The link between the much-loved verismo double act and the motto of the Boy Scouts is not obvious, but the 2006-2007 season at Madrid’s Teatro Real, now just beyond its halfway point, establishes that there is one. The connection arises in the following way.
Whether by accident or design, the first half of the season has not included a single opera in Italian, while the second half consists entirely of Italian opera (in the language sense, not necessarily by origin of composer), with the exception of the first performance of a new opera in Spanish, El Viaje a Simorgh by José María Sánchez-Verdú, scheduled for May. The season began with Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos at the end of September, followed by The Love of Three Oranges, The Tales of Hoffmann and, in January of the new year, Wozzeck. German, Russian and French, and an attractively varied mixture of operas that, with the exception of the Offenbach, are not entirely mainstream/popular. Even the concert performances so far have been non-Italian: Prokofiev’s Semion Kotko and Manfred Gurlitt’s Wozzeck.
Madrid’s opera house is a particularly fine place to spend your time, and even more so this season. The orchestra, the Sinfónica de Madrid, has been playing especially well; the theatre has a chorus that handles itself naturally and fluidly on stage, and all of the productions so far have been intelligent and visually sensational: particularly the new Hoffmann and Wozzeck.
The latter, a co-production with Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu where it was seen last year, was an emotionally devastating interpretation relocated from its military town to a Chernobyl-style industrial plant. Sitting quite close to the stage, I was surprised to find that the scenery of industrial tubing and gantries actually gave off a definite oily smell.
The centrally located Teatro Real, facing the Royal Palace (there is a sensational view from the promenade adjacent to the cafeteria), is easy to reach by public transport, and, because Madrid does not go to bed early, it is possible to go for something afterwards and still catch the Metro home. My godson, whose musical education I foster with an annual opera excursion (it is not an onerous responsibility!), confidently and probably correctly at the age of thirteen told me that the restaurant bar was the most beautiful bar in the world.
So where does “Be prepared” fit into this attractive scenario? The answer is, in getting tickets. These go on sale in the box office and on the theatre’s website about two weeks before the first night. However, a large number has already been sold on the abono system. If you have an abono, you have bought the same seat for everything in the season. This means that the theatre gets quite a lot of its seat revenue early on, so it must be popular with the accountants, but when the general booking opens it is a sale of what has been left, and many of these are seats with very limited visibility. The competition is intense: hesitate and you may see the seat you would like disappear from your computer screen.
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Now, with operas that are clearly less popular, things are a little more relaxed. I was not therefore surprised or disappointed in February to find that for a seat with reasonable visibility for Cavalleria Rusticana andI Pagliacci I would have to pay more I had for both of the performances of Wozzeck that I attended. In fact, for Wozzeck I took a late decision to go again, and I was able to hear Susan Anthony who took over the last performances from Angela Denoke. It wasn’t difficult, but you would not be able to do that sort of thing in the run of
Cav & Pag: cut-throat competition (appropriately, really!) would not have left much if anything at all. Surprisingly though, Rossini’s little-known La Pietra del Paragone has created a similar run on the box office. Apparently, the local audience is particularly committed to opera in Italian and, after politely tolerating other things for five months, is thirsty for the real vino generoso!
Benjamin Britten said something to the effect that he expected the concert public to have done some homework beforehand, perhaps with the score, or reading or recordings. It is important to be prepared for the opera: perhaps more so since it is an expensive enthusiasm. If you have paid a lot of money, it is worth gearing up to get full value from the experience. To get the most from the performance, it is a good idea to at least familiarize yourself with the synopsis and the music, and even if you are going to see an opera that you know well, a refresher course beforehand helps.
But being prepared, at least in Madrid, means having to start very early, studying the list of the dates when tickets go on sale, and making a fine estimate of each opera’s degree of local audience appeal, or you will not even get into the house to hear it.
Richard Pairaudeau
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