Quite a few people have asked me about the title I used in the last issue, ‘The show’s not over until the fat lady sings’. Well, as most of you know, it simply means that until the ultimate aria, curtain, whistle or whatever, nothing is final, things can and do happen. The origin of the phrase is, alas, a little more hazy.
Via internet, I discovered that ‘The opera ain’t over yet ’til the fat lady sings’ was used by Dan Cook in a sporting article in the Washington Post on 3 June 1978 and there are other references to the opera not being over until the buxom diva sings her last aria.
Personally, I would like to think that someone, somewhere said it at some point during Richard Wagner's interminable opera cycle Der Ring Des Nibelungen or The Ring, as it is either lovingly or un-lovingly referred to. The Ring, which is made up of four operas, not three as many people think, comprises Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung and takes somewhere around 15 hours to hear in its entirety. But I can assure you, that’s not 15 hours of unadulterated pleasure, more like 15 hours of undiluted misery, 15 hours of an ear-splitting cacophony, 15 hours in which tubby tenors carrying spears start singing when they are stabbed instead of dying, 15 hours of gargantuan pigtailed Rhine maidens with bulging bosoms, wearing the latest fashion in plastic helmets singing discordant arias that make today’s rappers sound like modern day reincarnations of Cole Porter and George Gershwin.
What is it that makes people get into such a tizzy over the antics of these lusty ladies, okay, divas if you preferı Surely they would be more at home in a Sumo wrestler’s doyo (ring) than in the hallowed halls of La Scala in Milano. They may have divine voices, but as Mrs Patrick Campbell said when she saw one of them up close, “My God! She looks like I do in a spoon.”
I apologize if I am offending anyone with my bigoted opinion regarding one of operas esteemed oeuvres, nevertheless, despite the fact that I might soon be drummed out of the Skegness Amateur Opera Society and be singing castrato to boot, I feel obliged to underline that from 15 hours of ‘music’ the only hits that could possibly make it onto a classical karaoke machine are Sigfried’s Funeral March, which is more fun than a barrel full of monkeys and the relaxing Ride of the Valkyries that was so effectively used to accompany the squadron of helicopters going into the attack in the Francis Ford Coppola movie Apocalypse Now.
And what about the list of charactersı Wotan, Froh, Brunnhilde and Loge - not exactly a theatrical agent’s dream are theyı But who cares, there’s always the dialogue to fall back on. Forget all those oft used clichés like Humphrey Bogart’s last words in Casablanca, “I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship” and start using these great one-liners at your intimate candlelit suppers: Wotan’s “Der alte Sturm, die alte Mueh, Doch Stand muss ich hier halten”, Brunnhilde 's short and sharp “War es so schmählich” or Froh’s “Zur Burg fuhert die Bruecke...”
Now, in a last ditch effort to try recover the hundreds of Europa Star readers who are also opera fans and are about to hurl the magazine across the office, let me tell you that some of by best friends are opera singers. But be that as it may, Wagner’s work is way over my head - as is the water under which the Rhine maidens in Der Ring Des Nibelungen are supposedly singing.
And where is all this leadingı Quite frankly, I don’t know. I started out with the best intention in the world to tell you about the behind the scene action at the fairs with the title ‘There’s more to trade fairs than watches …’ and finished up tearing Wagner’s Ring Cycle to shreds. However, I have to admit that I actually feel better for it.
Can you imagine how great Groucho Marx must have felt after he’d said: “I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll be glad to make an exception.”