through on the white plastic chairs whatever, though I did overhear one man talking to the neighbours on the morning following the terrible Dylan tribute band, saying that he hadn’t enjoyed it, it was like a bomb in your head. Why had he stayed then? Unfortunately, if his answer made any sense at all, I didn’t understand it.