So here I am in the Teatro Massimo. The second largest opera house in Europe, and the largest in Italy, I am told repeatedly.
We catch a guided tour, in English, which turns out to be not quite English, and also mostly Italian. I find myself zoning out when the Italian is spoken to the extent that when the English kicks in again, I don’t notice.
Two elderly middle class English women in open-toed plastic sandals flip-flop ahead of us, and seem to have the same problem, although they’re making no bones about it. They complain loudly throughout the Italian parts, as if any speech not in English is not really speaking at all, just annoying ambient noise. As they climb the stairs, they start a conversation about the superiority of the Albert Hall.
A young Asian man is also struggling with language. He complains bitterly that he can’t take photographs, while the guide repeatedly explains that he can if he doesn’t use a flash. He sulks and stomps, all the while watching everyone else take photographs. He even complains to the people taking photographs that he is not allowed to take photographs. He stands in the amphitheatre in which there is a live rehearsal, drinking from a plastic water bottle which he then chooses to crumple up loudly. The singers stop and stare at him and he stares back blankly. He slurps an ice cream throughout the tour and complains repeatedly that there is nowhere to put his ice cream container. Eventually, the guide patiently takes it from him and disappears behind the scenes to dispose of it. I wonder if she also punches a cushion and silently screams obscenities.
Meanwhile an American in an Australian hat, the skin folds of his neck smeared with thick stripes of white sunblock, repeatedly disappears, and is each time to be found trying a different locked door. He darts with excitement towards it, hand outstretched to handle, pumps it repeatedly, and when foiled, shakes it harder. Then he moves on to the next door.
At the back stand two stuck up, pole up the ass English homosexuals. Oh wait, that’s us.
We hang back and try not to kill our fellow tourists, trying to blend into the scenery in our English way, by bumbling apologetically and following every rule, silently judging. But silence is not assent. I shoot a stony British stare here and there, making a good show of our national pastime of passive aggression.
Of course we are secretly jealous of people who try locked doors, eat ice creams, and stomp with sulky abandon. We seethe instead. We grimace and eye roll. We write blogs criticising foreigners.
The guide tells us a story about the curse of the opera house - a ghost who pushes people on the steps. For a moment, her glazed, robotic delivery gives way to a smile that seems almost wistful. I suspect the ghost is that of a tour guide.
Kill the wabbit
So that’s the wildlife, but what of the scenery? Well, the auditorium is huge, and for me, more redolent of popular cultural associations than anything else. Rather than the opera itself, I just think of the images and texts it inspires. There’s the totemic image: sitting in front of the gigantic opulence of a stage, forced perspective, overtly constructed grandeur and artifice, and the silhouettes of heads in front of it, fronds of hair illuminated by reflected stage light. While there’s Walter Sickert and Toulouse Laurrec, there is most of all The Godfather Part III, The Man Who Knew Too Much, the post war version of The 39 Steps.
But most of all, there is the Rabbit of Seville and What’s Opera Doc. This, my friends, is where they killed the wabbit.
As the saying doesn’t quite go, you can take a pleb to high culture but you can’t make him stop thinking of Bugs Bunny cartoons.
