Posted by A few days ago, I heard on BBC Readio 3 Thomas Adès’s Piano Concerto, performed by the pianist Kirill Gerstein and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, conducted by Thomas Ades.
Thomas Adès is a British composer, pianist and director. His opera “Powder Her Face” was introduced in 1995 at the Cheltenham Festival, and afterwards came to the Almeida in London. I saw one of the Almeida Theatre 1995 performances as at the time I was living in England, in a suburb located conveniently near central London, and was enjoying the abundance of operatic offerings throughout the year.
I was working very hard, traveling a lot, but there were these moments of “freedom”, when I would just leave the office, drive to the Royal Opera House at the Covent Grarden, buy myself a ticket for the performance of the night and forget about everything.
Ades was 24 years old at the time (1995), one of the golden boys of British modern music.
In October 2020 I enjoyed over the radio waves his piano concerto, but cannot say that I remember much from the opera.
The memories that remain have to do with my companion G.
The process of association started from the “Piano Concerto”, led me to “Powder her Face”, and then to G and more.
G lived in Athens and was visiting me. At the time I had a flat in Kingston upon Thames, overlooking the river.
I remember driving to London late afternoon on the day of the performance. Almeida Theatre was full. G was as always immaculately dressed in black. I can still smell her parfume.
G stayed for almost a week.
“Powder her Face” was one of three opera performances we saw.
We would spend a lot of time in the living room, overlooking the river, listening to music, talking about the vicissitudes of life.
And the small things, like the reason she started painting her toenails red.
A few months back, in April 1995 I had travelled to Brazil and recounted to her my views on the exhuberant baroque of the Portuguese colony that became Brazil.
Sir Thomas Browne wrote that “There is no antidote against the Opium of time” (Hydriotaphia, Chapter 5). But in my memory G survives in spite of what Browne alleges. As I write this I feel that she is next to me, listening to music, reading, asking the odd question.
I cannot put my finger on an explanation for this persistence, for her image being almost constantly with me, but only speculate that there are forces that keep this memory alive.
These forces may be related to missing her companionship, the endless conversations, the insights that we shared. At the same time, they may emanate from the unresolved issues, the unanswered questions.
The other opera we saw with G in London in 1995, was Verdi’s “La Traviata”.
We went to a staging of the 1994 Richard Eyre production, revived by Patrick Young, conducted by Philippe Auguin. Violetta was sung by the American soprano Carol Vaness.
One of the evenings during her stay I cooked an “Italian” meal. I had bought pasta with cattlefish ink, black as coal, from Carluccio’s deli in Neal Street, a beautfiful shop in Central London, and some squid and prepared a dish which I remember well because we spent a lot of time discussing it. Colors, texture, taste, aroma.
This was the case with G. We could discuss anything and have a great time doing it.
During the 1993 – 1994 Christmas period I was in G’s house in Athens, where she had invited some friends to dinner. She had prepared a roast and once she presented it, she started slicing it. In an awkward move she managed to cut herself. One of the guests was a surgeon who attended to the cut and the incident went no further.
Having returned to England, in February 1994 I flew to Berlin for a long weekend and during a break from museum visits I wrote her a postcard inquiring about her condition. I expressed cautiously my concern that something was eating her from the inside.
I had almost instictively formulated the hypothesis that the cut of Christmas was no accident, but a cry for help, and wanted to make sure that I could help her, if she needed help.
G wrote back to me and we exchanged a few letters. There was no direct answer, but clear appreciation of my hunch that something was eating her inside. She knew I cared, and she knew she could ask for help, or just discuss whatever it was.
This happened a year later, in 1995, during her visit to England. She stated the reason for her being almost in a state of turmoil.
The second “La Traviata” performance we saw was in Birmingham, a production of Welsh National Opera, WNO.
I drove us there during the day, attended the performance and then had dinner at an Indian restaurant near the theatre (I think it was the Hippodrome) and drove home late at night.
The performance was good, but what impressed me was the audience. Compared to the crowd in the ROH stalls of Covent Garden, we could very well have been in a different country.
A comment is in order about the ROH in Covent Garden.
But first I must retrieve an image from my memory. That of David Hockney. I saw him on a rainy day at the end of 1995 in Floral Street, by the ROH. He is one of my favorite artists and I consider myself lucky to have met him, albeit by chance and for only a fraction of a second.
Due to the dire financial conditions faced by it in the age of COVID-19, the Royal Opera House are going to sell in auction the portrait of Sir David Webster, former chief executive and arts pioneer, a David Hockney painting they have in their possession. It is estimated the painting will fetch 18 million GBP.
Having gone on the David Hockney trail, it would be a shame not to mention his stage sets for the 1992 Richard Cox production of Richard Strauss’ “Die Frau ohne Schatten” (The Woman without a Shadow).
I now come to the comment I was going to make before I ventured into the David Hockney memory lane.
The Royal Opera House in the 1990s (I do not know if they still do) had a policy to sell a few 5 GBP tickets on the day of each performance so that people who could not afford the expensive tickets could enjoy an opera. These days the stall tickets on the average would sell for more than 100 GBP.
A couple of times I was lucky to buy these cheap tickets and found myself in another world. It was way up, as high as you can imagine, you could hardly see what was happening on the stage, but the sound was wonderful. In these cheap seats I met a London bus conductor who confided in me very proudly that he has seen “all ROH productions in the last 40 years”.
There was also another wonderful ROH policy that I benefited from. Some performances were not very popular. The ROH crowd by definition is traditional.
In Spring 1995 Benjamin Britten’s “Billy Budd” did not sell all the stall tickets, and the house discounted them. Instead of more than 100 GBP I paid 25 GBP on the night. It was a wonderful Francesca Zmbello production.
Paul Hindemith’s “Mathis der Maler” was another performance in 1995 that I enjoyed with a heavily discounted ticket. In a workshop focusing on the opera I had the opportunity to meet Peter Sellars, the American Theatre and Opera Director. Another invaluable consequence was my introduction to the world of Matthias Grunewald.
G’s “operatic” visit ended and she returned back to Athens.
A year later I moved back to Greece.
I lost G a few years later. It was a blackout, a complete loss of communication. I was travelling in the Balkan peninsula at the time, and took this loss in my stride. Her image would come to me while I was crossing the flat landscape near Skopje or the meandering route by the river Vardar (Axios in Greek) in what today is the Republic of Northern Macedonia, or as I was walking across the Bulgaria – Northern Macedonia border up on the mountains.
The benefit of such a blackout is that you are left with all the good memories, and you escape from experiencing some nasty incidents. The negative side is that there might have been a chance for a reversal, which is now lost.
Unfortunately I have recently experienced a similar situation with another friend.
We change as we progress in life, and real communication is difficult.
I am left with the memories.
Which I consider not a small thing.
Quite the opposite. I consider myself lucky and blessed to have experienced all the wonderful moments with G. And the memories will stay with me until my death.
