Oh yeh, really, it was like a Royal Wedding. We even had to go to the\npalace to pick up our invitations to the reception. Well, ok, not the palace\nbut to that big, posh building in the middle of the capital. That CIEM or\nwhatever it is, you know the one with white metal shutter that they can pull\ndown that seems to make the whole building disappear. There was this big sort\nof reception area and a lady there taking our names and giving out the invites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Actually she was really helpful and when we asked if could learn a bit more about the arrangements she made a call on the internal phone and this chap came down to meet us in the gold lift. He walked across to us and, to our amazement, we recognised him. He had played the piano at some concerts we had seen. In fact, only very recently we had seen him with one or two choirs and even with Lanzarote Ensemble classical orchestra. We\u00b4d thought he was really good. Turns out he was bound to be good as he\u00b4s director of the conservatoire ! He shook hands and told us his name is Javier Diaz and he\u00b4d be happy to give us some background information on The Marriage of Figaro. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He told us he had always wanted his students to learn how enjoyable\nopera can be and just how much work, and of what kind, goes into producing one.\nHe said that apart from playing and singing one or two arias in the past,\nstudents hadn\u00b4t really encountered opera on their curriculum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00a8Playing at the wedding,\u00b4 he said, \u00b4would be a thrill, for students to\nproduce and play alongside their mentors and staff members from all over the\nislands.\u00b4 Senor Diaz told us there would be a full choir and orchestra and\nsoloists, too, with full theatre lighting and acoustics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When we joked that opera is often seen as elitist art in the UK he smiled\nand said the pupils had enjoyed laughing at some of the comedy and satire in\nthe opera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The director is obviously immensely proud of the academy and its staff\nand students and was certainly looking forward to the reception as much as we\nwere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, by the time we got to the theatre it was obvious that not\neveryone was happy about this wedding. I\u00b4m not sure they ever really trusted\nthat Figaro bloke Suzanne has married. Some people said they had even been\nspied on whilst canoodled in the privacy of the gardens. What sort of people do\nthat? Apparently Suzanne and this Figaro fella even started leaving false\ntrails and sending notes to mislead people. There were all sorts of rumours\nflying round the theatre about disguises and deceptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Naturally, it all kicked off big time, at the wedding, didn\u00b4t it? I\ndon\u00b4t know the ins and outs of it but there were hints and allegations of\naffairs and all sorts of shenanigans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before the reception, of course, we\u00b4d taken a sneak peak at The actual\nMarriage Of Figaro. It was the biggest hoo hah ever seen on this island,\nthough, I can tell you. There was no expense spared. There were musicians and\nsingers and the reception ceremony went on for more than four hours. It was all\nreported on in the newspapers and Diario de Lanzarote estimated there were\naround 500 guests, but to be honest it seemed to me there were even more than\nthat. I didn\u00b4t see her there, but the Diario reported that even the new\nPresident of The Cabildo was amongst the guests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To be honest, it all turned out quite beautifully, though whether or not\nFigaro and Suzanne will live happily ever after, remains to be seen. She\u00b4s very\nflighty and I thought he seemed a bit of a wimp, really.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Marriage Of Figaro really was magnificent, though. The costumes, the\nlighting and the sound, and the props and scenery and the soloist singers and\nthe ensemble vocals were gorgeous. There were fifteen people playing stringed\ninstruments and another fourteen or fifteen playing wind instruments. With\nseven sopranos, seven altos, three tenors and four bass voices they made a\nbeautiful sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Javier was there, as he\u00b4d said he would be, playing the leitmotif on the\nharpsichord, and there was one guest with an English sounding name who pranced\naround all through the reception as if he was leading the choir.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was all rather refined. There were no Beatles\u00b4 hits being blasted out\nand the dancing was quite courtly. There was nobody doing the Hippy Hippy\nShake, I can tell you. In fact someone told me that all this music, coincidentally,\nhad been written (well, they call it \u00b4composed\u00b4 because this is \u00b4proper\u00b4 music)\nabout two hundred and seventy years ago, in Europe, whilst Lanzarote was\nenduring its last series of volcanic eruptions. So maybe opera was the \u00b4rock\u00b4\nmusic of its day. To be fair, though, all these staff and student musicians\nfrom the Academy worked hard. The reception seemed to last for hours and hours\nand the congregation kept shouting \u00b4bravo\u00b4 and bursting into long rounds of\napplause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was quite a mix of people who attended the wedding. Some people\nhad taken little babies with them and there were definitely three or four\ngenerations there of some of the families. In fact, we noticed one or two of\nthe teenagers slipping away after a couple of hours but everyone was really\nwell behaved. Of course part of the fun at a big wedding is looking around to\nsee who else has been invited. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We bumped into some friends even before we went in. We bumped into Dena\nand Christine with their partners in a bar round the corner having a crafty\ndrink beforehand, and we got all the gossip from them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
They both sing in local choirs and know all about the arts scene on\nLanzarote in all its glory and we enjoyed chatting with them. We\u00b4ve mentioned\nthem in these pages before, and another musical performer we have made note of\nhere is Marianne Whelpdale, who leads a German Choir and we noticed her\nfloating about at the reception. So, too, we noticed a white haired German man.\nNow, we don\u00b4t know him personally, and in fact we have only spoken to him once,\nbut we see him at nearly event we go to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At first our view of everything was blocked by two giant young men\nsitting in front of us, but fortunately they were two of the teenagers who\nslipped away early. From then on we could see all the proceedings very clearly,\nand we could see who was trying to \u00b4trap off\u00b4 with whom and all the chatting up\nattempts, successful of not, that were going on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the bride and groom were leaving at the end there was the\npresentation of beautiful bouquets to several major members of the family and\nwe noticed Javier beaming proudly, but shyly, as he was pulled centre stage to\ntake a bow with other performers. Whatever his ambitions were in bringing all\nthis together must have been vividly realised, and his students had done him\nproud. Despite all the fears about whether they would put in the hard work\nneeded to play to the high standard required the evening was a triumph. Once\nagain, this island, with so few indigenous people, had produced high art of\ngreat quality and everyone was all smiles afterwards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We noticed a few people, though, who we had seen arrive alone, leaving\ntogether hand in hand, and heading off into the island\u00b4s nightlife. Bound to\nend in tears some of those new relationships I reckon, just like they do in\nCoronation Street. In fact, I suppose you could say it was a real soap opera\nwedding.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n000000000000<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oh yeh, really, it was like a Royal Wedding. We even had to go to the palace to pick up our invitations to the reception. Well, ok, not the palace but to that big, posh building in the middle of the capital. That CIEM or whatever it is, you know the one with white metal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,45],"tags":[47],"class_list":["post-201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guest-writers","category-music","tag-opera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1412,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions\/1412"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}