Tuesday 2nd September 2014

I am reminded: I am yet to show my new turquoise mac from the Prada Factory shop, Montevarchi, Italy.

Saturday and Sunday Prince Dmitri and I were back to back mega-drenched, wracking, nerve-wracking Salome and then Elektra. The reception at the end of both, both given without an interval, was absolutely massive. Never has such soprano power been seen on two successive nights in the Royal Hall. These were unquestionably the greatest nights of the Proms season this year. Of the two, Nina Stemme as Salome was perhaps the more refined and the opera itself, springing as it does from Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley, more deeply redolent but Christine Goerke as Elektra recalled the great days of Birgit and even Kirsten. I was myself present at one of Birgit’s last appearances at the Garden when she gave Elektra in a hideous Greek sack-costume (tied and dye, I would say) but with good court shoes. Afterwards, the audience were surprised to find the outside of the Opera House completely black from all the coal (400,000 tons apparently) the great singer had consumed in the course of the perf. Then followed the era of the ‘clean’ nuclear-powered sting-ray soprano. But now at last the coal-fired model is back. Oh Christine Goerke, you are great! We will travel to the ends of the Earth to hear you.

I’m not sure one would want to be Elektra. You can see that her friends might have got rather fed up with her. But at least she hadn’t made it up about Clytemestra, her own mother, doing in her father. The most awful things happened in Ancient Greek times which are less frequent today but on the other hand, Poor Little Rich Gays frequently murder their mothers by hurling better frockage, decor, home and canapés as well as herbaceous borders and just about everything. But this is simultaneously a bid for intense intimacy with the mother. Clytem is more fun – frightful monster but not inhuman. She was sung by Dame Felicity Palmer who is 70 but absolutely booming. Huge voice.

As for Salome, I’ve never known quite what to make of it. Richard Nevil appeared nude in a student production in 1975 – of the play, that is. Don’t think some gays weren’t liberated in the 70s. He was supposed to be a slave boy, full of prophecies. Wilde said the work was profoundly poisonous. I think he meant subversive. Which it is. One is encouraged by the less than cosy depiction of human sexuality. No ghastly handy-holdy kissy-kissy smugness. More: off with his head and snog. But the experience of the opera is one of profound alienation, horror and revulsion. I can’t quite think why anyone would want to see it, let alone again. But we do.

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