A Weekend In Nottingham

Nottingham Theatre Royal

Some things take a while to settle. Big life events, experiences, works of art. Sometimes you just don’t feel them as truthfully at the moment they are happening than you will remember them after the fact. For me, these last few months have been full of things like that. In September my dad died after an almost three-year long illness. Obviously this has been tough, but really I don’t think I ever felt the weight of it in its entirety. I’m not sure I ever will - rather I’ll feel it in different ways at different times. I’m sure I’ll write about it and come up with different ways of expressing the effects of going through something like this more in the future, as it’s definitely an ongoing thing. I reimagined the purpose of this blog just before it happened, deciding that I want to be more authentic and genuine, and often write more about things that aren’t directly to do with music, and so that’s what I plan on doing. I enjoy posting reviews, and will do so from time to time - but why not give a fuller picture?

So, instead of directly reviewing the two operas I went to see in Nottingham last weekend, I want to reflect on wider experiences and thoughts. I feel like my subjective experience of anything, be it a form of art such as music or literature, or perhaps just an event in general life, is affected by so much more than just whether something was good (and in what ways it was or wasn’t good). The individual’s state of mind at the time of perceiving something is bound to affect their perception and, since I enjoy writing and reflecting so much, I want to try and capture that.

For those of you who don’t pay much attention to the news or don’t live up north, it rained a lot in Sheffield (and elsewhere) at the end of last week. And I mean it rained a lot, causing serious floods. I remember a very dreary Thursday in which it never seemed to stop raining and the roads were becoming more and more waterlogged as I went out teaching. I’m far more confident driving now, having passed my test earlier this year, so I wasn’t too phased by the heavy amounts of rain except the emotional low a dark sky can sometimes be so capable of bringing to an otherwise productive and satisfying day. Nevertheless, I was looking forward to two days away in Nottingham to see two operas, something I hadn’t done for a while. I always find it’s good to have something to look forward to like that once in a while, especially in the winter months. That evening I got home to the news that some parts of Sheffield were entirely underwater, and it seemed the next day’s travel might not have been happening after all.

In the morning however, I persisted - it seemed the roads would be clear enough to get to where I needed to be. My boyfriend and I travelled to Nottingham on the tram in the evening, and despite the bleak weather and the fact it now goes dark at something like seemingly midday, we had a surprising amount of fun. Oddly relevant was the meal I had before Friday’s opera, which involved a red-hot cast-iron pan being delivered straight to the table full of fajita filling, still smoking. Now, I like food as it is and especially enjoy cooking with the mindset of combining interesting flavours and textures to create an experience (which, the more I think about it, is the same process I use to compose, write and perform), so when a meal, which ended up being very tasty, comes with that small element of theatre about it, it makes it all the more exciting, and I honestly feel that for events such as opera, the whole experience including what was eaten beforehand colours my memories and experiences.

So, full of Mexican food, we headed (for the first time ever, for me) to the Nottingham Theatre Royal to see one of the most beloved operas ever, Puccini’s ‘La Bohéme’. By this point i was pretty well experienced with Puccini, having seen all of his other ‘main’ operas and some of his more obscure ones too, so this performance was definitely going to be one for the musical bucket list. On arrival, somewhat irritatingly, my boyfriend and I were pretty much almost told that we were in the wrong building by a member of staff and that the Rob Beckett performance was next door. We were also told, quite sternly, to make sure our phones were turned off upon handing our tickets over to be seated. I noticed that the elderly people in the queue in front of us were not reminded to do this, and reflected on how if this had been my first time at an opera, this might have made me feel rather alienated and patronised. Thankfully I knew that by then I was a seasoned opera-goer with a music degree behind me. Goodness knows how other people in this position might have felt, though, and after so long it gets rather tiresome.

Thankfully, the performance was the polar-opposite. Not only had Opera North had the fantastic idea to have two rotating casts for ‘La Bohéme’ made up of some exciting new talent, but the staging was an exemplar of creating a performance which is completely accessible yet also completely in retention of its integrity. Not that the two things are usually mutually exclusive, but it was so refreshing to see a performance that so proudly showed how the two things work best when used together. The set was striking and the performances outstanding. I already knew that the ending would be tragic, but somehow it hit exceptionally hard. Perhaps, as I mentioned earlier, this had something to do with the process of grief and the resonance of certain moments with me especially given the context of my trip to see the opera, or perhaps anybody would have felt the same given the fantastic performance and realisation of the piece.

The following day was a strange one, it was bitterly cold and I felt that sort of tiredness that creates a mild feeling of disorientation, and after arriving in Nottingham just as it was getting dark with not really enough time to explore the city, but too much time to just eat and go and watch the opera, we ended up playing adventure golf, which was full of students and actually became quite dark and cramped after a while. People had begun drinking for the evening and, as somebody who doesn’t drink at all, sometimes being totally surrounded by this, especially in cramped environments can leave me feeling a little bit overwhelmed. It’s interesting, because twenty minutes later I was also surrounded by people in a cramped and dark environment, but as this was a theatre, I felt more as if this was within my comfort zone. I found myself reflecting on why this was, and why I felt more welcomed in such an environment than perhaps somewhere I was ‘meant’ to feel more at home. Especially given the experiences upon arriving at the theatre the previous day.

Anyway, overwhelm is key here, because my goodness, Martinu’s ‘The Greek Passion’ certainly overwhelmed me. There was a lot going on, both in terms of the music/libretto of the piece itself and the staging. The piece’s message is an admirable one and deals with some heavy stuff, most notably the arrival of some refugees to a traditional village and how the villagers respond, paralleled with the story of the Passion of Christ. The way it does this is very intriguing, yet at the end of the first half I felt as though any sense of being able to make up my own mind about anything was lacking - the imagery on stage seemed to be far too heavy handed, yet there were also some effective bits. After the second half, I was really confused, and it took my boyfriend explaining something to me to realise quite how effective it had been. Basically, any piece of imagery that seemed too on the nose in the first half was deconstructed, viewed from a different angle and left far more ambiguous by the end. It was this ambiguity that initially confused me, but now I feel very much as if it was designed to be left to settle in the mind, perhaps even for a few days, before the experience of going to it can be fully realised. A prime example of this was that the words ‘give us what you have too much of’ lowered down into view at the end of the first half. This seemed far too obvious for me initially, however once the refugees began to realise they could not rely on others to prosper, these words fell from their mounts and crumbled. I felt like this enriched the inferred conclusion of the opera, but didn’t patronise the audience with it. Very interesting. The music was also an element of my initial confusion - what was it going for? Some of it was entirely unsettling, some of it the opposite, but there seemed no real transition between moods. One might describe the experience in the moment as one of tonal whiplash. However, viewed in retrospect and from afar, the bigger picture becomes clear and the depth of meaning behind the piece seems far more apparent to me now. As I said, some things take a while to settle.

Perhaps, had I been in a more relaxed frame of mind before the performance started, I may have understood this deeper meaning closer to the moment of performance, but knowing the context of my state of mind, I’m rather glad it happened the way it did. Recently, it seems things have required a lot of patience from me, but that’s no bad thing, because with patience seems to come a deeper understanding of the thing in the first place.