Day 8 (October 17): London, UK

I attended Les vêpres siciliennes, by Verdi, at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. I had been there once before, twelve years ago, but was still surprised at how small of a house it is, just a pillbox of a venue. The stage must be about half the width of the stage in the National Arts Centre's Opera (now known as Southam Hall), if that. The production took advantage of every square inch of stage space (an extremely deep stage, it would appear), as it included ballet dancers, a military regiment, scores of both peasants and masked ball attendees. Physically, several moveable backdrops folded back inwards and outwards to expand or contract the stage depending on whether the action was set inside or out.

One of the backdrops was meant to represent a wall of the Paris opera, with balconies and loges, where Les Vêpres was first produced. The synopsis in the program alluded to the production being not only about the opera's story of a struggle between the French and the Sicilians, but that it was meant to represent a battle over art 'ownership'. In keeping with this premise, the seats in the balconies and loges were occupied by some of the performers, quote often, the French soldiers. During the fifth act, those seated performers were reacting to the action going before them (and us) as though they were in fact attending the performance. The opera ends with Sicilian revolutionaries bursting in and shooting the French; the production ended with the Sicilians shooting towards the audience. The roles had now been completely reversed; we were now part of the opera and part of the company was now the audience.

Yeah, I do not get it either.

What I did get was how near-overwhelming the over-all quality of the production, décors, technical work and, of course, the singing and orchestra was. To state the obvious, the ROH is one of the top opera companies in the world and did it ever show. The production and performances were far, far ahead of what the English National Opera (ENO) put on Monday night with Madam Butterfly, and that was, I thought, an excellent performance (black-clad ninjas and scary child puppet notwithstanding). This is clearly not meant as a slight in the least on the ENO, but just to illustrate how the ROH plays in another, much more restricted, league.

Other observations, of the random variety:

- I recognized one of the performers: Michael Volle sang the role of Governor Montfort. I have seen in some of the Metropolitan Opera's broadcasts.

- The crowd's reaction was loud and very enthusiastic, but few people stood as they kept showering the performers with applause. Standing ovations are perhaps unique to North America? I do not know.

- The opera is sung in French. I always had thought that all of Verdi's operas were in Italian.

- Interval ice cream is clearly a thing here, as they were selling it both tonight and at the ENO production on Monday.

- This being the opening performance, it was the very first time Les Vêpres has been performed at the Royal Opera. Yeah, history!

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