In 2009 I wrote a piece of fiction called Encountering Don Giovanni. Here are the opening words:
Jessica Woodson is going to see her mate Toby sing in Don Giovanni tonight. Toi Toi Buddy!
Updated a few moments ago…
It was time to be getting ready. So after a hurried status update Jessica clicked logout, turned off her computer and got dressed slowly. She did the full make-up routine, starting properly with moisturiser then foundation, powder and even some contouring on her cheeks. By the time she was applying her eyeliner she realised she was thinking about the last time she’d watched an opera, and watched only to see Lochlann, mesmerized by his every movement.
*
I assured myself tonight’s opera experience would be different. I would not be distracted with thoughts of Lochlann. After all, I was going to see Toby make his debut. This was special. I’d been anticipating this day for years.
I put on pretty stockings, shifted my weight around, checked myself out from every possibly angle then glanced over my shoulder and looked down. The back seam made these stockings more than pretty, they were killers. I wondered if Lochlann would consider the effect as irresistible as I did. I stepped into my new amazing skirt that he’d never seen, pointed my toes and slid into purple heels bought on a total whim. Well done Jess, I told myself, this outfit is your best yet. Everyone will want a piece of this. And then I berated myself. When had I become so coarse? And anyway, lets be perfectly honest here, I didn’t care what everyone thought, just one person. Just one person who –and hadn’t I promised myself this a moment ago – I wasn’t going to think about.
All the same, I hadn’t got dressed up for quite some time, and while opera openings aren’t necessarily the ball gowns and glitz they once were, it wouldn’t be right to give up an opportunity to look as fabulous as possible.
Now listen Jessica, I reminded my reflection, you are not dressing for Lochlann and you are not going to this show for him, and even if you see him, Miss Jess, he certainly won’t be looking at you.
So, in some ways, when on the 26th of February I raced home from lunch, updated my facebook status to ‘Don Giovanni time at the Royal Opera House’, put on my prettiest dress and back seamed stockings and caught the tube to Covent Garden to watch the opera with my ex, I couldn’t help feeling like I’d some how already lived this night, the desire to be super attractive, just to prove that you can be; the awkwardness of watching Giovanni’s dealings with women and hearing the women sing of their broken hearts, years before, through a character I had invented. I didn’t mean to channel myself into Jess when I wrote the story, even though it did, as ever, turn out to be thinly veiled autobiography, and I certainly didn’t mean to channel her when I went to the opera it just kind of happened. Perhaps this is why when Matthew and I were still together he once accused me of having an outrageous ability to see literary irony in my own life. It just happens. Because when I like a story I immerse myself in it. And though I have a lot of love for old texts, I’m also a product of the now, the post modern and contemporary and I want the art I consume to be relevant and speak to me of my life. And I want no less from opera.
So lets return to my the opera, and my actual lived experience. I sat myself down in my much less than premium seat high up in the gods and watched Don Giovanni at the Royal Opera House, thus achieving the thirteenth thing on my list of things to do. Now, although this was the first show I had seen there, its not the first time I’d been in the theatre. Through my astounding industry connections (they’re not, but whatever), I’d been taken on a tour of the theatre, and been struck down with a severe case of opera house envy – the stage space is replicated three times on a kind of rotating grid, whats not to love, especially if you’re involved in changing the set each night! – and couldn’t quite get over the sheer size of the place. Being back a second time was no less awe inspiring, just being in the building, before anything had actually happened on stage. When the opera did begin, I rather superfluously turned to Matthew and said “Did I mention I like Mozart?” Seriously, that man’s music makes me so content. And that theatre made it sound so clear and striking, and really puts the acoustics of a smaller opera house on the other side of the world to shame.
I was a little worried that having heard a lot about the Royal Opera, and having wanted to see something there since I was first in London at the end of 2009, that I might be a little underwhelmed by the experience. Not so. Sitting as far back as we did, I really was impressed by how engaged I was by the operatic action of those toy like figures a million miles away, and of course the clarity of their voices, which I’m sure has as much to do with the afore mentioned acoustics of the place as with the ability of the singers. I continued to be amused and intrigued by the curious gender politics and sexual power plays of this opera, sympathetic towards Donna Anna even though I know the story, and of course, I still saw something in myself in the humorously pathetic, rejected Elvira. There is something truly satisfying about pointing out to your companion that someone is about to sing your favourite aria, then have her beautifully and powerfully, musically yell at him all the angst you’ve felt in the last while and perhaps a bit more thrown in on top for good measure.
In short, if you’ve not been to The Royal Opera House, do it. Because, although I did feel like a bit of a pleb when during the interval I ate my home made sandwich, it was wonderful to have an excuse to pretty myself up, feel glamorous and pretend I live a life of luxurious nights at the opera, but more than that, I was entertained, engaged, interested and (just a little bit) reflected in the performance, which is reason enough to watch any piece of theatre, to put it on your list of things to do, and be glad that you've done it.
