"Where are all those beautiful moments......"

Nottingham's Broadway Cinema

Last night (Saturday) Pat and I went to a live screening of the New York Met’s production of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. It was truly wonderful. We love the Mozart’s light, funny and moving operas – Figaro, Cosi Fan Tuti, Don Giovani, The Magic Flute - and to be a small part of something being performed in New York at one of the great opera houses of the world was really something – even though we were several thousand miles away! For me it was potentially a bit of a trial since for the past three and a half months I have been suffering from almost continual back, hip and leg pain – sciatica or something similar. Despite many visits to physiotherapists and doctors it has not responded significantly to treatment. I am advised to take pain killers by my doctor, which is good advice but because of my heart condition I am somewhat limited as to what and how many I can take. Fortunately, it has not stopped me doing most things but is a constant nagging debilitating pain and means that virtually every night I get little sleep. I am awaiting the results of an MRI scan – hopefully that will give some pointers, although I am not hopeful. All in all, I have become very “down” with the whole situation and so a trip into Nottingham and the opera whilst being a great attraction was also daunting. The prospect of sitting for almost 4 hours in a theatre, maybe living off pain killers and navigating Nottingham’s crowded city centre on Saturday evening was something I was not looking forward to – and made me fear the worst. However, I need not have worried. Although my back grumbled a bit it was a wonderful evening and when we at last left the Broadway Cinema and, clinging to each other, made our way through Nottingham’s heaving streets filled with very loud and mostly drunken young revellers we were both quite overcome by what we had seen and heard.

The New York Met

As we sat in the darkened cinema watching Mozart’s magic opera unfold and listening to the wonderful music that we knew so well I found that on several occasions a tear ran down my cheek. As I sat listening and watching the exquisite performance and sublime voice of soprano  Amanda Majeski who played the role of the Countess I was quite overcome. When, in Act 3 she sang one of the opera’s (and indeed all opera’s) most famous and moving arias Dove sono i bei momenti  (Where are all those beautiful moments) there was absolutely no doubt that the atmosphere in the Broadway where we sat and, I think too, at the New York Met was electric – an atmosphere that palpably intensified as we all watched and listened, spellbound. As her aria came to a close Pat turned to me and whispered “Wow” there was a rapturous, spontaneous and sustained applause both in our little cinema in Nottingham and in the mighty New York Met. She had clearly touched a nerve. It really was one of those moments when you wanted to stand up and cheer and shout for more. And as I sat there in the semi darkness, quite overcome by this thing of great beauty which over the centuries since Mozart composed it has been heard and loved by millions, I thought on the one hand how small I was sitting there with my painful back but also how lucky to be able to experience this thing that the young Mozart left us all. He was only 36 when he died and yet he left such a treasure trove of great music, and in my mind’s eye I pictured him sat in his little room in Austria and composing, perhaps by lighted candle, putting some of the world’s greatest music to the libretto provided by his colleague Lorenzo da Ponte. This timeless and glorious stuff, the melodies and notes pouring from his prodigious mind and onto the manuscript paper in front of him still touches the nerves and the emotions of people centuries later. The world’s very greatest musicians and singers have over the years performed it and we have loved it over and over again. I don’t expect that Mozart ever dreamed that three centuries later his music would still be acclaimed as wonderful, that it would become a major thread in western civilization and I certainly know that he would have been amazed to discover that his great music, this wonderful aria  could, with the help of modern technology, be watched and heard in a great opera house in New York but also by millions across the planet at the same time. I’m sure that Mozart would have loved that!  And yes, it made me feel very humble and small, and my painful back seemed of very little significance in the great scheme of these things.

The Countess, Amanda Majeski, sadly weeps for her
philandering husband, the Count

As I watched and listened to Amanda Majeski sing and thought about the words of her song I thought of how Mozart, a man of a very different time and place still has the capacity to reach out to the very essence of humanity and our innermost feelings. I don’t think there was a single person in the Met in New York or across the  world who could not relate to the feelings of the Countess as she stands and sadly looks back and sings of her lost love – her philandering husband, the Count who in true Mozartian style is chasing all the other young women in the tale (see clip below - not sung by Amanda Majeski, but still beautiful). For those few moments whilst the Countess sings we all watched and listened both entranced and hugely sympathetic to her feelings and sense of loss as she dreams of her past and of winning back her wayward husband’s affections. As we sat there I thought to myself that we were hearing the same sounds and words that people heard almost three centuries ago when his opera was first performed; we were experiencing and feelings, the same emotions that those opera goers of the mid 18th century had experienced and felt and they were just as meaningful and relevant to us as they were to them. Such is the power of great music- it connects us to our past and to past humanity.  Of course, this is Mozart so it all ends happily, order is restored, everyone finds their true love – just as it should be - like all good stories, everyone lived happily ever after! But until we reach that point at the end of the opera (and even though we all knew it would happily and with lots of fun and laughs on the way!) I’m sure that many like me had our emotions shredded. Again, such is the power of great music.

There was, too, another thought as I sat there and looked around me at the other entranced faces in the audience. The production was directed by Richard Eyre and as the audience in the Broadway was very much of my generation – senior citizens(!) I guess many others were thinking that in a tiny, tiny way that we had a connection with the evening’s entertainment from far off New York. In the 1960s and early 70s when I first came to live in Nottingham the place to go was Nottingham Playhouse – newly opened and at that time the foremost provincial theatre in the land. It was the place where some of present day’s greatest actors and actresses got their careers started: Dame Judy Dench, Sir Ian McKellen, the late John Neville and many others. And in those far off days the artistic director was a very young Richard Eyre starting off his career in the theatre too. So I would guess, others too were, like myself, thinking back to those days in the early 70s when a trip to Nottingham Playhouse was very much an “in thing” to do and we would see a production put on by young Richard Eyre. And now a much older Richard Eyre appeared before us again but this time producing a wonderful, opera not from a little provincial theatre like Nottingham Playhouse but from one of the great artistic venues of the world. Yes, I and I suspect others in the Nottingham audience, felt a little connection across the years.  Again, very humbling.

The four main characters in the opera: the Countess,
Suzanna (soon to marry Figaro), Figaro and the Count

Any one of the great arias  (see clip at the bottom of this blog for one of the other great arias) sung last night by different members of the cast was a show stopper but it is Dove sono i bei momenti  that will stay in my mind, mostly because of the sublime singing and exquisite voice of Amanda Majeski. But,I must confess too, that its words spoke to me personally as I sat with my grumbling back, feeling a bit “down” and sorry for myself. Just as the Countess wistfully looked back to the times when she and her husband had moments of “sweetness and pleasure” and she longs for them to return so, too, I was thinking back a few weeks to when I didn’t have a painful back condition and sleepless nights. I was feeling melancholy and put upon! But, what a lift when the aria came to a close – and the applause erupted – suddenly everything seemed a lot better. That is the power of great music it reminds us of our humanity, our frailness, our strengths our hopes and fears. It can bring great sorrow or overwhelming joy, it can uplift or make one consider the very nature of our existence. It can inspire the best in us, make us brave or help us to empathise with our fellow man and woman. Music such as that by Mozart can reach into our very souls - last night it reached into mine - and, I suspect, that of  many other people in New York and across the world in little local cinemas like the Broadway in Nottingham..

Where are all those beautiful moments
Of sweetness and pleasure?
Where have all those vows gone
Of a deceiving tongue?

Then why, if for me everything has changed
To tears and grief,
The memory of that happiness
Hasn't faded away from my soul?

Ah! If only my constancy
In yearning lovingly for him,
Could bring me the hope
To change his ungrateful heart!

When Pat and I had navigated our way back to the car park through Nottingham's loud thronging streets and returned home we started our plans to book tickets for the next live screening from the Met: Bizet’s Carmen in a few weeks, just before Christmas Wagner’s Meistersingers and in the spring Pagliacci to name but three! What a treat to look forward to!