My third Tosca since October: first Rome, then Live from the Met and on Saturday, Covent Garden. Saturday matinees are always popular.
The show was sold out until two returns popped up on Thursday. By Saturday morning seats were popping up all over the place – sixty-five of them to be precise. The out-of-town audience had decided not to attend because recent bad weather had curtailed operations by railway companies serving the south of England. Disappointing for those unlucky sixty-five as it was the last performance of a good 2006 production by Jonathan Kent with, as a bonus, Plácido Domingo on the podium. He might be seventy-seven but he is not rushing along the path to retirement. Last time I saw him live was at the Met in 2013 when he sang the baritone role of Alfredo’s father in La Traviata. He has now re-invented himself as General Director of Los Angeles Opera and a conductor. He was warmly received at Covent Garden on Saturday.
The production was as Puccini intended, set in 1800 with realistic sets. Act II is set in Scarpia’s lair in the Palazzo Farnese. The bookshelves were empty as the library had been packed away for safe-keeping while war ravaged Italy. Curiously five shelves still had books. It transpired that they were fake books concealing a hidden door into Scarpia’s torture chamber. A similar feature at Barmeath merely links the library and drawing room.
I read in Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin about the eponymous Monty Bodkin being released from a locked cupboard by movie mogul, Ivor Llewellyn :
“Tell me”, said Mr Llewellyn, having performed what in a Superba-Llewellyn treatment would have been called “Business with key” and watched Monty emerge like a cork from a bottle …
This is where PG Wodehouse and Puccini collide. In the first Acts of La Bohème and Tosca there is Business with key. I think they both spotted that a bit of Key Business keeps the plot on the move.
More opera this evening; I’m going to Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Royal College of Music.
I can not recall the secret door at Barmeath – probably because that is the point of an undisclosed point of exit or entry, but I do remember the doors of the library bookcases were curtained with chicken wire. I often wondered what this was supposed to retain or expel?
As I recall the doors have locks and the mesh was to stop the books being removed without authorisation. The rather ugly cupboards under the shelves were put in to store Masonic records in the days when Catholics could be Masons. The original panelling is in the bathroom on the same floor. You will of course have noticed the Masonic emblems disfiguring what was a beautiful Italian plaster ceiling.
As ever Christopher your family history is anything but pedestrian, I was not aware of the Masonic link. It was most felicitous that the Bellew’s altered their allegiances (presumably at the right moment in Irish history)…………If I may be so bold, I would appreciate a post on the background on the Protestantization of the family.
Post scriptum: I had to read your response several times to assure myself that the panelling was not ON the bathroom floor: I had rather ghastly visions of Bru splashing about on same!