Michael Coveney: Dog of a Mexican Show

The mystery of the mystery man on the front row is solved even before this morning’s concert — can’t wait; it’s the divine  soprano Magdalena Kozena — at the Queens’s Hall. Of course, he turned up at the Mexican opera at the King’s Theatre last night, and I pounced before curtain up. “You are Lobby Lud, and I claim my five pounds,” as we used to say on Ramsgate beach in my childhood.

He was obviously thrown by this overture, but rallied stoutly to declare that his name was Ralph Parkinson, and that he’s a retired university administrator and part-time amateur singer.

Some of his pals must have volunteered to sing in Montezuma, a 17th-century loincloth baroque opera by Carl Heinrich Graun (who he?) and, get this, Frederick II, King of Prussia. It was an absolute hoot and had drawn a big crowd including Simon Callow and Petroc Trelawny, some bemused looking critics, as well as reliable Ralph.

If the show had been really terrible, we could have dubbed it Montezuma’s Revenge, but it wasn’t, so we didn’t.

Most of the men were counter-tenors, and even the women wore loincloths, which flapped tantalisingly above their knickers and proved a positive turn-on when the dying queen (not one of the counter-tenors) sang the trickiest bit of Joan Sutherland coloratura as she crawled crab-like, backwards, up a cheap segment of the terraced set.

Best of all was a dog which came on with the invading Spaniards and howled incontrollably through a very serious passage and then nearly knocked off the conductor’s wig with his flapping tail.

This was definitely a festival highlight, and not the sort of unambitious rubbish you get on the Fringe. It had absolutely everything: flagellation, sodomy, men with high voices (no suprise after the first two experiences), the dog, tatty costumes, long passages of utter tedium, and a striking touch of modernism at the end, a massacre, and a marvellous madrigal. I shall check out Ralph’s reaction in a short while…