from the times.

May 24, 2004

Look, that's my boy up there

By John Clarke

When his nine-year-old son was chosen to appear in Der Rosenkavalier at the Royal Opera House, this father felt proud, but was unsure how the family would fit into this strange world

WE’RE SITTING in seats 16 and 17 of Row V of the orchestra stalls at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. A snip at just £155 each. We’re watching Act III of Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss. After two hours, we’ve managed, just, to keep abreast of the plot. The bullying baron, played by the German bass Kurt Rydl, is, it seems, about to get his comeuppance.

And then, a door opens stage left and on scurries our nine-year-old son, Joshua, dressed as a street urchin. He and the other children depart, but five minutes later they’re back again, pretending to be the baron’s offspring and hanging on to his coat for dear life while singing “Papa, papa, papa” as loudly as they can.

We have to pinch ourselves to believe that this happening. How is it that our son, whose last appearance had been as a heron in Noye’s Fludde in front of 40 school parents and whose favourite musical activity around the house is to sing “You’re not the boss of me now” from Malcolm in the Middle, is sharing a stage with Dame Felicity Lott and Angelika Kirchschlager in front of an orchestra led by Sir Charles Mackerras — people to whom the the Royal Opera House, La Scala, Milan, and the Metropolitan Opera in New York are second homes? But there it is on the programme, in small type on the back page just after “Dog supplied by Joan Blackmore” and before the “Please switch off your mobile phone” warning. “Singing children: St Paul’s Church of England Junior School, Kingston upon Thames (Music teacher: Alison Renvoize).”

Suddenly, a family whose musical tastes ran from the vaguely contemporary (Norah Jones) to the purposefully obscure (Blind Willie Johnson) found themselves intimately connected with a musical form they had previously neglected. Overcoming a natural modesty, I also managed to tell most people about it at the office, apart, that is, from the cleaner and the man who mends the photocopier machines. On the night, I couldn’t have been prouder if he’d won an Olympic gold. “Look,” I feel like telling the French foursome behind us and the elderly gentleman with an expensive suit and a beech walking stick, “that’s my son up there.”

It had been a different story six weeks before. He’d come home, slightly underwhelmed, after passing an audition at the school. Eight children were chosen, including Joshua, to take part in the opera on alternate evenings.

But then the first rehearsal transformed him. He was mesmerised by singers who could fill a room with noise just by opening their mouth. He delighted in trying on hand-made costumes, perfect down to their matching-but-never-seen socks, and he suddenly gloried in the music of Strauss and the words of Hugo von Hofmannsthal. A tape of the lines he had to sing would be played incessantly during our family meals. “E ntschuldigen Euer Gnaden” (May it please you, your lordship) became a musical family catchphrase and he would shout “Leopold wir gehen” (Leopold we go) at us over breakfast.

I went up with Joshua to one of the rehearsals. We met Alison, the incredibly dedicated St Paul’s music teacher, and waited with the other children for Mark Bennett, the minibus driver.

Mark impressed all the children — and especially Joshua — by a) his driving skills and b) his immense knowledge of The Bill. During the 30-minute journey he and Joshua discussed the finer points of the previous night’s episode (“That bloke who used be in EastEnders, he gets in a lot of trouble”) while the rest of us marvelled at his ability to get to Covent Garden without meeting so much as a sniff of a traffic jam.

At the Royal Opera House we were met by the children’s co-ordinator, Janet O’Connor, who won us over by saying: “My main priority is to see the children have fun.”

We were whisked off to a dressing room somewhere in the building’s bowels which contained a rack full of costumes and rubber masks of a pig and Popeye (left over, I was told from the then current run of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk). There was a rush to put the costumes on, and a quick run through in the dressing room with Alison and her cassette player.

“What’s the thing you want most in the world,” she asked eight-year-old Hamish Baverstock.

“A roomful of PlayStations,” he said.

“Well imagine you’re getting that when you sing. I want to see it in your eyes.”

We settled down to a lunch of sandwiches and crisps. but then someome committed a cardinal error by whistling. “You must never whistle,” Janet told us. “It brings bad luck.” Then the tannoy barked into life. “Scene three principals, tradespeople, musicians and children please.”

I watched from the front circle as the third act unfolded. Mackerras fine-tuned the orchestra, someone got trodden on coming through a trap door (the result, perhaps, of our unlucky whistling) and the children rushed off, ran on again, were herded off and then came back on again to the elaborate “stage within a stage” setting of the third act.

Neither the children nor their elder helpers seemed to be sure whether they were going the right way at times. But the “Papa, papa, papa’s” — their only but much repeated line, came through loud and clear. Backstage, so Joshua assures me, is even more fun. “People make faces and make us laugh.”

On the night we watch it, it is, of course, all different. The crowd scenes are handled as adroitly as the London Marathon and the children don’t seem to put a foot wrong.

I wear a red shirt in the vague hope that having re-mortgaged the house to pay for the tickets, we might have a chance of being seen by Joshua. He can’t, but he does try. “Did you see me looking at the audience?” he asks afterwards.

I’m not quite sure what effect appearing in one of the world’s greatest opera houses will have on his future life — but I know what effect it’s had on ours. I’ve ordered the CD boxset of Der Rosenkavalier (the Solti recording, naturally) and we’re already planning our next opera outing. Let’s just hope the seats are cheaper .

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