Wailing of the Italian Cats (or, An Evening at the Opera)

I've always learnt about things the wrong way. I learnt about the Greek myths from the Freaky Fable spoofs by Alan Coren in Punch. I read excerpts of The Prince in Science Fiction stories. Yesterday I saw the Parma Orcestra and opera at the Italian Festival in Delhi and realised that I'd known about the derivative long ago, and had to wait years to see the original.

We've all see the Hollywood musicals - most of us have, or at least seen their derivative, the Bollywood song-and-dance movie. If you've thought about it, you'd realise that they were based on stage musicals at Broadway and at other places. My fair Lady, Sound of Music, Oklahoma, ... all these were extremely successful musical shows on Broadway before they were made into acclaimed films.

Of course, these shows were the child of a tradition exemplified by Gilbert and Sullivan, and (AHAAA, now we come to the point!) G&S themselves were anglicization of the European traditional opera.

It takes a short time, listening to the soprano and tenor from the Parma opera to make that connection. It's easy if your not distracted by the language, or the beauty of a trained voice. Once you've made the observation that the opera does sound like a team of wailing cats, and you've glanced at the explanatory notes in the programme by the light of your mobile phone, you soon realise that the singing is strikingly similar to what we've seen and heard in the films - the same acting with the voice, the same kind of story-line and the same kind of music. Of course, a purist would say that a Verdi was a greater composer than say a music hall tune-meister, but it's a question of the type of music - they are so very similar.

I enjoyed the show quite a bit, even though we had to sit in one dingy corner, where a view of the stage was obstructed by hordes of people, and we had to see the stage on a screen (The better seats were occupied by Sheila Dikshit, her entourage and VIPs from all the embassies in Delhi). We were surrounded by softly whispering pairs, each more eager for the chance to hold hands than to figure out what was being sung. The conductor, Marco Boni, a gentleman who looked a stouter version of Tom Hanks in the days when he still had hair, and the orchestra played beautifully - at least music has no language or dialect, and the mosquitos had a feast at our expense.

We ended the night with dinner at Flavours, and while waiting saw NDTVs Sonia Singh having dinner with Andy Sehgal of the Oil-for-Food-Scandal fame. The food was as usual good. The service, as usual, was lousy.