I guess this shows just how much things can change in a year.
When Covent Garden released details of its repertoire for the 2014/15 season this time last year, Roland and I immediately jumped on their new production of Szymanowski's Krol Roger. We had watched the Bregenz production together on DVD a few years back and Roland had also seen the work in Warsaw. My only previous encounter with the work in the theatre had been at ENO in March 1976 when I was still an undergraduate. It was simply a must.
Booking opened before Christmas and Roland offered to get me a ticket for my birthday.
And, since then, there has been a great shattering so many of the core things in my life that I thought were relatively secure. To be perfectly honest, I probably should not have given over the time to going to London but, hey, I need something else in my life besides worry over work and worry over Ross's mental health.
So, down to London first class with me doing Maths planning on my laptop as the countryside flashed by.
Checked in to Roland's Civil Service club down near to the Embankment by Charing Cross and then over to the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery.
The object of our interest was an exhibition entitled Inventing Impressionism. It focussed on the work and life of Paul Durand-Ruel, an art dealer who promoted the Impressionists at a time when their work was considered to be unacceptable. Apparently Monet once said...
Without him, we wouldn’t have survived.
It’s hard to imagine what all the fuss was about these days.
Paintings like Degas' The Ballet Class seem quite easy to read but I guess that the treatment of the mustard coloured wall and the brown dance floor would have seemed extremely odd to anyone unused to anything other than a more realist school of presentation.
I liked the way that the exhibition had taken the trouble to assemble a number of series of paintings by different artists.
This sequence of five paintings by Monet featuring a view of a snaking line of French poplars captured from slightly differing angles in different lights and at different times of the year was fascinating.
There's a relationship that is built up over time.
Each work informs the others in terms of composition and palette and mood.
As ever with these artists, it's the way the paint captures the quality of light falling on the subject matter which grabs the attention. Such as...
The moonlight falling on Millet's depiction of a shepherd and his two dogs penning a flock of sheep in The Sheepfold, Moonlight
or the silvered summer sunshine of Sisley's The Bridge at Villeneuve-la-Garenne
or Pissarro understanding how the pale winter sunlight draws out the blue of the snow in Fox Hill, Upper Norwood.
I must confess that I had been lukewarm about yet another exhibition of Impressionist paintings but the show was quite, quite fascinating. It's always good to spend some time with these works but this show also offered insights into the social and economic forces which developed a taste for the style.
Paul Durand-Ruel built an appreciation which was first local, then general, then international. He formed an Art History which has influenced the past century and more in many ways - not least of which was the curriculum that I was taught at school. It's no exaggeration to say that he created an international art market which is that basis for all of the big money deals which are still done today. And, as a by-blow, he also established the notion of the one-man show as a viable way of presenting a body of work.
Roland and I ate and then moseyed over to Covent Garden for the performance of Krol Roger.
We should have moseyed more speedily. Roland had taken it that the show would start at the normal 7:30pm. However, as the performance was being broadcast live on Radio 3, the start time had been altered to 7pm. Roland was mortified. The front of house staff were excellent and ushered us into an unused grand tier box near the proscenium arch. Roland continued to be mortified. I was delighted to be so close to the stage and the overwhelming opulence of the music. Roland continued to be mortified. I told him to fuck off and went back to being completely enthralled.
Just as Britten was to do in Death in Venice, Szymanowski's Krol Roger is about a conflict of the soul between pleasure and rationality, between Dionysus and Apollo. It's interesting to note that both composers were gay men at ease with themselves but operating within social circumstances which did not make living as a gay man easy.
Antonio Pappano allowed the perfume of the music to be dangerously intoxicating. Kasper Holten took us (literally) inside Roger's head as the shepherd argues for natural exuberance against the strictures of the Catholic church. The movement team were just formidably astonishing.
Mariusz Kwiecień was just astonishing in the title role and Samir Pirgu's Shepherd was also a belting performance. Georgia Jarman gave us an exceptionally voluptuous Roxana whilst Kim Begley's Edrisi was a formidable creation - he seems to have had an eternal career.
I was captivated by the whole experience - well, I could have done without Roland's bleating but, after thirty years of friendship, it's not really that important.
Back to the room. Bed. Sleep. Up. On a train. Head home. Complete Maths planning. Send to colleagues. Crosby. Bed. Sleep. School.