Keep it simple ... ETO's current production of Handel's Teseo.
The second opera I ever heard live, in the sleepy market town of Darlington, North Yorkshire, was Mozart's Marriage of Figaro. I was about 13 years old, and fell madly in love with Countess Almaviva, as I have done on every subsequent occasion. There's something about Mozart and Da Ponte's exquisitely crafted character, ennobled both by her husband's treachery and music of poised but almost immoderate beauty, that each time I see her it becomes harder to resist bounding onto the stage and whisking her away to a better life.
On this first occasion, however, I also remember wondering why it was that a countess should have so little in the way of furniture. Of nice, brightly-coloured wallpaper she had an abundance, but her sparsely furnished room contained nothing more than a wicker chair and a bed.
The explanation, of course, was not the fact that the Count and his wife had fallen on hard times, but that this was a small touring production of the opera designed fit the often cramped stages of our country's smaller theatres. The opera company in question was called Opera 80 (a reasonable name at the time if not one built to last), later to be rechristened as English Touring Opera. Their latest Autumn 2007 touring season began at the weekend at the Hackney Empire, with sparse but sparkling new productions of Handel's Teseo (Theseus) and Haydn's seldom presented L'infedelta delusa (presented in English as Country Matters), together with a new jazz opera by Julian Joseph and Mike Phillips called Bridgetower.
ETO are one of the few opera companies whom no one could begrudge their modest slice of the lottery pie. Excellent value for money for both the lottery and for theatregoers, they continually remind audiences from London and Lincoln to Yeovil and Scarborough why opera is neither just privileged spectacle nor rarefied pleasure but simply the basis for a damn good evening's entertainment. Having begun life in 1949 as Opera for All, with a staff of four soloists, piano accompanist and stage manager/compère, the project was soon offering standard and unusual operatic fare to the inhabitants of small towns all over Great Britain, as well as launching the careers of many celebrated soloists, including Josephines Barstow and Veasey.
Of course, the idea of opera as a privileged, elitist and, above all, extravagant form of entertainment is certainly not without grounding. For while the idea of opera was born in an attempt to restore to modern stages the lost, mythical power of ancient Athenian theatre, much of the actual impetus behind the genre's early growth and later flourishing focused on the opportunity it offered for ostentation. Opera can be splendidly spectacular, there's no getting away from it.
But it doesn't need to be. The basic ingredients of opera - music and make-believe - are pretty much universal resources. More importantly, the real magic of an evening at the opera comes neither from the pomp and circumstance but from the extraordinarily direct manner in which the characters on stage can reach the hearts and minds of the audience. Film may allow a greater realism, and spoken theatre has recourse to much more flexible and naturalistic dramatic pacing. But when it comes to feeling the beating heart that animates a dramatic persona, opera can't be bettered.
So if you find yourself somewhere within reach of English Touring Opera's orbit, and you've never tried opera before, don't think about it - just book and go. You'll be amazed by many things, but not by the expense.
