Sydney
21.9
Oh,
dear
MICHAEL
FRUSTRATED CROWL will be my name from now on.
At long
last I got something positive from the Ballet – and even then it was at second
hand (via Anne). No go – well, I’m afraid that I feel rather relieved about
that – Ballet’s not really my line and since even the Ballet dancers would have
known the music better than me, I think it might have been a little risky. [This is bit of nonsense, of course; no ballet
dancers, any more than opera singers, know all the music of all the repertoire.]
So, I’m not over-worried about that. More relieved than anything to have
something positive at long last. That’s not where the frustration bit comes in!
 |
| Rookwood Mortuary Station - not when I was there! |
Decided
to go out to Rookwood Cemetery this afternoon. So via Cecil and the Caretaker
(on the This is my father’s burial number.]
Well, clever Michael decides to go and find it, disregarding the fact the
everyone sez Rockwood’s a big place.
I should have asked the Caretaker exactly where section 17 was, but I assumed
that at least they’d be in some sort of order.
phone) I got hold of the number of the grave: Sect 17, No 3486, believe
it or not. [
Well, I
got a through train from Wollstonecraft (at Northwood end) to Lidcombe, which
took me nearly an hour, so that it was about 4.15 by the time I got there. [I remember this trip: mile after mile of
suburbia passing by, a sight I wasn’t to see again until I reached London.]
I had planned to get back to
Northwood for tea! Well, I went into the cemetery, (which is just down the road
from Lidcombe Station) and found section 13 sitting right there. But apart from
a section 5, everything else was labelled A, or G, or EE! I discovered later
that this was the old part of the
cemetery. Well, I trekked around for a while and finally asked a lady in a
house that was sitting right in the middle of this bit if she knew where sect.
17 was? She didn’t! So after losing myself thoroughly in this place I finally
came upon a sign saying ‘Catholic’ – this was the new part, I presume, though
some of the stones had been there for years. To my joy (it was now about 5.15!)
I saw some small name-plates that looked like the thing I wanted. But these
only went up to 1050 or so. I then went right round that area and found every
section (18, 16, 20, 14, 15, 10 *!!!) but the one I wanted. And there was
absolutely no reason to it all. So if ever I get the chance again I’ll try
again.
But I
wasn’t finished yet. I took the road that I thought I’d come up, but all it
would do was insist on taking me in a completely unfamiliar direction. As far
as the eye could see there were graves, or bits of unrecognisable countryside.
You’ve no idea what an odd feeling it is to be completely and utterly lost (I
couldn’t find one of the churches I’d
seen on the way in) in a cemetery just before sunset.
Fortunately,
a car came tootling around the road I was on, and I waved them down and asked
how to get to the station, explaining that I’d got lost on the way through.
They very kindly pointed out the direction and were about to drive off when
they realised I didn’t have a car. So they gave me a lift to the station which
had somehow transplanted itself a good two miles away from where it had been
before.
AAAAGH!!
Why don’t they put up some sort of signs of where sections are, etc? Of course,
by the time I got to the Catholic Office in the grounds everyone had gone home.
So when
I got to the station, I rang up Anne and said I couldn’t make it home for tea and get to Rigoletto, (it was now 10 to 6) so I decided to have tea in town
(which didn’t bother her a bit) and meet her at the theatre.
Went to
the Poet and Peasant for tea, again, and then onto the Tivoli. [2018: in the previous notes I added that
this was ‘the theatre’. Curiously enough, according to Wikipedia, the Tivoli
stopped presenting shows in 1966, and was demolished in 1969. But this page
says the production was definitely presented there. In fact, it looks as though
all the operas I mention were performed there that year.] Went to my usual seat beside
the tympani player only to find that the harpist (who wasn’t playing) and his
girlfriend had already arranged to be there. So in the end, I wandered upstairs
and sat in a chair in one of the boxes that no one seemed to want! [2018: Quite extraordinary to think that I
could go into the theatre unchallenged like this each time.]
Quite a
good show, though only the baritone (as Rigoletto) was really good. Somehow
feel that the NZ Opera version was rather better all round. (Bias!!) [The NZ Opera version, presented in the heyday of their existence, was
firstly designed by Raymond Boyce. This meant that in the middle of the duet
between Rigoletto and Gilda, in the second act, the wall hiding the garden from
view suddenly shifted forward as the two singers went through the gate, turning
the whole scene into the garden.* Boyce used the same effect in Porgy and
Bess, going from the outside to the
inside of the house in the middle of the storm scene. Hardly a new idea, but
very effective in its timing in both instances. As well, I managed to see both
performances of the opera in Dunedin, by being an usher, and, because it was
really my first experience of the opera, I was overwhelmed by it. I don’t
remember who played the role of Rigoletto in the first performance, but it was
sung by Lucas Bunt on the second night, a gentleman I was to have more than a
little to do with while touring with him around NZ as part of the Opera
Quartet. I may be wrong, but I think three other members of the first Quartet I
toured with, Ray Opie, the tenor, Corinne Bridge, the mezzo, and Kathleen
Johnson, the soprano, were also in at least one of the casts. I don’t remember
a thing about this Australian Rigoletto,
but in at least one of the performances I saw in London- it may have been that
memorable first night that I arrived there – the baritone pitched a note he
sings on his own a semitone flat, and when the orchestra came in, something
Verdi never wrote persisted for quite a number of bars.]
Got another letter from you, Hurray!!!
So, see
yuh, Love Mike
* You can see a sketch of one of the sets built for Rigoletto here. The picture is copyright, so I can't reproduce it.
