We often attend Metropolitan opera HD live preformances here. I saw Javier Camarena and Pretty Yende in their performance of Donizetti's Les fille du regiment (Daughter of the regiment). It was a co-production of London, Vienna and NYC, so you knew it was going to be a memorable event. Pretty Yende was so spectacular that she will forever own that role. It will be hard to exceed her powerful voice, talent and acting.
Javier Camarena was her equal in owning his role as tenor. The singing and whole production was so beautiful that I came home and immediately tried to order a ticket for the next performance in N.Y. But, the broadcast one happened to be the final performance of that opera. Then I noticed that the Royal opera at Covent garden would show it in July. I immediately ordered a ticket and booked flights and hotels.
Being July, the weather was perfect every day. My hotels were only a few minutes walk from Covent garden and in a great neighbourhood for a visitor. I had a perfect seat on the main floor - orchestra level - in the 12th row. The Royal is a really comfortable house in every way. Many people who attend are seasons subscribers and a lot have been subscribing since Adam and Eve left open the space. This matters because they constitute a good audience which is experienced and obedient in opera audience protocol- which is as important as the opera itself.
The performance itself was riveting from the first minute to the last. Even the critics were sympathetic to the star soprano's dilemma as they wrote that for those who saw Pretty Yende in the role at the Met, almost any other soprano could not come close to her performance. She sang and acted the role well. But Javier Camarena was so spectacular that it was one of the greatest tenor roles and performances I ever experienced. There was one aria toward the end in which he is begging the standard nasty and reluctant old lady to relent and allow him to marry The Daughter. It was just overwhelming.
I have told friends that I have read of performance where the appaluse was "thundering" but I think I had never experienced it. But thunder in that opera house it did - truly thunder. Tha audience went completely nuts as they did in NY every time he sang the Ah ! mes Amis aria. It was sincere and authentic and that aria for Bel canto lovers is the apex of musical beauty.
In NYC, in a v. rare gesture, the opera director allowed the orchestra to back up and re-play the aria and so Camarena could do an instant encore - and the same was allowed in London. That role and aria requires a quick succesion of eight High Cs from the tenor. With a repeat, he is blasting out 16 high Cs in a few minutes. I have never known the equal of what Camarena did that night and again when I went back to exerience it a second time. Even one performance of it was worth the time and expense of the entre trip. (In March, 2020 I will see him at the Met in NY starring in La Cenerentola).
I so enjoyed that I went back to my hotel and bought another ticket - best seat - for the next perfrmance in a few days. It was an equally good performance. But I had the misfortune of having newbie bozos in front of me and they ruined the evening. They were a well dressed young couple who were just too young and unaware to be there at all. They were bored and whispered loudly to each, she kissed him and laid her delicate head and curls on his sturdy shoulder. All v. distracting for people around them.
What angered me was that they were also partly in front of a fine young couple to my right; he was in his early 20s and had just the day before graduated from The Royal Ballet school - a huge achievement and honour. Someone paid for his girlfriend to fly in for the occasion from their central Italy hometown. To be so young, and sit in the 12th row of the orchestra at the RoH is an expensive honour and was a gift from some family member - in other words, a major event for the young people.
By the middle of the 2nd act, I was so irritated - mostly for ruining my young neighbours' big event- that during a moment of applause, I leaned forward with my head right between them and said "We know you don't belong here, but could you try to act like adults for the rest of the opera?" That did not go down well with the young man in particular. They improved somewhat, but continued to whisper. I felt so lucky to have already seen one performance with excellent neighbours in every direction.
I did many other things over nine days including returning to Windsor and Eton. I also enjoyed Greenwich which I had not visited before. Greenwich is beautiful, historical (where time begins - the Greenwich Prime median at 0 degrees longitude - Greenwich mean time). There is a fine and extensive Maritime history and art museum. I am v. interested in fighting ships of old, and there are a lot of great maritime paintings - and who would want miss the blood-covered shirt Nelson wore on the day of his death.
One of the great and amusing pleasure of the trip was my hotel. On a previous trip while staying near Russell Square and the Brit,. musem at the fine Montague hotel, I saw a 19th C. bldg under massive renovation and wondered what it would become. Later I noticed on the internet that it was now a new Kimpton hotel named Fitzroy. I stayed a couple of nights there to see what it was like - as the photos of the lobby made it look very grand ond original.
It is grand in parts. The rooms are cleverly designed and of course as modern in every way as possible. I have adopted a room res. protocol for myself: I no longer want the so-called"standard room" which is today a shoe box. Instead I choose the room and rate at the next higher price (or more) I did so at the Kimpton Fitzroy, but tho well designed it was so compact that there was still nowhere to put luggage. It is an hotel what were they thinking. I wondered where the maids would leave it after cleaning and they put it on the end of the bed.But it is also a part of the Holiday inn massive chain of many brands and is four white walls and not much more (altho it was quiet, nice bed, all the essential elements for comfort).
Then I moved down the street a few blocks for the rest of my stay at L'Oscar, Wow. This was a 5 story church bldg before renovation, to which the new owners added two stories and made 38 room in seven stories in a just new hotel in the grandest and most magnificient style. One description said it is rich in silk, velvet, damask in red, green and gold with abundant peacock designs. The peacock designs are something you might expect to see in a museum rather than a contemporary hotel - in our day to day world where cheap, cheap, cheap is the mantra (L'Oscar is NOT that for sure - but not compared with most 5 star hotels in London - it is a deal).
My room was - for me - the epitome of what a hotel room should be and I felt the main room was the ideal apartment bedroom in stunning beauty and ultimate comfort. The mattress is one of those costing thusands, the comforter made from only Icelandic duck down, the furniture and fixtures all of the highest quality and custom designs. Today, hotels really sell bathrooms and this was the king of all bathrooms.
To get an idea of this entire L'Oscar, you should look at its site or travel sites. I am anxious to go back there in July, 2020.
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