Une nuit à l'opera

     I’ve written before about how eager students are for anything that is free. Food, clothes and branded pens can be the carrot on the string of any advertiser or local business looking for a new batch of regular customers, and, it would seem, l’Opéra de Marseille is just one such business.

     It was clear from the start that last Friday night’s Concert Offert Aux Etudiants was no normal night at the opera. Hipster glasses and ripped jeans took up seats usually reserved for suits and ballgowns as l’orchestre philharmonique de Marseille drew out the first few notes, but even before that the musicians seemed far more relaxed than I’d ever expected. A few were already in their seats before I was, tuning and reading over parts or just chatting away. During the performance a whole string of them made corrections in their music while not playing, then passed the pen on to the next person once they were done. At the back, a surly tuba player sat with arms folded and back hunched, probably wishing he took up the violin and got a place at the front.

     But it was after the last notes faded, and the applause we were eventually allowed to give died down, that the oddest thing happened- the conductor picked a few sections to play again. It became apparent very quickly that what we were watching wasn’t a concert at all- it was a dress rehearsal. But with this twist we got to see what most audiences don’t, and hear the voice of the often enigmatic conductor. He told one section to stand up here, another to quieten down there, and all the while two hundred students watched.

     Brought up on Springsteen, Dire Straits and Darwin the Dinosaur, I’ve never been very well informed in the realms of classical music. I doubt, actually, that many of us present had- any music that isn’t flesh on a basic verse-chorus-verse-chorus-crescendo skeleton usually passes us by, but this was the kind of blatant self-promotion I really like. When you get something free, it should be something worthwhile, and while a pen is damned useful, a free night out and an introduction to a new experience always wins.