The current run ended on 20th June, though the production is bound to be much revived. Meanwhile, Così fan tutte returns to Glyndebourne on 4th July with a series of 15 performances through to late August. It’s currently sold out, but more tickets will be released if and when the theatre police permit.
GOLDEN OLDIES RACHEL JOHNSON
BILL COOPER
THE PM’S WEDDING BAND
Turkish delight: Don Narciso (Michele Angelini) in Il turco in Italia
smart casual – a sure-fire winner where any film or opera is concerned. Julia Hansen’s designs were good to look at, though the poet’s lair was better at accommodating the set-piece trios and duets than the meticulously recreated 1950s Italian delicatessen in which the musically superior and largely poet-free second act took place. It’s wonderful what you can do with a string of sausages and a bottle of olive oil. That said, the central quintet – the masked ball in which Fiorilla’s put-upon husband fears he’s losing his mind – would have been better staged in the tavern that Romani’s libretto prescribes. A week into the run, the excellent cast had bedded in nicely, not least Michele Angelini in the high-tenor role of Fiorilla’s toyboy, her cavaliere servente Don Narciso. Fiorilla was shrewdly played by Elena Tsallagova, a bright-toned coloratura, whose astonishing aria of anger, remorse and despair, after she’s been abandoned by the amorous Turk and locked out of her house by her husband, provides the opera with its tragicomic dénouement. The Fiorilla in that 1950 Rome revival was the 28-year-old Maria Callas. She never got to sing the aria because of a less-than-complete edition. What she would have made of it, both there and on her later EMI recording, remains one of the great has-beens of operatic history. In the end, Geronio (the splendid Rodion Pogossov) takes back his wife, as the couple agree to tolerate each other happily ever after. Bored (or worse) by the idea of grey sex, the 22-year-old Rossini farmed out this duet of reconciliation to an assistant, though it’s an earnest of the truth-to-text of Clément’s superb production that it was strangely moving nonetheless.
This column has been on gardening leave. The kibosh on live events combined with my torpor and late-onset FOJI (fear of joining in) meant I even missed Van Morrison’s appearance at the London Palladium during his long-delayed anti-lockdown tour, which was one of the only concerts that has happened for over a year. I was excusing my absence thus to the editor, saying the only live music I’ve actually heard all year was at my bro’s recent wedding in the Downing Street garden. Guests were serenaded by an acoustic, waistcoated trio of such pep and spritz and brio that I wanted them at all future weddings, not just the PM’s. I frankly longed for them to be around every time I went out, so I didn’t have to talk to people. In fact, I continued, I’d like all social occasions in future to be some raucous, drunken singalong to all the greatest HOAT (hits of all time) around a campfire, with people sitting on hay bales, while the helicopter from Sky News hovered like an angry wasp overhead. I then told him off the record I’d requested that they play Creep by Radiohead, and belted it out on the small dance floor of a pretty, white-swagged marquee in the Rose Garden… ‘Gold dust, Johnson,’ he murmured, stopping my flow. ‘By Monday, please. What were they called, again?’
I huffily said I couldn’t possibly write about the nuptials and confessed I was so drunk by the time I left that I’d forgotten the name. Now, because I underwent a sixmonth journalism training course and was a graduate trainee at the Financial Times, he knew and I knew that I had the very special and refined skills to find out who that band were who entertained guests at the secret wedding of the century. A nanosecond’s work revealed this, in the Mirror: ‘There was a small bash at No 10 afterwards with music provided by a folk band called The Bow Fiddlies who reportedly played covers of Mumford & Sons songs, followed by a dance around the firepit at 1am.’ No comment! All I will reveal is that the Bow Fiddlies – I remember the name
‘Suit yourself, Fiona – there are plenty more people on the land!’
now – are the most talented threesome you have never heard of. They play covers. Who wants ‘original compositions’ at a wedding, or ‘the new album’ at a gig? Exactly. As my further researches (ie a look at their website) revealed, ‘They deliver a wide repertoire of all your favourite classics, as well as chart hits in finely tuned, three-part vocal harmony accompanied by lively guitars and their signature virtuosic fiddlin’.’ Right now, who could ask for more? Take a bow, Bow Fiddlies!
By appointment to Number 10: the Bow Fiddlies The Oldie July 2021 67
