It must have taken an age to make and it is only one of three made by this maker humtog but it has had over 3 million views and I can see why.
I use Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Auditon, Muse, ( Now obsolete but still the best web design programme) Premiere Pro, plus an awful lot of others on my iPad and iPhone.
If I don't use them for a bit, like now when I have been watching the Metropolitan Opera I get out of touch and have to revise.
Thinking of reading another audiobook. I lost my voice due to hyperthyroidism but now it is coming back. I shall use Audition to do this as for sound enhancement there is nothing else like it. Maybe the novella "The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James. I'll see.
I have had to relearn how to use this blog too as I gave up on it it appears when I took to FB but I think I shall give it another go.
I have been privileged to see two fantastic productions of Berlioz's Damnation of Faust, the first at the ENO in 1969 by Michael Geliot, I went three times. It was said to be better and more spectacular than the coronation and this Met production by Robert Lepage which is in the same vein, a multi-media extravaganza.
This opera was said to be unproducible in Berlioz's day. It was a century before its time. Both productions lean heavily on dance, the former was choreographed by John Broome who did the choreography for my first West End musical "Stop the World I want to Get off", I wish I had known he had done this. At the time I was not only in the musical I was the ballet mistress and tidied up the production every Thursday morning. I would have happily continued as the ballet mistress but it appeared I was too valuable as a performer. Evidently, I had "IT"! I wanted to produce opera not appear in "Lilac Time"!
I love the use of live TV behind the singer and I had the opportunity to do "Tristan" I should use this technique so the audience gets up close to the action.
The only problem at the Met on the transmission is getting the ensemble together. Berlioz was clever as a lot of the work is in unison so it is acceptable but when the parts separate it is unfortunate. Musicals get around this by wiring each artist for sound so they can hear themselves sing. Opera singers need to be able to hear themselves sing otherwise they can't and end up yelling which is most unpleasant and not their fault. Too many gorgeous voice are ruined in the hopeless attempt of getting over an orchestra and singers quickly develop large wobbles. Too many choruses are out of time and tune as the distance is too large. This production avoids this pitfall by having the chorus strung out downstage by the audience.
These past four weeks have been one feast of opera. Almost an opera a day and a superb example of the art at that. Without this virus, I should never have been able to see these fabulous works as I am too far away and even in NZ expensive. It is hard to recall them all but if I have to the one that was most striking was the "Tristan & Isolde" set in a submarine, very powerful, and surprisingly the two Fausts, very different and both "powerful".
There is no doubt about it I have lived a "Strange Life". My playground was Wembley stadium, one of my schools was a palace the other Upstairs, Downstairs, one grandfather ran the 1948 Olympic Games, the other gave the world pneumatic golf balls and the golf umbrella and that was just the start! I am definitely an "Outsider".
But I do enjoy being "an outsider". All artists are "outsiders. We see the world differently. We can't help it. We just do and we recognise each other immediately. We also "move on" to the next adventure. Normal people will just have to forgive us. I am certainly not "Normal"! "Strange?" Maybe. I think "Eccentric" may be the best description. At my age I am old enough to be "Eccentric"!
This engineer is using powerful lights, cameras, and computer software to digitally remove the varnish from the "Mona Lisa," allowing people today to see the painting as da Vinci once did.
I had an IT experience of this type quite recently at The Auckland Art Gallery. It is truly astonishing what scanning and IT can tell you about a work of art but not everything. In real life one never knows exactly what is going to happen.
In 1982 I commissioned two designs for "Fidelio" from the then destitute artist Tony Fomison. In NZ I owned the copyright. As oil paintings dry so slowly I had to leave them with the artist and as I was busy I never gave them another thought. He said he would look after them and I never saw them again until I walked into the Auckland Art Gallery 37 years later when I thought I recognised "Fidelio Act 2" only it did not look quite right.
Four years and an expensive court case for both parties established legally that I owned the copyright. Naturally, I thought the Art Gallery held my original and as I am 77 I asked at the settlement meeting if I could see it again as my recollection of the original and the slides that were used in the production looked very different but time has a way of altering colours and tints and one's mind plays tricks. It was agreed that I would be allowed a final look at the Galleries convenience.
After the settlement, the Art Gallery behaved in an exemplary manner and five months later this February 2020 a viewing was arranged. I had not been given access to the painting during the court case. Viewing the Art Gallery's painting was a shock to us all. It was in fact very different from the original and it was not time that had made the changes. My original was blue and light beige/pink, the one on view was yellow and white. Pure white!
What had happened? Well, we just don't know. Fomison was famous for reworking his artworks sometimes to destruction and this may have happened here as the underpainting revealed a ghost which was not there in my original copy. Separations for printing on Photoshop can show these as the Art Gallery's revealed. The original "Fidelio" had no ghost and was painted on board, not canvas as with the copy. The ghost is almost thumbing its nose at us and laughing at how much angst the artist's actions had caused.
Unfortunately, the Art Gallery and the BNZ, who holds what was thought to be "Fidelio Act 1", both have an unauthorised copy which the artist quietly sold on without my knowledge or permission in 1983 as originals and neither organisation holds the copyright. Still, as the price paid was just a few hundred of dollars and not the hundreds of thousand dollars the originals would be worth if genuine the galleries have not made a huge financial loss but both now have worthless copies that cannot be shown without a copyright licence till fifty years after my death.
It shows that proof of provenance is everything in buying art. Fomison was wise enough not to sign these works and sold them as is through an agent. Be warned art buyers, never buy an original artwork without a formal written transfer of ownership and guarantee from the artist.
Did Fomison cut up my original and paste it on to an old canvas? We don't know. Is my original underneath? I had hoped this would show up but it didn't.
But it was a practical lesson into what this type of technology can and can't do. It can clean up the Mona Lisa but it cannot tell reliably what is underneath unless each layer is dry first before being repainted as with the ghost who won't go away.
I am hoping when this virus is over to have "Fidelio Act 2" made into a mural on a wall somewhere in NZ which I think Fomison would have enjoyed. It was the mural he never painted on a wall. It is very beautiful and a vision of hope for the future which is so needed at this moment.
It has been fascinating to be able to watch the EU Referendum debate as it comes to a final conclusion from the distance of 11 thousand miles. I left the UK for New Zealand in 1974 just after Britain when the UK joined the Common Market in 1973. I was about 33. I am classed in NZ as an immigrant, at first as a Whinging Pom not so much by the native Maori but by the previous UK immigrants who had stamped their destructive mark on The Land of the Long White Cloud by cutting down all the indigenous forests and rearing lamb and dairy for the homeland.
With hindsight, I do not think that the Brits who voted so enthusiastically to join the EU over 40 years ago would do so today but this seems to have come as somewhat of a shock to the Remain Campaign led by Prime Minister David Cameron, Labour Leader whose name escapes me..... Jeffrey Corbyn and the Elite of the EU whoever they are. Why aren't the Brits falling over themselves to remain in Europe? Many other leaders from all over the world can't understand it either, President Obama, Angela Merkel of Germany, President Hollande, World Trade Organisation, International Banks, Big Businesses, a plethora of other notables even the Pope all consider Leaving the EU would be a bad thing for the UK and in fact a disaster for it.
To begin - after David Cameron did his renegotiation of UK conditions for Britain remaining in EU all seemed to go to plan and the Remains looked comfortably ahead. This was relatively easy to achieve as they have the press on their side. All they had to do was to tell the locals how to vote. For example, The UK Guardian, a bastion of the liberal media came out in favour and in fact, nearly every article published was and still is in favour of remaining in EU. It also favours immigration of any kind, no unfavourable comments allowed as I found out to my cost when my sense of fair play promoted Brexit the Film. I got your comments will be moderated red exclamation mark! which to be fair the Guardian has promised to remove but has yet to do so. The BBC, The Times, all publish pro articles so what is the problem? Well, the problem is that this Elite and it is an Elite just doesn't understand the British Middle or Working Class. They don't get us at all.
Suddenly out of the blue ten days before the vote things have changed! The Opinion Polls were given a jolt as for once the Outgroup has taken a small lead. Something has gone horribly wrong. Even David Cameron has said he needs to try harder. He doesn't realise with his background of privilege and help from his non-tax paying father Cameron has no idea of what or whom he is dealing with and really neither has anyone else who is not native British.
So what exactly do the British want that the EU hasn't supplied? The Elite appears to think the Leavers are behaving unreasonably and if the Brits don't toe the line dreadful things are going to happen to them Look what the EU has given them, wonderful cheap holidays, the chance to live abroad in a pleasant climate, no visas, cheap mobile phone charges on the way, and regulations from pillowcases to kettles. Also, some lucky firms have the safety of tariffs, quotas and more regulations to stifle the competition and Trading Agreements with other countries are in the offing ..... perhaps. etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. The British are like naughty, ungrateful children.
It may come as a surprise to the UK Establishment and the EU and the rest of the world that the deal being offered by the EU at the moment may be the best ever but the Brits don't want it. They prefer life without the EU thank you very much. The Romans must have experienced this lack of enthusiasm too. Rome gave the world central government, roads, aqueducts, peace and even citizenship if a man served most of his life as a Roman Soldier and yet the plebs were always revolting. Even Bread and Circuses didn't seem to please. The ancient Brits preferred the Dark Ages possibly still do. he only way to get them into the Middle Ages was to invade and kill them off. William the Conqueror did a great job in 1066. Killed an awful lot and enslaved the rest. Invaders sort of does this.
The British learned to be wary of Greeks bearing gifts and kept invaders at bay for centuries. Even when they had to have a foreign King as they had killed their own in 1642, they were happy to have one as long as the king did not meddle in politics. This is still the same today. The British do not like being invaded and now they feel they were invaded by stealth. It is not politically correct to say this is happening in many parts of Britain but an invasion it is. The native British have slowly been displaced over 43 years and although they may not say so they do not like it. Nobody would but the Elites think this is OK. No would you mind but you will take is not a good idea.
The EU and Elites do not realise that the British are not like the rest of Europe. Britain is an Island Nation and we stopped letting our betters tell us what to do in about 1215 with Magna Carta. The British didn't like being taxed by Elites then and they don't now. They don't like faceless bureaucrats telling them what to do. Any whiff of a poll tax and a revolt is certain and the Brits usually win. Even Maggie Thatcher could not get the poll tax accepted although it is good for many people.
Then nothing gets a group of people angrier than being sold a pup. In 1973 the Brits were sold a Common Market with all the benefits of a free market, not a political union where any rule or tax can be inflicted upon them by faceless Elites most of who do not speak English as a native and who have very expensive tastes like the arts, and school fees for children, and special shopping centres where they can indulge every whim which the Brits have to pay for without a chance to say Hey wait a bit explain please.
If you sell a concept like the EU you better deliver otherwise the natives will revolt. On the whole, the EU has not delivered for the UK may be to the Elite, who can see remaining in EU as a perk for life but not to the rest of the population who have mostly seen their jobs disappear abroad. The British Working Class are very special, they stood up to The Kaiser and Hitler but they have found themselves side stepped in favour of foreigners who are considered more worthy in their own country. Slowly without being asked the British working and middle classes have seen the world they fought for disappear and something very different emerge which they might have accepted if they had been asked but they weren't. New Britain has just arrived, especially in London, which is now no longer British but a Corporate City not of the natives choosing. London was a down to earth, gritty town, aged by fogs and bombs. It was a working city but today it looks like a fantasy theme park all blue, white and gilt glistening in the sun with a huge fairground Ferris wheel to boot. Lots of pretty toy soldiers and a Royal Family to make other countries who haven't got one, jealous.
One very British trait is that of fair play. The British like to play the game by the rules whereas other cultures like to win no matter how like sneakily introducing a political union with lots of rules without being upfront about it. The Brits don't mind losing as long as it is fair. Brits will give any foreigner a fair go but the foreigner has to play fair and meet the Native Brit a bit over halfway and this is difficult for the EU to grasp.
Immigration was not in the original deal. Immigration was a problem even from the Commonwealth but after an initial shock, the Jamaicans integrate very well Britain needed men to reconstruct Britain after the war. The first immigrants from the commonwealth had a basic knowledge of British culture and soon slotted in. They tried to integrate but the Asian immigrants were different. They didn't. It was too difficult so multiculturalism and all its problems were allowed to happen. If Britons had known that they would have to host millions of immigrants from Europe as well the first deal would never have happened.
But according to the British Elite and EU, the working and middle-class Brits should be embracing this opportunity. Well, I have news for them, on the whole, the Brits loathe it. The young who never have known any different may at first. They like the sound of living and studying abroad for free even though the reality may not live up to their expectation. They too are sold the dream of A free Europe only to find that they have been sold a pup when the jobs and the lifestyle fail to materialise and they find themselves pushed out of there home area but hoards of immigrants who eat up all the resources.
Now they are told to stand by for Turkey's 70 million to be given free access to Europe. Is it any wonder that they feel afraid. The Elite will go on living in their glass castle in Brussels telling us all to get on with it safe in the knowledge that they cannot be voted out. We know best. Well, they don't. The working class and now middle-class Birt just wants a quiet life, a house, a secure job, a couple of kids and enough spare cash to enjoy themselves with people like themselves. They are not interested in learning or fitting into a new culture in their own country. They do not see why they have to.
Being told what to do and how to think and being patronised by We know Best is just not going to work. Threatening people who have very little that things will get worse doesn't help either. The average Brit is wonderful in a crisis, very inventive, very hard working and if given the chance creative. They will start new industries and shops but not if they are forced into conformity by rules, rules, rules and they see people cheating the system.
So what could the EU Remains have done better? For a start, The EU should have listened to British grievances, taken them on board and offered something instead of nothing. Cameron was made to look foolish. If the EU wants Britain IN as it now says it does it should have offered something. The UK is afraid of mass immigration, it has small landmass compared to Germany or France and the UK is full up. It needs a breather for the immigrants to settle in and adapt to a secular society that has equality for women and does not like killing animals without stunning. That simple act would possibly have been enough. The British would have known that the EU had heard the problem and cared. As it is Britain knows that nothing is said or does will alter the EU as it stands.
Once the Brexit campaign swung into action pointing out these facts it is not surprising that they have succeeded in persuading the working classes that staying was perhaps not the right answer this time. Britain is quite capable of standing on its own feet. It has done so since 1066. They have put up with this Brussels nonsense for 43 years show that they have given it a go and now it is time to leave. It is time to take back industry and fisheries, reclaim our heritage take a deep breath and start again without being patronised by an Elite who does not think we can rule ourselves. We did once and now and we can do it again.
2013 is the centenary year of Benjamin Britten's birth and it seems that it is open slather on his character. Everyone is having a 'go' and I find it all fascinating. I have been fascinated by Benjamin Britten ever since I saw his Opera 'Gloriana' at Covent Garden in 1953, Coronation year when I was just 10. I still have the programme.
You either seem to hate Britten or love him, there is no middle way. Books and biographies official and unofficial have been published each with more startling revelations than the past, unknown young loves appear mainly male and little boys are interviewed on their relationships with the composer. There is one particularly vicious web site that is quite outspokenly hostile and even a TV documentary on Britten's failure as a composer. The list goes on and on and yet Britten is still an enigma. What exactly makes the man tick?
I have been a bystander on the Britten scene since 1953 but to my surprise, in 1958 I became more than a bystander as I was employed by the English Opera Group to play Mrs Sem in the first production of Noyes Fludde. Unknown to me I was a success and became a Britten favourite. Unusual as I was a girl and for the next five years I was part of Britten's scene, not Aldeburgh's scene as the Aldeburgh set did not see me but I was there and I got to know Britten rather well.
It has taken me years to piece my experiences together but as everyone else has had a go perhaps it is my turn and this is how I explain the dark side of Benjamin Britten. Well at least it is food for thought and you never know I could be right.
The key to Britten's major work is his sexuality. It dominates everything he wrote.
Benjamin Britten the son of a Lowestoft dentist was a talented child who had the misfortune to be born into the middle class in 1913. This meant that at an early age he would be shoved off to an English Upper-Class boarding school, all male of course and from then on deprived of all-female company. The male precept of the period was 8 is a good age to cut the umbilical cord. Britten never recovered.
The British Public School of the 1930s has a lot to answer for. Boys who are segregated from the opposite sex and who have no other way of meeting girls fall in love with masters and other boys. This is a common occurrence and when the boys grow up usually they meet young girls of eighteen and all is well and put all that behind them.
Britten didn't. The young adolescent girl meeting period was left out. Britten was unlucky because he did not go to university but a music college and girls were not around as orchestras liked boys! Then he was attractive and was taken up by the WH Auden set and was probably bewitched by them. Gays definitely have more fun. Being a wonderful pianist he was soon captured by a tenor Peter Pears. Singers at that time were always on the lookout for an accompanist as it is cheaper and oh so useful and Pears never let go.
There is no doubt that Britten was unsure of his sexuality at that time and really for the rest of his life. Although bombarded by his gay peers he refused at first to submit and it was only after a few years and much courtship that Pears got to do the deed in the USA. Pears was gay and had many partners and this is when it is thought he gave Britten syphilis. Once Pears had Britten, Britten was trapped.
Up until 1964 homosexuality in the UK was a crime even with consenting adults in private. You went to prison if you got caught and many did. Pears had this hold over his partner. If you leave me I tell! They were stuck with each other. Unlike a marriage, there was no divorce. Britten and Pears had to live together whether they liked each other or not.
Artists write about what they know so Britten wrote about the darker side of male relationships. All his operas are centred on this theme. It is as if he were taking revenge on the all-male world in which he lived and thrived for preventing him from experiencing heterosexual love which he craved but has never consummated
Every part Britten wrote for his supposed lover Pears was a villain or a simpleton, a tyrant, a child abuser, a closet paedophile, a traitor. If Britten loved Pears he had a very strange way of showing it in the parts he wrote for his paramour. In the first opera, Peter Grimes is a child abuser and murderer and the list gets worse and worse.
It has only just been admitted that the partnership was more of a business arrangement than a love match. For long periods Britten and Pears lived separate lives only coming together when work called. I could have told you that.
It is in his masterpiece 'The Turn of the Screw' a novella by Henry James that the key to Britten's sexuality is revealed. It is there for all to see. 'The Screw' is based upon the sexual choice a male child is forced to make. The child has to choose between the homosexual love of a manservant and the heterosexual love of a naive, sexually innocent governess. The child cannot choose and loses his life either physically or metaphorically.
For child insert the name, Britten. It is Britten's problem. Britten is known to be bisexual although this is not widely appreciated. Many musicologists feel that Britten reached his peak with this opera and decline set in ever after. Britten's 'Screw' is a masterpiece to homo/ hetero erotic love with a dose of paedophilia included. Never has the seduction of a male child sounded so good. It is beautifully and touchingly described and remember artists write about what they know. Britten knew.
From then on the Britten and Pears romance faded. Peter went on to other loves and Britten became celibate and bitter. The eroding partnership was never made public. Britten never came out in his lifetime. He wanted to be considered normal and he would have sued anyone who said otherwise. It was only three years after his death that Pears made the announcement.
Personally, I think Britten came to loathe Pears and that is why the parts for Pears got progressively nastier till the last opera 'Death in Venice'a cruel depiction of a dying man lusting after a young pubescent boy when Pears went on record as saying that 'Ben is writing an evil opera and it is killing him.'
It is not known if Britten ever experienced physical heterosexual love. He never got the chance. Britten was too well guarded. Britten certainly loved Galina Vishnevskaya and I know he liked me a lot and although Rita Thompson will never admit it Britten liked her too, banishing Pears to the USA.
Britten always loved looking at young boys whether he followed through is not known. Maybe his young groomed conquests are just too nice to say but if my experience is anything to go by Britten would have controlled himself. It is as if he had the classic Peter Pan complex about being a young boy forever and never grew up and pleasing himself by inviting children to the wonderful world of 'Aldeburgh Never Never Land' to make an opera. A case of arrested development pas excellence.
There is no doubt Britten loved men but he could have loved women too if given a chance, he wasn't and he made do with young boys.
My theory is that Britten's main tragedy is that of Miles in his masterpiece. Britten was just unable to choose and for him he had to live on in bitterness and disillusionment wondering what he had missed, hating his partner and taking horrible revenge by writing despicable roles for him for the rest of his life and regretting that he was never able to write an opera about heterosexual love.
I liked the man. He was one of my admirers, a notch on my belt, he had everything I wanted but too old. Pity he did not meet me when he was 19 or even 30! But it was too soon for me and too late for him. But Britten did give me my career and place in posterity and for that, I am extremely grateful.
Oriel College Oxford University - Wiki creative commons
I have always felt jealous of anyone who is clever and privileged enough to receive an Oxford/Cambridge education. Now as a 75 year woman who has had to go through life with no formal education at all, and most women of my age had to do this, Lady Di is a good example, she got just two GCEs and had to be Princess of Wales, I envy anyone male or female who has achieved and survived this exalted education.
If I had been a boy, my father who had the very best education money could buy would have seen to it that I went to decent schools and had I been bright I should have ended up at Oxford or Cambridge but in 1947, instead of the North London Collegiate that was at the bottom of my road I was sent to the local convent to be taught by Irish 18-year-old nuns who could barely read and write themselves and had no idea how to teach. I survived the first two years where I discovered that although everyone else could see God I could not and it was not until I was 7 that I got the hang of reading.
I had heard of a university but I could no more imagine going to one than flying to the moon. I was lucky because I self-educated right from the age of 5 as in 1945 my grandfather had one of the first televisions and Lord Reith who ran the BBC went in for Educate, Entertain and Inform and so I had seen most of Shakespeare, Ibsen, Wilde plays by the age of 11 not to mention operas and ballets. I had also seen Belsen and GB Shaw in an interview in 1949. When I could read I started on my grandfather's library but this self-education meant I had absolutely no formal qualifications at all. The only thing I knew positively about Oxford was that its colour was dark blue and it always lost the boat race.
I did learn Latin which in those days was necessary for university entrance. The nuns were good at Latin. At the age of 12, my father decided that as my educational standard was so low, I could not spell and one mark was taken off GCE O levels for every incorrect spelling so my chances of passing anything was nil. He thought all my brains must be in my feet. As I was good at ballet I was removed from the convent and sent to a ballet school in London, Portman Square just behind Selfridges at the age of 12. This was a secular specialist school which gave children the opportunity to be employed in professional productions as well as providing a basic education. Basic English, arithmetic (no algebra or geometry), French, history, and art for three hours a day. The rest was taken up with ballet, tap, drama etc and the chance to be on the stage and get paid if you were fortunate.
You can see my chances of an Oxford education were very minimal. I so admired my clever friends or anyone who got masses of O levels and A levels and who went to universities of any kind. I had no idea of how they did it or what they did when they got there. I was told it was magical and for many the years at Oxford was the best thing in their lives. They got into jobs of which I could only dream, the BBC, publishing and politics and I could only look on.
I was not alone. Most of my ordinary middle-class girlfriends were in the same boat. They became secretaries, nurses and teachers and the aim was to marry well. A teacher, a lawyer or a doctor, doctors who went to Oxford were the prizes as there were so few of them and strangely these clever men really had no choice but to marry us as there were so few female graduates and those that were available were generally blue stockings. Educated men had to put up with uneducated wives.
In May 2018 at the age of 75, I watched a YouTube Blog MollyatOxford of a charming, intelligent young woman who was studying Classics and English at Oriel College Oxford. She was doing the very thing that I dreamed of doing all those years ago. In 1964 I met a gorgeous Oxford educated GP, Oriel/St Mary's at Queens Ice rink in Bayswater. Doctors like ice-skating. It is splendid exercise, can be done alone and at any time. For 8 years I was just a pair of skates on legs and a useful ice dancing partner until one day he found out what I did for a living. He was amazed, took me to the opera at ENO that night and I married him a year later.
The first thing Miles did was to take me to Oxford and show me his college which was Oriel. I got a brief tour, just two quads and the staircase to his room. The delightful Oxford blogger did a much better job than my husband in this area but Miles was good on punts. My Oxford blogger has not ventured out in that area as yet. I became his Lady and overnight I had to be accepted by this privileged group of highly educated people. I still think some of them raise an eyebrow as to why a brilliant Oxford scholar should have chosen a ballet dancer as a partner and I bet none of them thought our marriage would last because I was considered uneducated.
As I said at the start until now I had no idea of what went on at Oxford or how they taught. My husband did medicine which is taught in a different manner to say that of Classics. It is usually a big secret so unknowingly my Oxford blogger, Molly has given me the opportunity to find out what I missed all those years ago. I found it riveting to see what Molly was doing between with her life between the years of 16 to say 23 getting all her O levels and A Level qualifications and compare it to what I was doing during those same teenage years with none. For a start just being a woman would have kept me out of my husband's college as Oriel was the last bastion of misogyny to fall. Took until 1990ish for women with qualifications to be admitted.
The Oxford Undergraduate experience is considered the pinnacle of education and will lead on to an enhanced status for the rest of their lives so what makes it so special?
Getting to Oxford as an undergraduate seems to be the major obstacle and major achievement. It is a long hard academic slog, many are called but few are chosen, but once there it really seems to someone like me who worked my way through the teenage years a really cushy existence and about two hundred miles from reality. How can this cosy isolation arm you for life in the real world? Where is the real world?
Only short terms, 8 weeks in very pleasant surroundings and accommodation, all food found for four years of the most formative years of one's life. For Molly, her life consists of writing an assignment a week and a few exams at the end of the first year with the next set of exams three years down the track. No travelling involved, a social life provided if you care to partake, some lectures to attend, a tutor to give you hints and put you on the right track and really no responsibility at all while one lives in this enchanting atmosphere and architecture. The life of a student under these circumstances is very gemütlich indeed! The only fear is not handing in the assignment on time.
It is learning for the sake of learning as most of what students has been well trodden before and the opportunity to find something original in Classical texts that are over 2,000 years old is highly unlikely. Molly had not studied Latin at school so coming to Oxford unprepared in this area and expected to do translation in her first set of exams must have been daunting. My Latin was possibly better than hers at first and I am no Latin scholar although I do enjoy it now. I know how it feels to behind in an essential subject. Oxford ought to have warned her of this. How can you translate if you don't know the language? Takes years to really learn Latin.
Next thing that surprised me was Molly's weekly search for books. Really two days of each week were taken up in the hunt for the set texts. What a waste of time and energy. Surely Oxford should supply these books online to its students. This would give the undergraduate more time for study and less foraging around. Actually, this book weekly book search shocked me. Molly seemed to have little time left for socialising which is an important part of university life, for life after university perhaps the most important part. Molly rarely attends the lunch so possibly does not gain as much as she should in this area as she does not meet students from other disciplines on a daily basis to broaden her knowledge of real life if there is such a thing in Oxford. Does Molly get out on a punt a la Dorothy L. Sayers?
By Molly's age, I had mixed with princes and spent time at the local Labour Exchange with the unemployed. I was often one of the unemployed. I had travelled the length and breadth of UK on a train. I saw the poverty and hopelessness of the way many citizens lived. Bradford was an awful wasteland in 1964 and still is today. Glyndebourne, where I wined and dined, was very different. I became an Equity deputy and I admired Venessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson with whom I worked.
The May Ball, which I had been lead to believe was the height of sophistication looked disappointing too. In a tent with earphones. Now Sandhurst Ball was quite something in my day. Very elegant. I had expected the May Ball to be like that. First night of theatrical productions in the West End are good too with lots of champagne and flowers whether they are successes or not.
Socialising is so important and seems to be getting lost in hunting for books and essays on time. For me, rehearsals were the perfect time to meet and talk with cast members and musicians and management. You get to know them well on long train journeys too. I learned from the best this way and as I was interesting to talk to and had original ideas I was accepted. Molly doesn't seem to meet anyone above her on a daily basis. Only a tutor once a week. It seems very limited to me.
Molly's sole day trip to London was a highlight of her week but she went to a Harry Potter Exhibition! Admittedly she did go to the Ashmolean and has a student ticket for Radcliff Camera for her book search but after school, I could go anywhere. I lived at the Wallace collection and National Gallery and while working on the opera The Turn of The Screw for TV for six weeks I had the British Museum every day at lunch. She went on a family holiday to Croatia and spent one holiday as an intern for work experience.
I worked full time for a living and learned on the job. You have to be better than the best. There are no second chances in the West End and London Theatre. This started young. At 12, I got up at 7am, walked a mile to the station, took the tube from Canons Park, Changed at Wembley Park for Baker Street, then walked or took a bus to Portman Square all by myself. Ballet class was at 9.30 am followed by another vocational subject. After lunch, school till 4.30, the English was excellent. I can parse my way out of a paper bag. Then off to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden for the ballet performances. This usually finished at 10.30 pm where my mother would come up and take me on the long journey home. Ballet dancers have to be ready for professional work at 16 and some become ballerinas at 18. Life is short in ballet. Ballet dancers are brilliant, know how to work and deferred gratification. Very different from Oxford essays. I did this for two years.
At the age of 12, I was out in the world doing voice-overs for commercials. Huntley & Palmers Biscuits relied on me on TV to sell Ginger Nuts! At the age of 14, I was chosen to be in The Royal Ballets first performance of Petrushka in 1957 at a Gala Performance. The two children were something of a hit and I spent the next two years with the Royal Ballet where I met everyone from Margot Fonteyn, Fredrick Ashton to Sir Malcolm Sargeant.
In 1958 at 15 I was chosen by Benjamin Britten for the first performance of Noyes Fludde at Aldeburgh and then in 1959 for his opera as Flora in the "Turn of the Screw" live on British Television and at Aldeburgh. Because of my knowledge of opera and ballet, I got to know Britten well and in fact all my papers of that time and my score signed by all the cast I have left to the Bodleian Library. I deserve a PhD for my take on whyFlora is so important in her own right and not as a back up for the boy! I can tell you Britten never told me all this. Britten would not have dared. I had to work it out myself. Britten admired me for doing this.
I have three O levels which I taught myself as I had to change to a school that did not do GCE's. I had a brilliant headmistress who taught me the three English Lit books in just three weeks. I got 87% and the remark that "as my spelling was so bad we would never know your true academic value". Yet I am considered uneducated. Many of my schoolmates were in the same position. One Jackie Collins went on to have quite a career. She never passed anything.
At 17 went to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where at 18 I won the Production Prize but could not get a job as BBC did not employ women and preferred male graduates from Oxford and Cambridge and yet I was really good. I met this obstacle constantly but eventually, I did sell a ballet series to BBC. I had to go to New Zealand to do this 16 years later.
Spent next two years working my way up in musicals, eight performances a week starting with a major tour of "Stop the World I want to get off" around 14 of the major towns in England including The Oxford Royal. Visiting these towns was a great educational eyeopener. We travelled by British Rail on a Sunday, for 14 weeks. These journeys were again and eye-opening experience. We were paid a pittance and the work was never ending. We had no day off.
Then I had to do pantomimes as a principal girl. This is the University of Musicals and stage productions. Sometimes 12 shows a week for over two months in the bleak provencial cities. Very hard work. I also did drama, films and TV productions.
By the age of 24 I was starring in the West End. For a year it was 8 shows a week. We had nightly audiences of over 2000. The responsibility for quality performance was enormous. You don't get a BA for doing this and yet you should.
My workload makes Molly's weekly essay and life experience look like an afternoon picnic on a sunny summer's day. It is so isolated from real life.
However, Molly is officially recognised as educated and I am not. Her BA from Oxford for a few essays will trump my University of Life any day of the week. I am just astounded at how easy it is Oxford graduates to succeed in life. My husband was an example. He was given an MA Oxon for just completing his medical degree. Not an essay in sight! Everything was given to him on a plate including a wonderful pension. Artists do not get pensions as Margot Fonteyn found out.
Up until yesterday, I envied Molly and her sojourn in Oxford. Surprisingly, I think the University of Life is far richer than the Oxbridge University version. At a pinch I could do what Molly does very easily, I should have to revise my Latin and use a spell check but don't we all. There is no way that Molly could do what I do or have done with her education which seems so limited. I was lucky not to be able to spell and sent to a ballet school but I should have liked a PhD and a pension of my own and to be recognised as educated in my own right.
I was lucky to experience Oxford second hand via my husband who always said there is only time in life or the best and he chose to marry me. I suppose that is a compliment. However, if I had been given the opportunity to go to Oxford when I was Molly's age I think I should have taken it and look what I should have missed.
