In the wake of society's decision to finally retire The Music Review from its Pantheon of Unusually Weak Ideas We're Going to Stick With For Just A Little While Longer, I thought I'd post up Exhibit A.
This afternoon I made my fortnightly trip out to Borders and bought a CD of Wagner's opera 'Tristan und Isolde'. I've lingered over this purchase for years after hearing a good chunk of it on the better-than-ok film
Ivan's XTC.
(One of the first feature films made with a digital camera. At the time of its release, the director announced he'd changed film-making forever. Which was a little like D.H. Lawrence claiming to have reinvented Contemporary Fiction when he switched from a pencil to a biro). The spiralling climax to this opera is definitely famous, and was used to excellent effect at the end of the film when Ivan died horribly alone in a hospital bed. It was a powerful scene and I was moved to the point of wishing I could cry more easily at films. Had it been captured digitally, I'm sure this off-screen viewing would have trumped the on-screen dying in the gruelling tragedy stakes.
What happened next?On the way home I bought a big Aero from Wilkinson's to eat during the playback. And then, shortly before 6pm, the foundations of what I'd considered Reasonably Tragic Experience were shaken violently. Massive tears plopped onto the rubble and dust, and kept on plopping, until the final note fell away.
And then I woke up, and realised it was all a dream.
