For the second time (the first we went to see was ‘Rigoletto’) we went to the opera! It was performed in the Coliseum opera house, and I think it was better than our first trip there. It had more jokes and it was a little less hard to understand. It was called ‘The Pirates of Penzance’ and it was set in Cornwall. However, it was after lunch, and we didn’t go to see it as soon as we got to London, like we did when we saw ‘Rigoletto’ – we went to lots of other places first.
One of them was the National Portrait Gallery. We went there last time after we’d seen ‘Rigoletto’, but Tilly was feeling a bit queezy so we left earlier than we had intended. This time we looked at the paintings of Henry VII and the busk of Edward The Black Prince in more detail. However we actually spent most of our time in the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square.
There we saw the larger paintings. One of them was The Ambassadors, which we’ve been learning about while doing the Tudors. It was painted by Hans Holbein, one of the king’s most liked artists. It has on it an anamorphic skull. This strange object (which from the front people comment looks a little like a ‘baguette’) is a skull like any other, but it has been stretched in an awkward and clever position, so that when one takes the time to go to the left or right hand side of the painting and peer at it at a certain direction, one can see it in a skull’s normal position. I have to say that I don’t know why somebody would go into the trouble of paintings something so it looks abnormal and so that from a different angle it looks perfectly fine, but I do know why Holbein chose a skull to stretch upon the carpet of the room the two men stand in. He chose it because of symbolism. I like to think of it symbolising a certain Latin phrase – ‘Memento mori’. It means, ‘Remember you will die.’
Apart from paintings, history, poetry and so on, we also learn about classical composers. The most recent one we’ve been learning about (we’re currently listening to Hadyn) was Handel, George Friderick Handel. In the National Portrait Gallery we saw a painting of him! He had the official curly wig-hair (I privately think of old-fashioned composers as Bigwig) and had an open book next to him with Messiah written on the open page. Messiah was one of his biggest hits.
We also saw one called ‘Courtyard of a House in Delft’. We’re going to learn about that one next. It’s a Northern Renaissance painting, and it shows a woman walking with her back to the observer through a stone archway in a sort of run-down courtyard. There is also a lady holding a platter of corn or some crop like that, who is holding hands with a little girl. The idea is that it’s a simple painting of simple life, in a simple courtyard by a simple house. While we English types were painting wealthy ambassadors and composers dressed in ermine-trimmed cloaks, the Dutch were talking of more practicle, everyday matters.
There was also a room filled with paintings of flowers. In vases, on tables, or maybe even a close-up view of them on the lawn – but all kinds of flowers. If one looked closely, one could see small bugs like butterflies or caterpillars. Tilly said afterwards those were her favourite of the pictures; however I quite liked Courtyard of a House in Delft. I think Mummy did too.
Henry VIII wasn’t just looking to marry Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard and that lot. In fact there were plenty of people he didn’t marry – not just the women with whom he had illegitimate sons and so on – but people who he didn’t have any kind of affair with at all. One of these, and the most famous too, was Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan (she was a widow). Henry would have married her – had she not said no. I don’t quite quote but she said something along the lines of, “If I had two heads and two bodies, I, of course, would give one of each to the king; but as it stands, I do not have two of these each, and so I shall remain how and where I am, and will not marry Henry VIII.” Hans Holbein, who painted a lot of the king’s pictures, painted a life-size one of Christina, which we saw in the gallery, and sent it to him so he could look over her. Henry thought she looked very clever, and asked to marry her, but by now he was old, fat and had a gammy leg, and she wisely declined!
We left the art gallery after seeing these paintings (and a few more, but I can’t list them all) and went for a quick walk after a lunch in Pret, since there was an hour or so before we had our tour, which was also before ‘The Pirates of Penzance’! On our walk we went past a large gate, with a man dressed in a funny outfit sitting on a big brown horse. He looked a little like a beef-eater. People were getting photos with him – though I should say with the horse, because he stared forward and didn’t blink when an ignorant man asked him questions and started to get very frustrated with him. There were also policemen with guns guarding at the same time, though I don’t know why because I didn’t get much out of Mummy’s explanation!
On the way out of the park (which was the place the people were guarding for some reason), we walked past yet another huge gateway, with policemen carrying guns again. The sign on the buildings said ‘DOWNING STREET’ in boring capitals. Downing Street is where the prime minister lives – at the moment Theresa May. We watched for a few minutes and saw plenty of posh, shiny black cars drive out the big gates. The policemen had to lower a mini wall that blocked the road, and then open the gates, and then quickly shut them up again before anybody was able to come through. It was all very secured!
On the way to the opera house we had to pass through Trafalgar Square. A large pillar called Nelson’s Column looms over everything and everybody, crowded round by four stone blocks, guarded by gold stone lions. Last year we went there, we were allowed to clamber all over the beasts, but now they’ve been taped round, presumably for ‘health and safety reasons’.
The opera was about a man named Frederick. As a boy, his nurse had mistook what his father had said, he saying ‘Make him a pilot until his twenty-first birthday’ and she handing him over to a pirate until he was twenty-one. Frederick married Mabel, and they were about to live happily ever after, when Fred’s nurse and the captain of the pirates came along. ‘Frederick,’ they said, ‘your father’s will says that you must be a pirate until your twenty-first birthday. Now you have left us because you are twenty-one. But actually, you were born on a leap year on the 29th of February – and therefore, in count of birthdays, some of which you have not had because they have not existed, you are only five. So you must remain with us.’
The ends with the very ‘noble’ pirates marrying Mabel’s sisters, Frederick marrying Mabel, and everybody lives happy lives. When we watched it it was as good as it sounds, and if you don’t like how it sounds, better. I would gladly watch that very opera again!
