PHANTOM OF THE OPERA BOX

OVERTURE

This is my confession to you.

I have frequently found ways to enjoy opera boxes by duplicitous means.

I'm not proud about it. Well actually, I'm neither proud or ashamed.

The 'Robin Hood of opera boxes' I briefly considered myself back then as I routinely managed to secure the best seats in the opera houses of London through a number of casual ruses.

Now, if you'll permit me, I'll attempt to explain myself.

ACT ONE

The first time it happened it wasn't actually a con. I had just simply arrived late at the Royal Opera House to watch Pfitzner's four (or is it five) hour opera 'Palestrina' after a tube strike had thwarted my chance at arriving for the beginning of the piece.

My seat was the cheapest of the cheap up in the upper ampitheatre where you may as well be watching from the moon with a Gysker Telescope but the house staff felt it would be too disruptive to have me get to it so asked if I'd be happy to sit closer to the stage.

Naturally I said yes but never imagined for one moment they would give me my very own box.

Turns out, some other poor chap was late, too, and as we sat for the entire lengthy first act together in the spacious balcony box (the one on the right of the horse shoe closest to the stage) I was convinced we'd bagged the best seats in the house.

Finally, I now knew how all those aristocrats felt in those Edith Wharton novels and I had to admit, I kind of liked it. In fact, make that love.

When the lights finally went up for the act one interval, I was sure my fellow box beneficiary wouldn't give up his seat for the world. Turns out I was wrong.

"My friends will never forgive me," he said as he looked guiltily toward the upper ampitheatre where his actual, impoverished looking seat was reserved.

"You're a better man than me," I said acknowledging his sefless sacrifice to be with his friends over the comfort of the best seats in the house. "They must be some truly good friends."

Meanwhile, I proceeded to kick back in my own private box, feeling like a king and ecstatic that I had had the unusual foresight to fill a silver hip flask full of whiskey before I even arrived. The hip flask was a Christmas gift and I'd never thought to use it before until Pfitzner's 'Palestrina'. It seemed like an affectation to have one. Still does.

Nevertheless, watching Acts 2 & 3 in a perfectly relaxed state I realised this was an experience that needed replicating.

The box not the whiskey. ;-)

ACT TWO

They say you always remember the first time but I remember the second time even better. I had taken my girlfriend at the time to London for her 21st birthday. I'd gotten some last minute (by which I mean cheap) tickets to see Mozart's 'Die Entführung Aus Dem Seral' (The Abduction From The Seraglio) conducted by Charles Mackerras and starring the tenor Kurt Streit with bass-baritone Kurt Rydl.

As we took to our seats after stuffing ourselves with dim sum from Gerrard's Corner Chinese restaurant and enjoying cocktails on the balcony of Covent Garden, I quickly realised that I hadn't anticipated the huge cushioned barrier in front of me while I sat in preparation of the overture.

Essentially, my long legs were having the life throttled out of them by these red velvet barricades.

Standing up to leave my seat, I ruffled a few feathers of those sitting next to us who looked perturbed at my obvious discomfort. My girlfriend (who remained seated) was regarded by these meek men and women with looks of sympathy who, unlike me, had no barrier to obstruct them with their damn flasks and binoculars.

As I approached the floor manager, I quickly invented for myself a fictional deep vein thrombosis affliction. The house staff clearly wanted to take zero chances on me as a liability (law suits pending) so suggested my girlfriend and I have a box all to ourseleves.

As I gestured to my girlfriend to come down from her seat, the audience members sitting next to her looked at her as if she were a slave to some despotic tyrant (apt as that was also the plot of 'Seraglio').

"What a fuss!" one woman said to her as she stood awkwardly against her seat to let her pass.

"Quite!" her husband snorted through his unruly thicket of nose hair.

However, it turned out the last laugh was on them. For we were bequeathed the ultimate box in the royal house and looked back up toward them with the sympathy of aristocrats, waving to the peasants (that could have easily been us) before Mackerras started up the glorious and jubilant overture.

"Happy Birthday!" I said to my girlfriend, feeling as if I had adequately demonstrated my ability to create a silk purse out of a pig's ear.

Of course I'm talking about the ticket, not Mozart who is forever silk.

ACT THREE

"Die Meistersinger". Wagner. You either get it or you don't. One of the greatest works of art ever created to my mind.

Turns out, to two of my friend's minds too.

We'd got tickets to see the Graham Vick production at the Royal Opera conducted by Antonio Pappano with John Tomlinson playing the iconic role of Hans Sachs and once again at minimal cost as we'd secured cheap seats at the very top of the house, (had I learned nothing?) Pragmatic about our poverty stricken strategy, we believed then, just like Puccini's Bohemians, that we had the souls of millionaires.

The reality once we had taken to our seats was quite different, however as we squinted to see the ant-like performers on stage from the vertiginous heights of the Gods.

"Let me see if I can sort us some better seats," I whispered to them both as the Meistersingers on stage squabbled about the arrival of Walther von Stolzing.

At the half time interval, we loitered in StarBucks across the way where we noticed the famous conductor Simon Rattle with his mop of silver ringlets just in front of us in the queue. A man of the people I thought or perhaps just a man who simply liked froth on his coffee.

"I'll speak with the floor staff and I'll make sure we get a better view," I boasted to the boys as if I was Han Solo in the Mos Eisley cantina in Star Wars. They nodded but looked unconvinced by my nefarious hustle.

But on our return to the ROH, I had sweet talked the floor staff into my 'deep vein thrombosis' angle and how I would need my friends to be close by in case of an emergency.

"They're driving me home and we may need to make an early exit."

I know, it was immoral but when you think I did it for the greater appreciation of high art, I feel I can be somewhat forgiven for my opera house transgressions.

At least I hope I can. God forgive me!

So, we were led to our box courtesy of the ROH staff.  Then, just before we entered, the floor manager asked me if I was okay sharing with another gentleman who also had issues with his leg. I pretended to look non-plussed but feared I may have found a nemisis of the very same opera box ruse I'd been exploiting. My very own Moriaty of the opera houses if you will. Could it be there was more than one of us attempting this hustle I thought to myself.

"Hello!" the gentleman with the gouty looking leg supported on a tiny stool said to me.

"Hi!"

"My name is Alan."

"Max."

We shook hands and I took my seat next to him, not even thinking to debate the seating arrangement with my two friends who took to two high stools like naughty school kids behind me.

"Bit Teletubbies this production, don't you think?" he asked me, I replied that I thought it was great and was actually my second time of viewing it.

"Each to their own."

As it turned out, Alan was friends with Placido Domingo and Franco Zefferelli and owned a company called Digital Classics which made me think he probably didn't need to invent an excuse about his leg to secure a decent seat. We actually hit it off in the brief time we talked before the music started up again and our strange quartet became focused on the drama on stage.

Sitting there, with my close friends in attendence (how many would I eventually include as accomplices to my nefarious stunts), I wondered if I was pushing my luck. Perhaps I'd let my consecutive box successes go to my head. There is always a fear one may fall victim to hubris when at the summit of achievement and I was becoming ever more mindful of that potential pitfall.

ACT FOUR

Like all famous outlaws, or perhaps more appropriately like Mozart's serial villain Don Giovanni, my criminal career stealing into opera boxes was always bound to hit the buffers at some point or another.

Only this time, it wasn't so much by design but by accident.

I had gone to see Richard Jones's production of 'Die Meistersinger' for the Welsh National Opera at the Wales Millenium Centre in Cardiff Bay with my opera singer girlfriend at the time and my opera loving friend, Keith. Sitting far away from the action, I was beginning to come over all Jimmy Stewart in 'Vertigo' as the space between our seats and the stage seemed almost infinite. Nevertheless, as the music was well conducted and the cast impressive with Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel in the central role of Hans Sachs I thought it inappropriate to attempt to negotiate better seats this time.

Then, after Act Two had finished, we went for a quick spot of lunch in a local Italian restaurant opposite the Welsh Millenium Centre.

As we enjoyed some food with drinks we found ourselves bedazzled by a singing waiter who stood on a nearby table and did his best impression of Mario Lanza. In fact, so beguiled were we by this comic caricature of opera that we found ourselves losing all sense of time until one of us quickly regained it by checking the time. There was an irony that we were so easily entertained by this circus act, forgetting we were here for one of the great works of the opera canon across the way.

Hurriedly heading to our seats, we were informed by an usher that it would be too disruptive to return to them as we were quickly escorted to a strange, contained box room behind the stalls with glass in front of it that appeared to have the live opera music being piped in through a muted tannoy. Was this hell? It might as well have been for this opera lover. However, we stayed for the entire act 3 in a state of theatre purgatory with other gormless refugees of the opera house. At times the experience felt as alien as a scene from a Tarkovsky movie where the reality of the experience we'd paid to see was removed from us through a glass barrier and the music sounding to our ears as if we'd been on a bad acid trip.

Then it dawned on me. I slowly began to realise that this was my 'bizarro' box experience to act as a sort of penance for all the other times I had enjoyed the real thing.

Was this the end of the line for my box robbing days? Or was it just Wales in the same way it was Chinatown for J.J Gittes at the ambiguous end of that classic movie where all bets are off when it comes to expecting standard practice.

ACT FIVE

There was to be another box, though and it came one matinee afternoon taking my daughter to see Stephen Sondeim's ' Sweeney Todd' at the English National Opera in St Martin's Lane, London.

Two men (let's called them Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee) were sitting in front of her, blocking her view of the stage. I realised swapping seats would make no difference as the men were of the exact same proportions.

Call it muscle memory or the remembrance of boxes past, but I quickly made my play to the floor manager just I had done with her mother many years before. Was it destiny that events were now, once again, conspiring in my favour? Possibly. Nevertheless, after explaining the arduous journeying we had both done to get to the Coliseum and how much my daughter had been looking forward to the show, we were taken to our very own box just behind the stalls where we could see the cast within arms reach.

I had now extended my list of accomplices to my very own daughter but my shame was always curtailed by my devoted appreciation of art. And so, in my final summation of this confession to you dear friends, I will simply refer you to a quote by Puccini's most famous heroine, Tosca, "Vissa d'arte" (I lived for art) and plead non guilty.