Happy endings

Very well, Hans Sachs and Fairy Edna may have nothing else in common, but they do both help an outsider and a merchant's daughter in difficulties towards a wedding. And to be honest, the panto in Wimbledon spoke more often to my depths - or my shallows, though what's as profound as Homeric laughter? - than the Royal Opera's Meistersinger revival (the final scene of which is pictured above by Clive Barda). There were passing pleasures, all the same, in the second of the two comedies which rounded off a year rich in events.

I tried to unpluck the best from its varied tapestry in my Arts Desk 2011 choice, but even then I found I'd missed a few (how could I not have squeezed in Kazushi Ono's CBSO Mahler Resurrection Symphony?) I needn't repeat the results here except for the crème de la crème: in terms of Gesamtkunstwerk, it was a tough choice between Christopher Alden's production of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Sasha Regan's riotous but also very moving all male G&S Iolanthe, full of attractive strangers and responding well to Wilton's Music Hall magic (and there's another special event I left out - Alina Ibragimova's recital-happening at Wilton's in colloboration with the Brothers Quay. I think Sussie Ahlburg's photo was taken at the concert's first, Manchester venue, but never mind).


Thought I ought to do a quick coast back over the 2011 blog, too, for other signifiers. Nothing new about the most entertaining book I read all year, Simon Winder's Germania - others rail against its flippancy, but he makes no bones about it - or the most revelatory author, Halldor Laxness, though after Under the Glacier and Independent People, I'm getting stuck with the disconsolate whimsy of World Light. Nothing new either about all seven series of The West Wing, after which everything on telly comes across as flat and unprofitable (dipping into BBC drama, it always seems well acted but poorly scripted. And could you believe the direness of Ab Fab? I couldn't).


The places I fell in love with, either for the first time or again, are too numerous to mention, but I'll try - from Darwin's Down House, the treasures within Cologne's churches and the unpickled German small-town perfection of Göttingen to the wilds of Connemara and the Burren in Ireland, the monastery of Tioumliline, the medina of Meknes and the beautifully-sited Roman town of Volubilis (pictured above again, why not? )in Morocco and - of course, the highlight - the top of Iceland's Snæfellsjökull and its lavafields/slopes running down to a blue, blue sea. Of course the whole place would tell a different story in wind and rain, but that's not how we saw it.


Here's hoping that we do head back to Iceland's south coast in 2012. And may your year be as adventurous as you want it to be.

Cinema 1938: a mural in Meknes

Say what you will about French imperialism in north Africa, but the so-called Protectorate in Morocco left a certain amount of what it found untouched. Thanks to Resident-General Hubert Lyautey's 'do not offend a single tradition, do not change a single habit', the old ways carried on alongside the new. In Meknes this means that for the flash, be-blinged 4x4-driving Moroccan nouveaux riches, the Ville Nouvelle is the place to go for cafe and nightclubbing life, while the medina on the opposite hill, separated by the valley with the Oued Boufekrane flowing (if that's the right word) through it, carries on an existence largely unchanged since the middle ages. This is the view of the medina from the newly-developed park slopes above the valley.


The other result is that the tourists ignore the Ville Nouvelle other to eat and drink there. Sadly the Moroccans have rather neglected it, too, which is a pity, because it's a treasure-trove of 1930s architecture falling into disrepair. In any other city where this was the only asset, it would be assiduously preserved and guided tours would be taken around its gems (think of Tel Aviv, or wonderful Asmara, capital of Eritrea, where the experimental architectural projects under Mussolini are a major draw). But at least it's still here, and very much the centre of attraction off the central roundabout is the 1930s Cine Camera, still a working picturehouse.


Had it not been for an excellent illustrated French guide to the town loaned us by Mouna and Simon of the Riad Lahboul, we might have missed one of the great artistic treasures of Meknes, one Marcel Couderc's 1938 fresco in the foyer, for neither the Rough nor the Blue Guides mentions it. The eye is drawn up to the central panel of opera singers, pianist, string players (love the double-bassist) and jazz band.


The details are no less charming on a close inspection. There are selective glimpses of Paris


and New York


sport and sailors


the movies


and fashion - dig the chap in his plus fours.


Upstairs


even the wall above the projection room is duly adorned.


There's been a fine book produced on the 1930s architecture of Asmara, but I couldn't find much on this - it all needs documenting by an enthusiast of the era. And I'm told Tangier and Casablanca have just as much to offer.

Volubilis: an outpost of empire

Sites, shmites: it's easy to become cynical about yet another tourist-attracting antiquity. Actually, when I come to think about it, those that have been worth running varying degrees of the fairground gamut to see are more numerous than I'd casually remembered: the pyramids and sphinx, Ephesus, Nemrut Dag, the Acropolis of Athens, Persepolis, Tyre, Palmyra, Qalaat Samaan, Petra, Thanjavur...probably I've left something spectacular off the list. The point is that Roman Volubilis, about which I'd heard nothing before we went to Morocco, wasn't high on the list: the feeling was, we're in Meknes, we ought to go. And it turned it to be one of the most breathtakingly-located, mosaic-rich set of ruins we'd ever seen. The rains had brought the flowers out in abundance, of course, and even the edge of the site looking over to the basilica and forum was a wonder to behold. The ruins are spread out on a ridge above the high and fertile Zerhoun plateau. Above are abundant olive groves and copper-rich hills forming an amphitheatre, in the middle of which nestles the shrine-town of Moulay Idriss. Volubilis may have been a Berber settlement before the first century BC, when the Romans arrived. Its era of prosperity began when Augustus gave the combined kingdoms of Mauritania and Numidia to the Berber prince Juba II. So Volubilis became the seat of the provincial governor of Mauritania Tingitana (love that name, comes from Tingi which was the original name for equally influential Roman Tangiers). It exported wheat and oil - easy still to see why - as well as wild beasts for Roman games. And just as Lebanon was all but stripped of its cedars to provide timber for ships, so ancient Morocco lost its lions, bears and elephants. They became extinct in 200 years, about the length of the Roman rule here. After it, the mixed population continued to speak Latin well into the seventh century. The city was all but abandoned a century later, with the coming of Islam, and plundered in the eighteenth, when Moulay Ismail plundered the site for its marble. The animals are at least depicted in what for me is the most charming of the many mosaics which still preserve their brilliant colours in full sun and are subjected to only the minimum of cordoning-off (we saw not a single guard, and 1990s plans for expansion with a new museum and visitors' centre seemed to have come to a full stop). The so-called House of Orpheus is a sizeable mansion, formerly of three storeys. Its finest floor has a design I'd want in my own palace: the great musician at the centre, taming the birds and beasts who radiate outwards from the centre. There's also a more basic, black and white marine picture with a stocky Amphitrite in a chariot drawn by a sea horse and sundry exotic sea creatures. The prospect of basilica, capitol and forum then leads you forward - as do the storks nesting peacefully on several of the columns, unperturbed by the sparrows which flit noisily in and out of the twigging beneath them. The complex here seems to have been rebuilt in 217 AD during the reign of the African-born Emperor Septimus Severus. The path then leads onwards to a triumphal arch erected in the year of Caracalla's death. It would have been lavishly adorned with statues, many of which along with bronzes which give their names to some of the houses have gone to the museum in Rabat and seem, given the present building lethargy at Volubilis, unlikely to return here in the near future. The Decumanus Maximus which rises upwards from the arch is lined with many of the more prosperous residences. Most of the mosaics are slightly crudely executed - especially as compared with those in Tunis's splendid Bardo Museum - but the colours, where not over-restored, are very jolly. Bacchus discovers a half-lost Ariadne in the Knight's House while the labours of Hercules are portrayed in roundels to the north and there's an even finer mosaic of Bacchus flanked by the four seasons (only two of them reproduced in full below) and with what is - I think, but the guidebooks can't reach a consensus about this - a Bacchante beneath him. The best-executed mosaics are on the other side of the Decumanus Maximus, in the House of Venus. In the most celebrated of them, Diana is discovered at her bath by Actaeon. The surprised nymph on the left and the love-goddess's Roman hairdo are marvellously executed. And in the next room, Hylas is captured by frolicking nymphs. No doubt more will come to life if the indolent archaeological team can get its act together. But it's a wonderful site to spend an afternoon strolling around, and it certainly wasn't swamped by tour groups when we went. By 5.30 when I returned to the capitol, there was just a handful of visitors and the stork welcomed her hunter-gatherer mate back to the nest. I missed snapping that, but here she is anyway looking haughtily at a cheeky sparrow. There was no time to stop in Moulay Idriss, other than to take a view from above of the camel-humped town with the mausoleum to Morocco's influential sultan-pioneer of Islam in its dip. Then we sped back to Meknes to enjoy the early-evening entertainment on the square.

Good Friday at Tioumliline

By serendipity, I'd just watched a second time what I can only describe as a great masterpiece of cinema, Des hommes et des dieux (Of Gods and Men), and written an all too brief precis review of its DVD release for The Arts Desk when I discovered that where we were going in Morocco was only an hour and a half's journey away from its location. Director Xavier Beauvois couldn't film in Tibhirine, the Algerian monastery from which the Trappist inhabitants were abducted to be murdered in 1996, so he chose a potent equivalent in the middle Atlas mountains of the neighbouring country.  

Potent because Tioumliline, named after the source of the river which flows down to the town of Azrou from this altitude of 1500 metres, also seems to have been a goodly experiment which ended in a dissolution, albeit a less violent one. Like Tibhirine, Tioumliline had its dispensary giving free medical treatment to villagers in need, and helped provide food when harvests failed; and again, there seems to have been no missionary intent, just a faithful imitation of the bounty of Christ. According to my Rough Guide, the local who now lives in the dispensary, Monsieur Boudaoud, remembers the monks with great affection; but despite the harmony that existed between Muslims and Christians, and the value of the monastery's library to students at Azrou's famous Berber College, the governing Istiqlal party closed it down in 1968 - not the mid-1990s, please note, Rough Guide - on the grounds that the monks were proselytising. 

What stands now is a ruin in remarkably good shape, perhaps because the film crew may have restored certain elements when they came here a couple of years ago. It was totally deserted in the rain when we arrived - no sign of M. Boudaoud, only a couple of child shepherds shouting to their flock nearby - so having walked up the steps from the minor road through the holm oaks some five kilometres above Azrou (we walked the long way because the footpaths aren't signed)

we found our way in to the chapel. It's very much as you see it in the film, minus the benches, the lamps and the chanting bodies. Below the modern stained glass which plays such a prominent part in the film 

is the aumbry, which combines elements of Moroccan carving both when closed 

and open. 

I think I'll spare you a corny little tribute to the spirit of place, complete with 'Kyries', but the sequel film will give you some sense of how heavy the rain had become by the time we decided to leave the sanctuary.

   

No wonder there were signs of sheep having sought shelter within. The view, already disappearing when we arrived, of a farm and a distant Azrou 

was now non-existent. Our walk back was a real penance, as driving wind lashed hail against my poor supra-orbital fracture and dizzied me with the pain. One reward was the friendly shrug of 'what can you do?' from the equally drenched Berber making his way back up the hill. Moroccans really do have the most candid, open smiles if you can engage them or share in a bit of suffering. Because J's only trousers were wringing wet, we couldn't go down for supper at Azrou's Hotel des Cedres - the voluble waiter kindly brought it to the room - and then I did go down, with a chill, and threw up a couple of times once we got back to Meknes. So I'm not sure our planned trek would have happened anyway. But since the rain was still torrential the next morning, we gave up on that, sat for an hour in the best patisserie of our trip hoping in vain for the skies to clear and then, having taken a quick soggy spin around Azrou to see the rock after which it's named,

caught a creaking, fumous bus back to Meknes. There, once I'd been sick in the souk on the way back to the riad, Mouna was on hand to provide mint tea and sympathy. And the next morning I was right as...rain, which finally gave way to the brilliant sunshine we'd enjoyed at the start. Wouldn't have missed that little pilgrimage for the world, though. And we watched Of Gods and Men again with Sophie and Keita chez Lahboul, being struck more than ever by the craft which a first viewing so carefully conceals. The Swan Lake Last Supper scene with the headshots is one of the great moments in cinema - I still wept even though I knew it was coming - and I think this time we admired the ensemble work even more; Lambert Wilson and Michael Lonsdale seemed to dominate less. Here's a superbly detailed royal review by my old colleague Jonathan Romney. 

I'd still like to see the screenplay published; in the meantime, I select two great quotations. One, especially pertinent for this momentous week, is when Brother Luc quotes Pascal's 'men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction' (you have to admit, though, there never seemed anything cheerful about Osama Bin Laden. Maybe five-year old Cecco had a point worth remembering in charity now when he asked his mum Mary 'didn't Bin Laden have his feet tickled when he was a little boy?'). The other is the conference with the community and the Islamic elder when Brother Celestin says 'we are like birds on a branch: uncertain when we'll fly away', and a village woman quietly says 'We're the birds. You're the branch'.