[Jayne Osborn]

Here's the August Literary Review competition: Are any of us opera 'buffs', I wonder? My dentist is, actually; I might have to pay him a visit and pick his brains!

Jayne

From the magazine:

By Deputy Editor Tom Fleming

Next month's subject is 'opera'. Entries must, as well as rhyming and scanning as usual, be twenty-four lines or fewer in length,
and reach these offices by 28th August.
The Literary Review, 44 Lexington Street, London W1F 0LW
Fax: 020 7734 1844
editorial@literaryreview.co.uk

[John Whitworth]

There is a good poem by the late Martin Bell called 'Benefit Night at the Opera'. The last, and best.stanza runs as follow,

Lo! Wild applause proclaims a happy ending.
Vendetta is achieved with clinking swords.
Sheer from the battlements the diva is descending,
Rash in black velvet and resplendent chords.

That would be 'Tosca' I think. Or 'Fidelio'?

[Jerome Betts]

T-I-M-B-R-E !

The great Claudine, the Opera's best,
Of mighty lungs and pride and chest,
Whose voice could shatter armoured glass,
Got something pinched at Kew, poor lass,
And let out such a rending screech
She felled three chestnuts and a beech.

[Brian Allgar]

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

There is a good poem by the late Martin Bell called 'Benefit Night at the Opera'. The last, and best.stanza runs as follow,

Lo! Wild applause proclaims a happy ending.
Vendetta is achieved with clinking swords.
Sheer from the battlements the diva is descending,
Rash in black velvet and resplendent chords.

That would be 'Tosca' I think. Or 'Fidelio'?

It depends whether she's descending from the battlements on foot or in free fall.

[John Whitworth]

Free fall I think. I once was stagecrew in Edinburgh and saw Anna Moffo descend sheer from the battlements, bounce on the mattress beneath and appear momentarily for an encore. Honest guv, I did.

Oh, and while we are about it, how about this?


Opera

An opera is like a play
Except that in a play they say,
And in an opera they sing,
They sing away like anything.
Some operas go on for days
Which is unusual for plays.

You itch in rich, repulsive seats
While an expensive tenor bleats
His theme of love and longing out.
The lady, who is rather stout,
Responds in modulated shrieks,
And half an hour seems like weeks.

The villain, sour and bearded, looms
And booms revenge and dreadful dooms.
The music starts to swoop and soar:
The drums and trumpets are at war;
The frenzies of the violins
Dance like the seven deadly sins.

The plot is complex and obscure
And you are doubly unsure
Since opera is always sung
In some ungodly foreign tongue:
Taedium Vitae à la mode;
High culture by the barrowload.

[Esther Murer]

TIMBRE! LOL, Jerome.

Here's an old one of mine (I was playing around with combining rondel with ghazal) - first 2 lines from John Ashbery:

Ashbery is of two minds about the opera

I.

If only a phantom would stop reappearing!
Business, if you wanted to know, was punk at the opera.
Read the reviews to see whether the show is a flop or a
hit. Though the latter, of course, would be cheering,
the former is more like the outcome I'm fearing.
My stomach is all aflutter with lepidoptera.
If only a phantom would stop reappearing!
Business, as you probably know, was punk at the opera.

In places I thought the performance was searing.
Marguerite's "Jewel Song" was a show-stopper, a
tour de force. I'd better make a note to drop her a
line. That will help her to keep persevering.
If only that phantom would stop reappearing!
_________

II.

If only a phantom would stop reappearing!
Business, if you wanted to know, was punk at the opera.
So awful, in fact, that I got drunk at the opera.
The big fat soprano was so domineering
I felt I was lucky to be hard of hearing.
I beg you, don't ask me what I thunk of the opera.
If only a phantom would stop reappearing!
Business, as I said before, was punk at the opera.

It's nearing the end of its run, which is cheering.
You probably think that I shouldn't debunk the opera,
but I'm the sort who has always shrunk from the opera.
So I left, and at once my head started clearing.
(If only that phantom would stop reappearing!)

[Brian Allgar]

Although imperfect mortals, base and clay-ey,
We do the work of God at Opus Dei,
And can't help feeling nothing could be properer
Or more divine than our collective opera.

[Jerome Betts]

Thanks, Esther. You've spurred me to bung it in, though stiff competition already it seems.

Peripheral to the theme, but always liked Beachcomber's ( J.B. Morton) An Old Gramophone Record

On the revolving disc her topmost note
Pierced the loud music with a maniac yell,
As though a tiger had her by the throat.
Il faut souffrir pour être Edison-Bell.

[Marion Shore]

Our love was like an opera,
passionate and grand,
as though at our first meeting,
you clasped my trembling hand;

as though we danced together,
dressed up in masquerade;
or underneath my window,
you sang a serenade;

as though I were a gypsy
who lured you with a flower;
as though we drank a potion
that bound us in its power.

The orchestra swelled louder,
drums thundered, cymbals rang.
We swore our love eternal--
Then the fat lady sang.

[Ann Drysdale]

Marion - here are all the operas I grew up with, culminating in one inescapable truth.

I applaud - and sigh...