Gadjo’s Night at the Opera #2

WARNING: The following contains misogyny, vulgarity, decapitation, nastiness and, ultimately, more Country and Western music than it does actual Opera.

To continue the classical music theme, I’m very glad that my singing teacher enjoys Lieder as much as I do, but he also likes opera. I respect his opinion, but I do feel it’s high time that we at Gadjo Dilo addressed the task of extracting the Michael from The World’s Best-Loved Arias:

La Donna è Mobile (from Verdi's Rigoletto): Women are like furniture*: you’re excited when you get your hands on a new piece, but after a while you’re content to leave it in the kitchen and forget about it.

Nessun Dorma (from Puccini's The Best of The Three Tenors): The monster of the Loch, it sleeps; see if you can wake it up, Luciano.

Recondita Armonia (from Puccini’s Tosca): I’m going to try to repair this mouth organ, I want to have go at Freight Train.

Habanera (from Bizet’s Carmen): (Oi!) Have a Banana.

Che Gelida Manina (from Puccini’s La Bohème): Your tiny hand is frozen. If medical science improves by the time we get to the final act of this then we’ll take it out of the freezer and try to sow it back on again. In future I’ll be more careful not to sing in Italian and shave at the same time. Sorry about that.

Votre toast (from Bizet’s Carmen): Here’s your toast.

Tutto e Deserto (from Verdi’s Il trovatore): ...and there’s fruit salad for afters.

Glitter and Be Gay (from Bernstein’s Candide): I’m not usually a vindictive person, but I’d like to restage this – more a happening, really - using this Otis Lee Crenshaw song** with Gary Glitter in the submissive rôle.


Sorry to end on such unpleasantness, but there you go. Speaking of Otis, I think I’m going to take matters in my own hands and write a whole Otis Lee Crenshaw opera; heck, it practically writes itself:



* “Mobile” means “furniture” in Romanian. I’m pleased to report there's actually an astonishingly vulgar Romanian version of this song, which goes (when translated) like this: Women are changeable, as the crows shit, sometimes is hard, another is more soft.

** If you have trouble with accessing this video, try this (ignore the visuals, I've no idea what they're all about).

Gadjo’s Night At The Opera

Following Gyppo Byard’s initiative and further posts by him and No Good Boyo I hereby present my favourite operas. Now, I’m not a massive opera fan: in the realm of classical music I tend to prefer oratorios, lieder and chamber music - or simply banging my head against a wall and shouting “why, why, why!!” in counterpoint - but I do have my favourites. Opera has the reputation of being a most bourgeois and respectable of art forms, so here we go: one by a bloke with a girl’s name, another by a bloke who fancied underage boys, one with a libretto by a gay brother, and one about somebody who shags his mum.

Bluebeard’s Castle (Béla Bartók, 1911)

You must ignore me when I say silly and rude things about Hungarians, for the truth is that I love their music. Bartok does it for me, and I reckon he was a genius. We saw Bluebeard’s Castle in the Hungarian Opera house here – £2 for front row seats, beat that you Covent-Garden-going suckaaas!! – and I was in ecstasy. It only lasts an hour, has only 2 characters, and is rather short on romance. My wife speaks “hospital Hungarian” and could understand a bit, and we’ve had great fun since intoning the “give me the keys” schtick every time we arrive at our front door. Bartok also collected lots of great folk music in the area where I now live and even learned to speak Romanian - so, respect.

Peter Grimes (Benjamin Britten, 1945)

I’m glad that Boyo didn’t pick this one as his Britten opera as it’s my flyaway favourite. Most of Benny’s stories seem to be about little-boys-lost who need protection, but I suppose you’ve got to write about what you know. It has the astringency that I crave and yet gallons of “real music” at the same time. It’s also got the salty tang of the sea, especially in evidence in the interludes. Peter Pears is pretty camp in this clip but it’s a good television version of the opera. I saw it in another wonderful staging by the ENO at London’s Colosseum.

Street Scene (Kurt Weill, 1947)

I greatly enjoy the music of Weill and Hans Eisler (with lyrics often by Bertolt Brecht, of course). I know much of it in recordings by singers such as Dagmar Krause, Ute Lemper, Robyn Archer, etc, but this is the only one of their operatic works – apart from a very poor production of The Threepenny Opera - that I’ve seen on the stage. As Street Scene is from Weill's American period it's perhaps atypical, but it's a very pleasing and unassuming piece, not posing or puffed up like many operas that turn me against the genre, but telling stories with poignancy and some excellent jazz-influenced classical music.

Œdipe (George Enescu, 1931)

You’ll think that I chose this because it’s by a Romanian. Welllll... that fact that I’ve heard it is because it’s by a Romanian, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not any good. On the contrary, it’s excellent. Enescu was a real all-rounder: brilliant musician, renowned teacher (of Yehudi Menuhin, famously) and an interesting composer with a very varied range. Œdipe has been described variously as “a forgotten masterpiece”, “the finest musical interpretation of the Oedipus myth” and “of course is good, is by a Romanian!”