The Crimson Petal and the White - Michael Faber

I had been saving this for a rainy day, so I took the book with me on a trip to France. I always take too many books with me when I go away - paranoid that I will run out of reading material when stuck in a tiny airport with no bookshop - so I'm not very good at travelling light. This monster weighed in at over 800 pages so it counted for two or three normal length books.

It was a very good read. Good story, intriguing characters, and a totally new perspective on Victorian London Society. It was one of those books that it's easy to lose yourself in - perfect for a travelling companion.

Beyond that, I'm not sure what to say. The book isn't particularly inventive in construction or content - it's a fairly straightforward start-to-finish story of a prostitute with heart and brains who makes good. The only feature - 'though not exactly original - is the overpresent narrator. The reader is introduced to the main characters, entreated to stay with them even when they are dull or self-pitying, and generally guided through the novel in a very self-conscious fashion. Very Jane Austen. But not very consistent - the narrator fades around the middle of the novel, only to return on the last page as an apology for the inconclusive ending. But even this feature doesn't add anything profound - it's just a bit annoying.

I would recommend this as a good holiday read.

Orlando - The Royal Opera, Covent Garden

I caught the last night of this new production on the 23rd October. I was slightly concerned beforehand about the poor reviews I had seen in all the British press: complaints about the quality of the singers, doubts about whether the trouser-role of Orlando was set too low in Alice Coote's voice, and the most biting criticism of Anthony Baker's set designs. For the first ten minutes or so of the show, I was prepared to believe the reviews, as I sat through a dull and unsparkling first aria from Jonathan Lemalu (Zoroastro) and a very wobbly first recitative from Alice Coote (her voice took quite a while to 'settle' into the right range).
But things soon improved with the appearance of Camilla Tilling as the charming but slightly hopeless shepherdess, Dorinda, and Bejun Mehta as Medoro. As I sat and listened to aria after aria, each more splendid, virtuosic, moving or original than the last, the overwhelming impression was of attending a true spectacle. I left after three hours feeling uplifted.

Alice Coote was amazing. I had never heard her sing before (I missed her now famously over-acted recital at the Edinburgh Festival this summer), and at times I could not tell, either from her deportment on stage, or from her voice, whether she was male or female. She was just a stunning performer - to the point where eventually I stopped wondering about the gender thing and just concentrated on the musical and vocal expertise on display. Her most virtuoso aria, the bellicose 'Fammi combattere', brought the house down. One reviewer had worried about her voice carrying to the back of the hall - there was no such problem on the night I was in the audience - I was sat in the amphitheatre and Coote's voice carried perfectly; indeed, I would say better than any of the other singers', including Jonathan Lemalu, who is a dry-but-fruity bass. Impressive. Some of the more complex moments later on in Act 3 were slightly less impressive, but the 'Sleep' aria was very moving.

Barbara Bonney was less impressive overall, although there were some moments of the perfect phrasing that I would have expected from her. She seemed uncomfortable to be on the stage - fumbling the props - and had very little presence (despite the huge width of her skirts). She did sing in tune most of the time, however.

The same cannot be said of Camilla Tilling. I quite honestly don't know how to sum up her performance, except with a list of pros and cons:

Pro:
Acting: she has great stage presence, tons of enthusiasm and energy, and brightens up the stage simply by being on it.
Voice: charming, you can forgive her a lot for the consistent sweetness - it's just perfect for this shepherdess role (also for Pamina, earlier on in the year). And a good portion of her performance was stunning (e.g. the nightingale aria at the beginning of Act 2).

Con:
Pitch: in about half of her arias, she sang consistently sharp to the pitch of the orchestra. I can't imagine that she has problems with the baroque pitch, so to me, this permanent sharpness speaks of poor vocal technique and a distinct lack of musicality.

Fluffs: she nearly caused the first act to grind to a halt twice, firstly by coming too early in the recit after Bonney's first Aria (coincidentally robbing Bonney of the opportunity to take applause), and then by losing it completely in her second aria. I think there may have been a problem with the rotating set, which ground to a halt with an unhealthy sounding noise, but Tilling clearly did not know what she was singing, and the orchestra were so confused that they almost stopped playing. Fortunately Harry Bicket managed to get things going again.

I was also quite won over by Bejun Mehta, who is a bit of a star in his own right (he has also performed the title role of Orlando). One Aria in Act 2 (two hearts always intertwined, sung to Angelica) provoked a similar response in me to my first hearing of Tristan und Isolde: tears and shivers down the spine. I was amazed to find myself so moved by Handel, and I think the praise for this is due equally to Handel and to Mehta.

This was the first time that the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment had performed at the Royal Opera. It very different to the usual Opera House band - much smaller, the whole orchestra fitting into the portion of the pit that is not blcked from view by the stage. The Opera House is really too large for an authentic 18th century orchestra, and the orchestra are too far removed from the singers on stage to achieve true intimacy, but within these limitations I found it a new and satisfying experience. Ths crispness of Bicket's phrasing was a welcome change from the usual sloppiness heard in this House, and the small ensemble pieces (arias accompanied by two viola d'amore or recorders) worked very well, all things considered. Best of all, the orchestra stayed after the final curtain had fallen to take a bow - and were rewarded with the loudest applause of all from the audience. It makes such a difference when the band doesn't disappear down the pub the minute that the curtain falls.

But Handel's music deserves the starring role in any discussion of this performance. I had never heard any Handel opera before - I have sung endless Messiahs and have heard quite a few oratorios - and what amazed me was the realness of the emotions behind many of the arias, but particularly Dorinda's. Although the structure of opera seria is highly constraining, Handel is constantly pushing at the boundaries and doing the unexpected (I found Andrew Jones' excellent program notes to be very helpful for a novice such as myself). The trio where Angelica and Medoro console Dorinda is a perfect example.

I can only think that the performances have improved since all the reviews were writen at the beginning of the run. No doubt the singers have become more comfortable with the fiendish demands of the music. There was definitely an air of the 'last night'about the evening, and I felt that each of the five singers were giving their all to te performance with no holding back (except possibly Barbara Bonney, who hadn't managed to find top form). I will go back again when this production is inevitably revived, and will take my husband with me. Maybe next time Bejun Mehta will take the role of Orland? That's something I would like to hear.

Far from Heaven

I missed this film when it was showing in the cinemas and have just watched the DVD. What a shame that I didn't see it on the big screen - the film always promised to be visually stunning, and from its opening moments, when Julianne Moore pulled up in front of her 1950s white-painted house in a vehicle that looked more like an ice-cream than a car, I knew I was not going to be disappointed. The visual impact of each scene has been so carefully planned that every single shot is a beautifully constructed work of art: a view of the town is framed by a branch of autumn leaves, and during the opening scenes, which take place in autumn (in New England) the actors' clothes are all in golden shades of red and orange and green, matching the scenery.

But the film is not just beautiful to look at: there is a lot going on under the surface here. Set in 1950s suburbia, Julianne Moore plays Kathy, a housewife who appears to have it all - successful husband, two children, girlfriends - and is interviewed as a model housewife by the local newspaper. However, the reality is somewhat different. Early hints in the film about her husband's lack of interest in her sexually are followed through when Kathy discovers her husband kissing another man. He admits that he is a homosexual, and, tortured by what they see as a disease, embarks on a course of unspecified medical treatment to attempt a 'cure'. He sees the course of treatment through although he is clearly under severe mental strain, and husband and wife go on holiday to Miami after joking that 'everything is pink there'. This temporary peace is broken once and for all when he falls in love with a man 'who wants to be with him' and they divorce. In the meantime, Kathy grows increasingly close to their black gardener, played by Dennis Haysbert, a cultured widower with a young daughter. After they are seen in public together the family is ostracised by the close-knit white community in the town, and Kathy decides that they can no longer be friends. As the film ends, she says goodbye to father and daughter, who have been forced to leave town. They have been caught in the middle of the town's two communities, suffering racial abuse from the whites and stones through the window from the blacks, who feel equally betrayed.

The film examines two prejudices that would never have been explicitly discussed in a film about the 1950s made in the 1950s. One of the most telling scenes for me is towards the end of the film, when Kathy finally admits to her best friend that her marriage is ending because her husband is a homosexual. Her friend does not like homosexuals (both we and Kathy know this from an earlier conversation) but sympathises strongly with Kathy's situation, and offers her full support, until Kathy tells her that she is friends with her gardener. This betrayal of the white community is insupportable to her friend, and she turns her back on Kathy, unable to support this behaviour that she cannot understand.

The film is emotionally intelligent - another wonderfully understated scene is the conversation between Kathy and her husband immediately after she has caught him kissing a man. The whole conversation takes place in unfinished, generalised, half-sentences: her speaks of his 'problems' and she suggests a doctor, but the word 'homosexual' is never spoken. The two characters are unable to name explicitly what they have both seen with their own eyes, because they simply did not have a language to discuss these issues. Neither of them are stupid, they are just constrained by their background and a complete lack of understanding of the issues they are facing.

The film makes wonderful and knowing use of melodrama. This references back to real 1950s films - the shock when he strikes her, her shock when she opens the office door to find him in the arms of his lover. Elmore Bernstien's music is used to good effect here, strong string chords adding to the melodrama.

Despite the sad ending of the film - her husband has left her and the man she loves has left town - there is a note of hope. She admits that she has learned about moving in different worlds - her horizons have been broadened, and in time the horizons of society may also widen to allow a black men to speak to white women. This is confirmed by the closing shot - we have moved from autumn through winter into spring, and the first blossom is on the trees.

Man Booker Prize winner

So the dirty rotten scoundrel DBC Pierre has won the 2003 Man Booker Prize for his first novel, Vernon God Little. The story behind the book (drugs, cheating of friends, debts of reportedly three times the prize of £50,000) is very intriguing - I must read it!
Since I haven't read it yet, I can't comment on whether this was an appropriate winner. All I can say is that I'm glad that Monica Ali did not win with Brick Lane, as I thought this book was the most overrated of 2003. I enjoyed Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, but thought it covered a lot of the same ground as The Handmaid's Tale (and numerous other sci-fi books influenced by this fantastic book) and therefore didn't deserve a prize.

The Little Friend - Donna Tartt

I've just finished reading The Little Friend. It was a bit of a struggle to finish it - this is a very long and rambling novel. The plot twists and turns and left me feeling disorientated at several points, and some sentences seem to take on a life of their own and span lines and lines of text.

First of all I should confess that I am not a huge Donna Tartt fan, so I wasn't eagerly anticipating her second novel - hence I waited for it to be published in paperback here in the UK before I read it. I did read The Secret History, and found it gripping and weird enough that I could understand the Tartt 'cult' that grew up around it, without wanting to participate in the hype myself. So any Tartt fans might find my response a bit luke-warm.

I'm not going to attempt a full analysis of the novel - there are plenty of resources available for those who are interested, from fan site purple glitter to a book group reading guide provided by Bloomsbury (clever marketing).

A few thoughts:
Tartt writes from one main and several subsidiary view-points. The book revolves around Harriet, a twelve year-old girl who is looking to revenge the death of her brother Robin, and Harriet's viewpoint is the main one in the novel. I'm not sure that these different viewpoints work - Harriet is a very odd little girl, and the parts of the novel that are written through her eyes (although in the third person) do present a satisfyingly warped view of what is going on. But the mixture of Harriet's viewpoint with that of the adults in the book is a strange one, all the more so because the adults are a very strange lot themselves.

This can be described as a Southern novel, since the events are centred on the town of Alexandria, Mississippi. I think that the novel creates a real sense of place, and I loved the action centred on the white trash family, who are so hopeless and beyond the law that even when they are behaving very badly, we can't help but feel sorry for them.

In fact after putting the novel down, I am left with a sense of pity for all the characters. They are all damaged by a lack of care: Harriet's parents do not care for her; the white trash family are not cared for by society or by the system of welfare; even the hospital does not care effectively for the characters who are admitted to it. Just surviving is difficult for all of them, but I'm not sure whether their battle is against the South, or against the author: they are constantly struggling against the many black and twisted plot devices Tartt throws at them.

Nothing is resolved in the book. Tartt appears to have an unresolved ending in mind right from the start, as discussed in this interview with Robert Birnbaum. I would not have been surprised by the number of threads left hanging loose (characters leave town after an argument and are never heard of again; we don't know what happens to Harriet's parents or whether they start to take better care of her; we don't know whether there are any consequences from the happenings towards the end of the book; we don't know whether Harriet's mother discovers that her husband is living with another woman), except for the big set-piece ending involving guns, cars and near-drownings, which seems to predict some great resolution. Yet it never comes. Was I a frustrated reader? Slightly - but having travelled nearly 600 pages with Harriet and her strange friends and relatives, I was quite content to leave her company. You can't help thinking that she would grow up into a very screwed up woman - maybe she will write a novel about her experiences?

Frederic Beigbeder - Windows on the World

This is the first of what I suspect will be several postings about contemporary French literature. I recently discovered amazon.fr, the French amazon website. Not very difficult to discover, it has to be said - but it had never occurred to me to look there before. I was struggling to get hold of new material to read in French - I was a bit bored with the 'classics' which is all most British bookshops stock by way of French language books - and wanted to try something more contemporary. I think this was also a reaction to the French/American stand-off earlier in the year over Iraq. Anyway, I was looking for a Michel Houellebecq book, and finally found it on amazon.fr - and they ship to the UK. So I am now officially an amazonaute! And I am enjoying some contemporary literature - it's a good antidote to the american lit that I read a lot of.

Windows on the World

The first Beigbeder novel I have read - I saw a brief mention in the Guardian Review last month. I have also ordered Luc Lang's book but not read it yet.

There are two first-person narrators in the novel - one is FB himself, the other is an invented Texan called Carthew Yorston, who is visiting Windows on the World, the restaurant on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center, with his two young sons. We are presented with alternating chapters from each narrator - the Carthew Yorston timeline is linear and takes place within two hours on the morning of September 11 2001, whereas the FB narrator covers more than one day during the period that the author is writing the book.

FB is a hyperrealist like Houellebecq. This comes through most clearly in the chapters written in the quasi-factual author's voice: the fictionality of the Carthew Yorston character is made explicit in these sections, and we are even told how the author invented the character's name by slightly changing his American grandmother's name. When describing places and events, FB uses some similar hyperrealistic techniques to Houellebecq: he gives the price of the food he is eating, even the telephone number of the restaurant he is sitting in as he is writing, giving the reader the illusion that he could step into FB's world just by picking up the phone. In fact the FB chapters come very close to a blog written by the author, discussing his divorce, his young daughter, and his relationship with his girlfriend, and his last novel.

The effect of the hyperrealist FB chapters is to consciously fictionalise the chapters written in the voice of CY. This is a very useful technique for tackling the book's controversial subject: the last two hours of the lives of the people who died at the top of the WTC, unable to exit the building because the plane had crashed into it several floors below them. As FB says early on in the novel (and is quoted on the dust-jacket of the book): "The only way to know what happened in the restaurant on the 107th floor of the World Trade Centre on September 11 between 8.30AM and 10.29am, is to invent it". To my mind, by admitting to the reader that he has invented a father and two sons, rather than leaving us to wonder whether these people really lived and died, he is cleverly sidestepping potential criticism from the relatives and friends of those who died, who might understandably not be happy to find a fictional acount of their last two hours.

The account of the last two hours in the Windows on the World restaurant is incredibly vivid and populated by cartoon-like characters, for example, the Texan narrator himself, who is a real-estate agent (what could be more American?); his two young sons, who constantly bicker with each other, but who poignantly believe for most of the novel that the whole experience is a tourist attraction like Jurassic Park; the two traders sitting at the next table in restaurant who are in the middle of a passionate affair but still avidly discussing the latest hot stocks; and later on, the black waitress who looks after the little boys. By dealing with these stereotypes, FB creates a super-fictional world at the top of the WTC that contrasts sharply with the super-real world described in the author's chapters. This is most clear in the final pages of the book: as Carthew Yorston's last moments alive are described, in the first person, the reader canot help but question "who is writing this?" because we know that the author did not survive. But then he does say, at 8.31am, "Dans deux heures je serai mort, mais peut-etre suis-je deja mort".

I found this book very moving without being overly sentimental - indeed, one of its strong points is that it is describes the world mourning that took place after 11/9/2001 in a critical way, but deals sensitively with the personal grief of those people who were touched directly by the tragedy.

I also find it very interesting that the first authors to dare to tackle 9/11 as a subject are French, not American.

I look forward to reading more of FB, and to reading Luc Lang's book, which should be an interesting comparison.

Madam Butterfly, The Royal Opera, Covent Garden, 2 October 2003

This only counts as half an attendance because I did the unforgivable: yes, I walked out half way through (all right, I left at the interval and didn't come back, not quite that melodramatic. Anyway, in the amphitheatre at the opera house it is simply not possible to leave without causing a gross disturbance to the people sitting around you, there isn't much space.)

Why did I only stay for the first act? Mostly not down to the performance at all - I wasn't feeling well and wanted to go home and get some sleep. But I didn't enjoy the first act - if I had been gripped by the performance, I am sure that I would have soldiered on and stayed.

I have to admit that I don't really know Madama Butterfly as an opera at all. Puccini isn't my home ground, and part of the reason for buying the ticket in the first place was to start educating myself and see if I like him as a composer (recent experiments with Verdi had proved successful).

I was disappointed with the first act on so many levels. The characters have no depth - the libretto stays with the Japanese/American stereotypes and I couldn't find anything in the music to take me beyond that. Quite frankly, I think that the Mikado gives more insight into Japanese culture than Madama Butterfly.

I also find the language of the production to be a problem. Normally I am more than happy with the Covent Garden set-up - original language productions with well-timed and non-intrusive surtitles. However, this opera was written in Italian for an Italian-speaking audience, yet we know that the characters are either speaking English (the Americans), Japanese (the Japanese exclusively I would guess, unless any of the Americans have bothered to learn the local lingo) or pidgin English (the Japanese again, if they are trying to communicate with the Americans). And then we have the odd toast to America in sung in English, just to confuse the issue further. For the benefit of the audience in London, we have the Covent Garden surtitles - in English, of course. I found I spent a fair amount of brain processing power trying to work out what language the characters were meant to be singing in at any given time. I know opera is never realistic, that's not the point - I just ended up feeling rather sea sick because of the multi-layered translation problem.

Most of the singers' performances seemed acceptable, if not very exciting. However, Madama Butterfly - Chinese soprano Li Ping Zang - didn't seem to be on top form, and to my ear sang persistently a quarter tone under the note. I know I am fussy about such things, but it did spoil many of her passages. I suspect that it was a symptom of her voice not being in great shape that night - I thought she was reaching for some of the higher notes.

So anyway, I still haven't converted myself to Puccini. I will try again - since Wagner respected him alone from all the Italians, I should be able to get something out of it - but maybe when I, and hopefully the cast, are on better form. And I'm sure that it would help to hear the whole of the opera - maybe all the good bits are in the second act?

Boris Godunov, The Royal Opera, Covent Garden, 4 October 2003

This Sunday matinee performance was meant to be a special treat for A and me. It very nearly turned into a complete disaster, as we were turned away by the nice girl in the red Royal Opera jacket on the main doors because, as she so politely pointed out, our tickets were for the evening performance two days earlier. I was rather upset by this, because the internet booking system had ended up sending me the wrong tickets (there is no way that I would have asked for two tickets to a Friday evening performance) and I hadn't noticed the error. We were just beginning to think of alternatives ways of spending a Sunday afternoon in London (the British Museum was one idea but that appealed to A more than to me). Fortunately there were two return tickets for seats in the amphitheatre, so after taking a deep breath and trying to force out of my mind the total cost of the afternoon's entertainment, we paid for the two return tickets.

Having had such difficulty getting through the front door, I needed a stiff drink. I had booked us a table at the Amphitheatre restaurant inside the theatre - the first time we had eaten there. I was pleasantly surprised by the standard of the food, especially since two courses of food plus a glass of wine each only cost us 30 pounds. We didn't have time for pudding, and sadly they don't serve dessert during the interval of matinee performances (I plan to do this one day for an evening performance and have dessert and coffee in the interval).

And the opera?

Some fantastic music, and very strong performances musically, but sadly let down by an over-long performance and the dreary, unchanging, set.

Running time: I don't know the history of the opera in depth, but from the programme notes, I understand that Mussorgsky himself revised the opera several times, adding in and taking out whole acts, and the Rimsky-Korsakov had his finger in the pie too. Is it just my imagination or do the Russians always revise each others' work like this? This version was researched by David Lloyd-Jones for this 1983 production. There are around 3 3/4 hours of music. The Royal Opera runs this with only one interval. Each sitting - of two acts - is nearly two hours long. This is too long! And to add insult to injury, the interval is very short, as the set does not need to be changed. It is not like the Royal Opera to reduce its bar sales by having a shorter interval than necessary. We had barely got our drinks before the 10 minute bell rang. But seriously, I don't understand why some judicious cutting wasn't done - there are whole stretches of repetitive choruses and orchestral interludes that could be cut without anyone missing them. I would have enjoyed the whole even more if I had been concentrating properly all the way through.

Music: some good stuff. I particularly liked all the peasant dances, and the little folk songs sung by the inn-keeper and nurse. The musical language is a little odd - I don't know enough about Mussorgsky to know whether the very Russian musical language/tonality is his natural language, or whether he is consciously writing in an assumed 16th century Russian idiom. Whatever, it worked for me. I also liked the development of the 'False Dmitry' theme that is played every time Dmitry is on stage, or his name is mentioned - it starts out very innocently, and then mutates into a military call to arms towards the end of the last act.

Performances: all excellent. There was obviously a competition between the men for 'largest Russian bass' - they are huge! John Tomlinson (the only British large bass) won hands down. He was excellent, I would love to see him in some Wagner. There were lots of up and comings as well, thanks to the Vilar young Artists platform. It was good to see Ailish Tynan again (she was Papagena in Zauberflote last season and won the BBC Singer of the World lieder prize this year).

Set: the performance is a revival of the 1983 production. It illustrates how far the ROH has come technically in 20 years - there is one set throughout, with no moving parts, and not much real interest on stage. I was practically begging for some pyrotechnics by the end - there isn't quite enough going on in the music to really absorb your attention if the plot isn't advancing - and all we got was a bit of twinkly snow coming down from the ceiling. Please, will someone pay for an up to date production, with about half an hour less music? I would pay to see that - I won't be paying to see this production again.