A day at the opera

By James Carson:

It started badly. At the box office, the charmless young woman could barely have dispensed our tickets with less grace had she pelted us with them. When I asked where the tour began she mumbled something inaudible. I asked again, and she released an impatient sigh.

”Ten minutes! You have to wait there!”

She was pointing behind us, to a vestibule that was devoid of character, illumination and, most importantly, seating.

Robert glared at the woman, a familiar venom in his eyes. After a lifetime in hospitality, my other half has developed a pathological intolerance for bad service.

“There’s nowhere to sit,” he told her. But she had already moved on to not serving the next visitor. 

The bleak foyer was a chilly prospect. We returned to the sweltering streets and found a bench in front of the theatre.

Sited between the Plaza de Oriente and the Plaza Isabel II, the Teatro Real occupies perhaps the finest piece of real estate in Madrid. The theatre has a majestic view of the Royal Palace and is embraced by elegant apartments with filigree balconies, and flowerbeds bursting with colour.

For the next ten minutes we baked beneath the midday sun, listening to the bluesy meanderings of a busking saxophonist. In the middle distance, a fake matador was posing for selfies with tourists. Every now and then, he gave his cape an exaggerated swish.

When we returned to the vestibule, there was still no sign of our guide, and the box office was also deserted. We had a look in the theatre’s shop: DVDs, CDs, scarves decorated with dancing treble clefs, mugs with mugshots of composers. I bought a couple of bookmarks. It was now nearly an hour after the scheduled start of the tour.  We returned to the vestibule and waited disconsolately.

Finally, a woman wearing a long, floral skirt and a frilly, dark blouse appeared. She looked to be in her seventies; small, smiley, full of life, she introduced herself as Hortencia. We were the only ones on the tour, and when she heard we were from Scotland, she beamed. “A great country, “ she trilled, “I love it!” Robert nodded wordlessly. It was going to take more than a bit of tartan-trimmed soft soaping to defrost his nuclear winter. 

She led us to a small elevator and we squeezed in. Hortencia gave a puckish grin: “First, I’m going to take you to Paradise.” We glided up in silence, and as the doors opened, Hortencia led us into the auditorium.

Traditionally, the ‘gods’ of a theatre contain the cheapest, most uncomfortable seats. The ones here in ’Paradise’ certainly looked a tight fit, something confirmed by one dyspeptic online critic who also had a go at the central heating: “Ok for dwarves with hypothermia.”

From this lofty vantage point, there was a fine view of the stage.  An empty theatre is a joyless place. But even in the half darkness, it wasn’t hard to imagine the expectant buzz of an audience in their finery, the orchestra tuning up, a mezzo soprano hovering nervously in the wings

Our eyes were drawn upwards to a glistening chandelier which, Hortencia informed us, came from the royal crystal factory at La Granja. Robert was about to take a photograph, but Hortencia intervened: no pictures allowed in the auditorium. Robert bristled:  “In that case, why is she allowed?” He was pointing to a woman down in the stalls, merrily snapping the red seats, the gilded balconies, and that magnificent chandelier. Hortencia frowned and shook her head sadly. “It is not allowed.”

I’ve never understood the photophobia of some tourist attractions.  At best, it’s a barrier to a bit of free publicity; at worst it can spoil the whole visit. Once, in Berlin’s Helmut Newton Museum, I was about to snap the great man’s silver-blue jeep when a supervisor barked at me: Kein fotografie!” I could have stopped to explain to him the irony of a photography ban in a photography museum; instead, I silently christened him the Stasi bastard and moved on.

Back at the Teatro Real, Hortencia was explaining how an opera house works. This was more interesting than it should have been, mainly because she used a cute little model of the building to demonstrate the lifts and pulleys deployed when changing the scenery. From the outside, the Teatro Real seems to occupy a modest space, in contrast to the sprawling opera houses of Vienna and Paris. But what it lacks in girth it makes up for in the inventive use of its vertical space, with 18 overlying platforms allowing scene changes in seconds.

Hortencia led us downstairs and onto the theatre’s external balcony with its superb view of the palace and the Almudena cathedral. 

“I’m going to give you some dates that you won’t remember,” she said, and gave us a potted history of the theatre that mirrored the story of modern Spain itself: construction, damage, decay, reinvention, restoration. 

One date I did retain, mainly because it was plastered in big white figures on a red banner above us, was 1818: the year when King Fernando VII decided Madrid had waited long enough for an opera house to match those in the other great capitals of Europe. 

After a lot of stopping and starting, the Teatro Real finally opened in 1850, and quickly attracted the world’s great operatic performers. But after just 75 years the curtain fell when work on the nearby metro station afflicted the theatre’s foundations. 

For much of the early twentieth century, the Teatro Real was a forlorn shell, treated with indignity and disrespect. During the civil war, it was a storage depot for munitions, and shortly after General Francisco Franco took control in Madrid, an explosion destroyed the interior. 

During the 1960s, the Teatro Real was rebuilt as a concert hall. On YouTube, a grainy film of the opening night shows General Franco, arriving in evening dress, accompanied by his wife. A few steps behind, there’s a young crown prince Juan Carlos looking seriously uncomfortable.

An aerial view of the theatre uncovers something unexpected: the Teatro Real is a coffin, a perfectly formed hexagon. In reality, this casket for the dead is a music box where audiences across the centuries have been brought to life by the sounds of Stravinsky and Verdi, Carmen and Aida.

And - unlikely as it may seem - the Teatro Real occupies a curious place in Eurovision history. In 1969, the song contest was staged here.  At the time, this was a big deal for Spain, which many western European countries still regarded as a fascist dictatorship. Spanish television used the competition as a golden PR opportunity, and recruited Salvador Dalí, no less, to design the stage. The surrealism spilled over to the final result, when four countries received the highest number of votes. With no provision for breaking a quadruple tie, Spain’s moment of Eurovision glory ended on a flat note.

Six years later, Franco was dead, triggering a remarkable transformation of the country’s political and cultural life. Hortencia explained that the Teatro Real was not immune to the winds of change sweeping a newly-democratic Spain. “The Socialist government wanted to show its cultural credentials, and they decided to rebuild the Teatro Real as a world class opera house.” 

We were now in the Cafe del Palacio a swish restaurant with shiny marble floors and carved Lebanese cedar-wood. 

Hortencia pointed to the walls, where framed remnants of the old auditorium hung alongside the heavy costumes singers had to wear in the 19th century. 

“Today, singers also have to act, sometimes to dance across the stage, and so the costumes have to be lighter.” She told us about recent productions, including a Philip Glass opera on the life of Walt Disney. Robert sniffed. “I prefer more traditional operas.” 

“Me too,” said Hortencia, and recalled a memorable performance of The Magic Flute at La Scala.  And with that, the thaw was on. Robert can be grumpy, and sometimes frustratingly stubborn. But his heart is as big as the sky, and whenever he encounters sincerity, he’ll always reach out to find common ground. I left them happily discussing their favourite operas, the genius of Pavarotti, unforgettable nights at the Met and Covent Garden. 

I wandered into one of the public salons where audiences can mingle during performance intervals. In the spirit of the new democracy, it was stipulated that these rooms should be open to all, not just the great and the good. The salons have been tastefully restored, with deep and sumptuous carpets, woven from Castilian merino wool, La Granja chandeliers and portraits of King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia, who opened the restored Teatro Real in 1997.

Our final stop was the royal box, where I resisted the urge to give a regal wave to the technicians on the stage. Hortencia shook our hands and smiled uncertainly:  “I hope it wasn’t too boring for you.”

We returned to the summer afternoon, joining laid back  Madrileños and sunburnt tourists. 

From a cafe nearby came the sounds of a city at ease: the clink of glass on glass, the sizzle of paella, the hum of conversation. 

We lingered to listen as two guitarists set about their instruments with passion and intimidating skill. In the shadow of the Teatro Real, they were playing their very souls out, as if to convey that a life without music is no life at all.

***
James Carson is a writer from Glasgow. His work has appeared in various magazines, including From Glasgow to Saturn, The Skinny and ExBerliner, and his stories have also been selected for anthologies such as Streets of Berlin, Tip Tap Flat and A Sense of Place.