Notes on Lucia di Lammermoor

Andy asked me, a week or so ago, what the Scots make of Lucia, highlighting the equally unlikely pairing of Puccini and the Wild West in La fanciulla del West.

Well, it appears Walter Scott tended to play fast and loose with historical accuracy at the best of times, tending to prefer a highly romanticised view of Scotland, yet the librettist takes this even further. While Scott sets his novel The bride of Lammermoor during the reign of Queen Anne (1702-14), the opera refers to the recent passing of a King William, leaving a Queen Mary on the throne. The Mary in question cannot be Mary Queen of Scots (who was around over a century earlier, preceded by James V), yet as the lack of any ordinal following her name suggests, she was the first Scottish monarch of that name. Mary II and her husband William III, both of whom had an equal claim to the throne, came to the throne in 1689 - interestingly, after the union of the crowns (in 1603), but before the Act of Union of 1707 - which would make sense in the case of this opera, if it weren't for his surviving her rather than the other way round.

That said, I doubt many opera lovers pay that much attention to such minor matters as historical accuracy - let's face it, that's not the point of this particular artform. Despite Donizetti's music being, in a lot of places, utterly unsuited to tragedy (there are times when it veers dangerously close to Gilbert and Sullivan), all is swept away by the glorious bel canto of the two principals. Okay, there may be a distinct lack of Scottish influence to the score, but come on, who cares when you've got the ne plus ultra of operatic mad scenes?

A cultural roller-coaster

My mother is coming to visit on Friday which, as ever, heralds an intense few days' culture: we've got something on every day.

Some friends are coming round on Friday evening for a game of Ex libris (think a literary spin on Balderdash). The next evening sees us holding a French dinner party (artichoke gratin, a selection of Alpine cheeses and apple charlotte), and after church on Sunday we're off to Dundas Castle for The life of Jesus Christ, which (assuming the rain holds off) promises to be stunning.

On Monday we'll be off to the Filmhouse (one of Edinburgh's arthouse cinemas) to catch Beijing bicycle - this is apparently Edinburgh Bike Week, but that comes second to Mother's interest in all things Chinese. Tuesday evening sees us at Guys and dolls at the Playhouse, all leading up to Lucia di Lammermoor at the Festival Theatre the following evening.

Mother's always keen to try out the city's restaurants, so we have a table booked at David Bann (one of the vegetarian restaurants in Edinburgh) pre-Lucia and will probably be off to the sizzling Scot at some stage.

Enough to be getting on with, I think. At least, I'll have a little breather before Festival madness kicks in ...

Why Elgar is not worth the bother

It's the 150th anniversary of Edward Elgar's birth today, an ideal occasion to write about why I don't like his music.

You see, I'm inherently suspicious of anyone who is very little (if at all) known outside their own country - Z-list celebrities certainly, but also those composers who are adored by a given nation but unheard of elsewhere. The ones who wrote little beyond operetta make up a high proportion of these as it's a genre which doesn't travel well, not helped by the relative poor quality of the music. Please don't go telling me that Gilbert and Sullivan is high art because I will shoot you down. The fact the latter wished more attention were paid to his serious music says a great deal.

Now even I wouldn't put Elgar in this category; the amount of light music he wrote is comparatively small compared to his other output. It's not even a case of disliking him on account of political incorrectness (displayed by works such as The spirit of England which, to be fair, are typical of the Imperial English view of the world): true, there are times when he can be insufferably English, but this was a man who didn't actually like the association of his Pomp and circumstance March no. 1 with Land of hope and glory. That said, his outlook was so limited that little of his music is known outside the English(-speaking) world.

If we limit ourselves to purely instrumental works (which have a greater chance of international acceptance because of the lack of any text to get in the way), the Pomp and circumstance Marches can be, in the wrong hands, little better than bombastic Sousa marches. Even at their best, they appear po-faced when compared to the fun of Walton's efforts (Crown Imperial, Orb and sceptre and the like), which can be taken as satirical swipes at the genre. Only the 'cello concerto escapes such jingoism, and that's largely because of Jacqueline du Pré, whose association with the piece has (in Britain, at least) sadly become mired in sentiment. The same is of the Enigma variations, which would be his greatest orchestral work if it weren't for the dreadfully English nobility of Nimrod.

The fact I don't like the thickness of his textures is very much a personal matter, in the same way as I don't much care for the German Romantics, but at least they're not always so pompous and humourless. Wagner seems just as bad until you hear bits of Die Meistersinger or the beautiful chamber music of the Siegfried-Idyll, while Strauss maintained his youthful outlook far beyond Der Rosenkavalier. Even Brahms, another one I have litte time for, wrote a sublime violin concerto amid all the more turgid stuff.

Great artists create for the world. Elgar didn't and thus cannot hope to be among them.

The joy of box office

Two years ago I wrote about the, shall we say, slightly eccentric customers I dealt with in my retail days. Now, one year into box office work, I'm building up a nice repertoire of similar anecdotes regarding a slightly different bunch of people ...

Before considering paying customers, however, there's a degree of repetition in queries from people who've come to the wrong place - above all, during the summer, those seeking tickets for the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, whose offices are elsewhere. After informing them where they should try, we will let the nicer tourists know that tickets went on sale the previous November, so they probably shouldn't raise their hopes too much.

The puzzled question "is this the cathedral?", another repeat offender, at least has the benefit of being an understandable mistake. We, like the Festival admin staff, work in the Hub, a former assembly hall for the Church of Scotland which, despite all appearances to the contrary, was never actually used as a church. People tend to realise they've come to the wrong place the moment they step through the door (at the east end, incidentally, but if I've only just realised it as I'm typing this post that's the high altar would be, I can't expect a tourist to), but it's only reasonable they should come further to ask where St Giles is, if not here. (Answer: further down the road on the right, you can't miss it.)

"Is this the castle?" Er, no. I could go on, but my friend Peter's fantasy about adorning the outside walls of said castle with the spray-painted legend "it's over here, you American p****s" says it all.

(shudder)

On to customers who know what they're doing here. The request for leg-room in any of the venues used for the Festival is probably the most frequently heard, and certainly one we try to accommodate. It's the reasons they give us which are priceless, not to mention how they describe it: a gammy leg, "left leg out" (and your right leg in?) or, a couple of days ago, the sublime "I have terrible knees". We shouldn't laugh, but it brightens up our day no end.

Last year, tickets to the Berlin Philharmonic under Rattle were few and far between, even during the priority booking period. One man refused to believe the ticket we'd sent him was the best available at that stage and did not hesitate to tell us so, very aggressively. How he could think that treating box office staff with such disrespect would work to his advantage, I cannot imagine, but his customer record promptly gained the warning "VERY rude man".

Compare him to the lovely old dear who rang us constantly to ask if there'd been any returns for Abbado conducting The magic flute. We got to recognise her voice immediately and were invariably sorry not to be able to help, as she was invariably so optimistic. Imagine how delighted we were when, on the morning of the final performance, she finally got her ticket - worth £42, which (she said) was the number of times she had called. I only wish I could remember her name ...

Of course not everyone is so lucky. Even when a performance is sold out, people after a single ticket find it difficult to accept that no, we really can't fit them in anywhere, and woe betide you if you have a pantomime booker who simply refuses to go in January when all the performances in December of nigh on full, even when you point out it'd give the children something to look forward to in the New Year. As for not having a performance on Christmas Eve this year - it falls on a Monday, which is invariably their day off - let's not go there.

Given the international flavour of the Festival, there's the usual inevitable round of mispronounciations. Don Quixote was spoonerised into Donkey Toxey, while there was an incredible number of people going on about die Zorba float last year. This time round I predict references to the Emperor Nero's lover Poppy-a, umpteen manglings of Euripides (Yuri Pieds?) and the funky Rameau ballet On danse being pronounced with a lisp owing to the forte-style F used instead of an S.

I'll keep you posted ...