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.

Unmodified rapture

I don't usually double up on an Arts Desk rave, but here's a show in which I wish I had shares: Sasha Regan's all-male Iolanthe, newly transferred from the tiny Union Theatre to the evocative space of the wonderful Wilton's Music Hall. And on it will no doubt go to the West End and Broadway, and if it doesn't, it should. Any excuse to put up a few more photos by Kay Young: of the fairies above, who of course have their fair share of camp, but do so much more besides, and of Alex Weatherhill who brings counter-tenorial beauty to the Fairy Queen's most melting number.


It's worth remembering, since Gilbert especially is taken to task for cruelty to old bags like Katisha and Lady Jane, that these ladies also get the most soulful numbers in the shows. The Queen's liquid melody has witty lyrics to match: 'amorous dove, type of Ovidius Naso' is invoked in verse 1, and verse 2 eulogises the then chief of the London Brigade:

Oh, Captain Shaw!
Type of true love kept under!
Could thy Brigade
With cold cascade
Quench my great love, I wonder!

There are so many pleasures in lyrics and dialogue, some of which I confess I was anticipating more keenly then they were occasionally delivered. We all love lofty Lord Tolloller's plea to not-so-simple shepherdess Phyllis to 'spurn not the nobly born':

Hearts just as pure and fair
May beat in Belgrave Square
As in the lowly air
Of Seven Dials!

Here's Alan Richardson's charming Phyllis with Luke Fredericks's Lord Mountararat and Matthew James Willis's Lord Tolloller.


There's also such musical distinction in the music of Iolanthe's resurrection, and her Act 2 crisis - all the more so when you listen to Sullivan's limpid orchestration, as I have done again this morning on the Sargent recording (such a shame that Telarc pulled the plugs on Mackerras's series before he could get round to Iolanthe, which he specially adored). Yet Christopher Mundy's lone piano-playing was masterly.

As I've already intimated in the review, what I loved best of all about this magical evening is that G&S come out of it triumphantly vindicated as the best of tune- and word-smiths. Ideas flash up so thick and fast in the Act One finale, and - rare in most of today's musicals - the ingenuity continues all the way through Act Two. Plus here it all was getting new life through a young, pretty and buffed crew, a class-mix Gilbert would have relished of show kids and kosher opera singers, dancing boys from Essex and others exuding public-school confidence like the beauteous Strephon of Louis Maskell.


Now I'm waiting for our overseas friends to come and stay so we can have the excuse of taking a Monday tour around Wilton's Music Hall, which just gets better; I remember the peculiar atmosphere of the peeling auditorium from Fiona Shaw's reading of The Waste Land, but I don't recall the foyer rooms being so welcoming.


Do go and see Iolanthe there - book now before it's too late; I don't doubt the show will find an even bigger home, but none could be more susceptible to true fairy magic than this one.