Operatic Antics by Vivien Teasdale

I had this girlfriend once, called Sally; she wanted to go to the theatre. It was to see a sort of Romeo and Juliette thing but with a happy ending, she said. La Nonnay Sanglantay, it was called. Translates apparently as Bloody Nun, and it was – bloody nunsense.

There’s these star crossed lovers, Rudolpho (not Romeo) and Agnes. The families are at loggerheads, so to keep the peace, she’s being forced to marry Rudolpho’s older brother. She runs away by disguising herself as the ghost of the nun that’s supposed to haunt the castle. Rudi trots along to the rendezvous they’d arranged earlier, sees the ghost, thinks it’s Agnes, and marries it, witnessed, as he would be, by all his ancestors - who are also ghosts.

Then he finds out it’s not Agnes. You’d have thought he’d have checked what was under the veil, wouldn’t you? Anyway, the ghost won’t let him go unless he kills the man who murdered her – I hope you’re following this, ‘cos I couldn’t until Sally explained it at the interval.

Rudi agrees to kill the bloke. It turns out, as you might expect, that the murderer is his own father. So it’s a choice between patricide or bigamy. Assuming, of course, you can actually be charged with bigamy for marrying a ghost?

Naturally, when dad hears the sad tale, he does the noble thing and runs away so he gets killed by the guards and dies in Rudi’s arms. Conveniently, the elder brother (remember him?) well, he’s now dead too, the ghost renounces Rudolpho, and it all ends happily, as long as Rudi doesn’t mind the fact that most of his family’s been murdered.

And talking of murder, she was – Sally, I mean. Dragged me off to see another opera. I only went because she said it had a football song in it. Apparently the prince was so in love with this princess called Turandot, that he wouldn’t tell her his name.

For all sorts of weird reasons that I’m not sure of, Turandot tortured his servant girl until the lass committed suicide, had his dad beaten up, threatened to cut off the prince’s head yet and the berk still wanted to marry her! It was all in some foreign language; I couldn’t understand a word of it.

Then I saw another one. That time I was conned into it because she said it was in English. It was in English, but I still had no idea what was going on.

The title said it was something to do with destiny. They just kept repeating the same thing, over and over. Five times they sang one line. They kept telling each other to jump out of the window. “They’re coming to get you,” they were singing and I thought, ‘Well get on with it. Jump out of the blessed window.’

I didn’t understand it at all and English is my first and only language. I’ve never been to the theatre since and have no intention of going. Ever. I’d rather take a load of kids to see Bambi. At least you know what’s going on.

Of course, I never saw anything of Sally after that. Last I heard, she’d run off with the second trombone.

La Nonne Sanglante – Gounod

Turandot – Puccini

La Forza del Destino - Verdi