It is one of the deceits and the conceits in English-speaking countries that opera is almost entirely a musical art form, and we say this because we are largely unable to follow the text, argues Kevin Myers
Opera is thus often reduced to being barely more than a bizarre concert in which the performers reveal multi-tasking talents by moving around the stage in funny costumes as they sing. For most of the audience, the relationship between the music and the narrative is often tenuous, or even non-existent.
The usual way round that problem has, of course, been the opera synopsis, the writers of which have traditionally striven to make as incomprehensible as flat-pack assembly instructions for an electron microscope. Even if you could understand the ludicrous opera plots when they have been reduced to a few words, it doesn't mean you can remember them as the drama unfolds before you, and as you try to recall who is Bartolo and who is Basilio.
Moreover, even if you can remember the plot, this means that here are no surprises, in a narrative which might be full of them. The entire purpose of the drama is thus subverted.
We have accepted this destruction of the operatic form as normal, which is sad, and unnecessary, as a recent production of The Marriage of Figaro I attended at Garsington in Oxfordshire testifies. One of the keys to the triumph of the Garsington festival is that every aspect of the opera must be enjoyed, and the drama that is locked in the Italian language is opened by the technological key of surtitles. Thus the recitative in particular, that strange half-melodic formula for carrying the true narrative of the opera, is carried in illuminated text slightly above the players. The entire plot is opened up: the transformation from a strange, dysfunctional concert to true musical drama becomes possible, and real opera is triumphantly born.
The revelation about The Marriage of Figaro which the use of surtitles makes clear is that it is a truly hilarious comedy, requiring great comic timing as well as serious acting skills. And in the middle of this opera buffa there are the great jewels of Mozart's arias, so absurdly beautiful, so magnificently and extravagantly rising above their comic setting. It is almost like an Alan Ayckbourne play with great music - one, moreover, which allows the singers both to sing and act. One of the cast is Irish - Doreen Curran, playing a male page with a delightfully funny and roguish sexual ambiguity, as befits the quite explicit bawdiness of the genre.
Garsington is sort of outdoors. The audience are covered by an awning, as is most of the stage and the pit. Last week, nature decided to take a hand in the proceedings and lined up a thunderstorm which rather resembled the Battle for Berlin, April 1945. It made its appearance during the long interval allowed for dinner (the opera begins at 5.30), and proceeded to unleash a violent Niagara over the stage and the auditorium. Winds gusted madly, and the awnings cracked like whips. The result was sensational.
Now the conductor, Jane Glover was notionally in cover. But some meteorological freak caused a torrent of rain to advance sideways under the tarpaulin over her head, and to drop vertically the moment it detected her handsome Scottish scalp. In other words, for her the evening was like conducting from within the power-shower at home. Around her, waves of rain water were with nonchalant malice washing over the strings, while their players huddled together like shipwrecked survivors on a rock, grimly sawing, bowing and plucking, and being generally rather plucky.
The stage meanwhile resembled the National Aquatic Centre. The admirably named D'Arcy Bleiker is perhaps the first singer to play Figaro using the breast-stroke. Julian Tovey, the Count, however, negotiated the rapids in which he was immersed by means of the Australian crawl. His maid, played by Lucy Crowe, propelled herself to the shallows by a powerful backstroke.
Doreen, as is the way of her transvestite role, was changing costumes repeatedly: it is to the regret of us all that she never resorted to a tasteful swimsuit. Singers did not make entrances so much as plunges, and rather than stand when they delivered their arias, they simply trod water.
Breathing, of course, is central to the presentation of a good aria, but for this production, instead of inhaling between lines, the players more usually imitated spouting gargoyles.
Moreover, the opera did not proceed in acts but in tides. Lesser functionaries swam in and out of the narrative, as thunder exploded overhead and the canvas snarled and boomed. Occasionally, there was a plaintive little cry as a member of the choir was washed out to sea, a tiny hand waving in the surging main, to which we bade a sad and sodden farewell, before redirecting our attention back to the opera.
I don't actually know how it all ended - it's hard to keep track of things when doing the doggy-paddle - though end it did, and happily. Moreover, and against all the odds, Jane Glover clambered like a seal from the ocean which was the orchestra pit, alive and apparently well. She is the first person ever to conduct Mozart in a wet suit and flippers.
She paused briefly during the tumultuous applause which greeted her miraculous survival to remove a haddock from about her person, and then took a final bow, before we all eddied downstream to our beds after the most splendid night's opera perhaps any of us have ever known.