100 YEARS OLD AND STILL GETS YOUNGER EVERY DAY...
OH, what a beautiful mornin’, Oh, what a beautiful day, I got a beautiful feelin’ … Only it wasn’t morning at all, it was evening. Last Friday evening, to be precise, when I went to my first Prom at the Royal Albert Hall for a performance of Rogers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma and heard the above lyrics. And besides the beautiful feelin’, it gave me a feelin’ of intense guilt and regret that I had not been to a Prom before.
It all goes back to my school-days, I suppose. I recall one summer’s day strolling with a couple of friends when one asked the other (or it may have been the other way round) if he was going to a Promenade Concert that year. The other (or the one), who was one of those over-educated, overprivileged, pretentious characters whose company I have always enjoyed and who served as role-models for my younger self, replied with a derisory sniff, followed by a curt dismissal of Sir Henry Wood’s populism: “second-rate concerts in a third-rate concert hall,” he said, then sniffed again.
Those words have stayed with me for decades. I know that the performers at the Proms are now of the highest standard and they have worked for ages to try to improve the acoustics at the Albert Hall, which are now not bad at all, but the Prommers, unlike visitors to Glyndebourne, do not wear dinner jackets or long dresses, many of them but cheap tickets that offer them standing room only, and to judge from the televised Last Night that I have seen, they do not even remain silent during the performance. Are these really the sort of music-lovers I wish to associate with?
That is the question I have long asked myself, and until now my answer was: Definitely not. My experience last Friday, however, has taught me how wrong I have been. Oklahoma was pure joy from start to finish, with the John Wilson orchestra, conducted by John Wilson himself, giving a gloriously rousing performance of Hammerstein’s music (did you know, incidentally, that Oscar Hammerstein is the only person named Oscar ever to win an Oscar?), and the entire all-singing, all-dancing, all-acting cast, especially Nathaniel Hackmann as Curly and Scarlett Strallen as Laurey, bringing a level of glorious talent and energy to the show. It was billed as “semi-staged”, but apart from the relative lack of scenery (which would have got in the way anyway), one would not have felt that anything was missing.
Perhaps, now that I am in my 101st year, my views have mollified over time. I am now tolerant of vegetarians, which never happened in the past; I even accept that beetroot may be edible (as long as it is accompanied by goats’ cheese); I am even tolerant of regional accents on the BBC.
Yet my realisation that the Proms are a Thoroughly Good Thing is not just a mark of tolerance but an acceptance that I was wrong for all these years. The Proms are great! Admittedly, I was in a VIP Box, swigging champagne and stuffing myself with smoked salmon throughout the show, but the show would definitely have been enough.