Captions: (top) Inside Montpellier's Opera Comedie, as seen from the gods; (centre, from left to right) Poppy, Yvonne, Erszi, Justin, Michelle, Josh and Alex, sitting on the opera house terrace; (above) the Opera Comedie, Montpellier.
About two or three times a year, a group of buddies from Roujan go on an outing kindly organised by our pal Yvonne (who lives in London, but now also has a house in the village). The first expedition was to see 'Carmen' in Montpellier and it turned out to be an extraordinary production. Of course the music is sensational and we practised all the major arias in the cars on the way there! Perhaps not unnaturally, we were expecting lots of colourful costumes with the cast moving in lively fashion around Spanish-looking sets. We were therefore rather aghast, therefore, when instead the cast wore mainly everyday clothes, the sets I recall as expanses of grey, and the lead singers and chorus spent most of the time standing still and singing straight at the audience; really, there was no acting or natural movement. Despite all this we had a fab time - a dreary production can't spoil a great opera - and we sang all the way home.
Then there was the marvellously sung and beautifully designed production of 'The Marriage of Figaro', which we all found enchanting. The third - never to be forgotten - trip was last summer, when eight of us went to see the 10 pm performance of 'Aida' in the Roman theatre in Orange. (Naturally I nicknamed it 'Ada in Orange', and so it be came known locally.) The theatre seats 9,000 people and we were on stone benches right high up - so high we could even see outside the theatre and catch the breeze on what was a tropically hot night. The full height of what the ancient Greeks called the 'skena' or structure at the back of the stage still stands, in brick, five storeys high - it's simply stunning. (I'll try to add some images later of Orange.)
Our most recent outing was not to the opera, but to see a French touring production of 'Fiddler on the Roof', the musical which made Topol famous. Yes, we did all sing 'If I were a rich man' driving along the autoroute, in between speculating on how well most of the numbers would work in French. After all, everyone knows that French isn't the best language in which to sing great pop songs - they rarely work - so we wondered whether the same would be true of American and British musicals. In the event, 'Si j'etais un richE', with heavy emphasis on the last E, worked fine. And it was a lively, well sung and visually attractive production. Bravo, Yvonne!!
Then there was the marvellously sung and beautifully designed production of 'The Marriage of Figaro', which we all found enchanting. The third - never to be forgotten - trip was last summer, when eight of us went to see the 10 pm performance of 'Aida' in the Roman theatre in Orange. (Naturally I nicknamed it 'Ada in Orange', and so it be came known locally.) The theatre seats 9,000 people and we were on stone benches right high up - so high we could even see outside the theatre and catch the breeze on what was a tropically hot night. The full height of what the ancient Greeks called the 'skena' or structure at the back of the stage still stands, in brick, five storeys high - it's simply stunning. (I'll try to add some images later of Orange.)
Our most recent outing was not to the opera, but to see a French touring production of 'Fiddler on the Roof', the musical which made Topol famous. Yes, we did all sing 'If I were a rich man' driving along the autoroute, in between speculating on how well most of the numbers would work in French. After all, everyone knows that French isn't the best language in which to sing great pop songs - they rarely work - so we wondered whether the same would be true of American and British musicals. In the event, 'Si j'etais un richE', with heavy emphasis on the last E, worked fine. And it was a lively, well sung and visually attractive production. Bravo, Yvonne!!
1 comment:
hello ... I am an old friend of Yvonne Bachem's (I used to rent her basement suite) and would love to say Hello. I realize that this is a very old post but if you are still in contact could you tell her that Tedd Robinson says "hi". she could google my name to contact me. Thanks so much in advance.
Tedd
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