And while I’m on the subject of Great Grand Parents…..

In Skerries a couple of week ends ago I came across another photo of Sile’e Great Grandmother. Teresa Brady from New Ross who was married in the 1890’s.

This was taken of the happy couple in Dublin , one imagines from their obvious youth that it was shortly after their wedding,

The amazing thing is that full length the beautiful Teresa is even more attractive.
Just look at that figure, the waist must have been about 18 inches at most.
Was she excruciatingly squeezed in by whalebone or was she really that shape?
Either way she cuts a particularly fine figure.

I have managed to unearth another picture of my illustrious forebear; John Francis Maguire.
This one is from the Cork Examiner archives, the paper he founded, via Mary Leland’s book on Cork Harbour.
A rather more flattering portrait.

I can still see the vestiges of his face in the present generations.

I discovered today while doing the Sunday Times crossword that Britany Spears is an exact anagram of Presbytarians.
Does this tell us anything?
I thought not.

I just love the specific regionality of French food.
Both Provence and Languedoc, who live side by side, have their own cuisines and both are equally proud of their specialities, Provence of her great tomato and olive specialities, her Bouillabaisse, her Aioli, Languedoc equally proud of her Cassoulet and Brandade.
In French Provincial Cooking Elizabeth David tells a story about being in a restaurant called Nenette’s in Montpellier.
She suspects that the version of Homard a l’Americaine owes more to Provence than the Breton coast and remarks on that to Mme Nenette.
For some unknown reason I treasure the reply;

Madame Nenette observed in terms of only very mild reproof in answer to my question about her lobster dish, “Ah, nous ne sommes pas en Provence Madame, ici c’est le Languedoc”

When the Michael Hunt, producer of Waterford’s Tosca, was explaining his version of the opera to us he mentioned that the third act was going to take place in the square outside the Bishops Palace.
“Unfortunately” he said “the safety people won’t permit us to have Tosca throw her self off this at the end so we have had to find another way”
(She performed the dirty deed with a pistol on the night)
I was reminded by this of an anecdote that Gerald Durrell relates in his wonderfully funny autobiography; My Family and Other Animals.
Theodore, a character with a great store of anecdotes about Corfu tells the story.
It appears that a travelling opera company arrives in Corfu to perform a version of Tosca.
This is how Theodore tells it:
“The singer who took the part of Tosca was exceptionally well developed.
As you know in the final act the heroine casts herself to her doom from the battlements of a castle.
On the first night the heroine climbed up the castle walls and cast herself on to the rocks below. Unfortunately it appears that the stage hands had forgotten to put anything beneath the walls for her to land on. The result was that the crash of her landing and the subsequent yells of pain distracted somewhat from the impression that she was a shattered corpse on the rocks below.
The heroine was, rather naturally, somewhat upset by this incident, so, the following night the stage hands threw themselves with enthusiasm into the job of giving her a pleasant landing.
The heroine, somewhat battered, managed to hobble her way through the opera until she reached the final scene.
Then she again climbed on to the battlements, sang her last song , and cast herself to her death.
Unfortunately the stage hands, having made the landing too hard on the first occasion, had gone to the opposite extreme. The huge pile of mattresses was so resilient that the heroine hit them and then bounced up again.
So that when the cast was down at the footlights, telling each other she was dead, the upper portions of the heroine appeared two or three times above the battlements, to the mystification of the audience.”

Well I am just back from a most enjoyable evening of Opera.
Tosca hasn’t got a lot of tunes in it, as far as I could judge just the one really, Tosca’s prayer to the Virgin in Act Two.
The rest of the music is really recitative, (maybe I’ll change my mind on that when I start to play the CD I just ordered)
Without the great show stoppers, which other classic operas boast, Tosca needs all the help it can get from both production and singing.
We had a magnificent Tosca in Constance Novis from Canada.
She had an incredibly powerful and yet vibrato free voice.
She is a pleasure to listen too, and an actress who managed to convince and move me even in the sometimes ridiculous convulations of plot of this opera.
She was well served by her Mario, David Curry also from Canada and a wonderfully evil Scarpia, Mario Solimene from Brazil.
But the real star of the show was the innovative production.
We were bullied about between the various locations by jack booted and blacked up soldiers, ushered up through the stage to Act Three in front of the Bishops palace, to a bomb site, lit by burning barrels the orchestra playing in a graffiti daubed black plastic fit-up.
In this the director, Michael Hunt was very well served by Mike Leahy and Dermot Quinn from Waterfords Spraoi whose street theatre skills suited this production exactly.
A great night .

Opera is a funny thing, I always imagine that it must have been the total lack of alternatives which made it so universally popular during the last centuries.
I have enjoyed all music since a teenager, pop, jazz, classical, musicals, folk, even for quite a time having a passion for the light operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, but the enjoyment of grand opera was always a bit of a mystery to me.
Sile has always been involved with choirs so she was the first to make me appreciate the joys of choral singing.
It is all to do with familiarity, having attended hundreds of concerts of the various choirs in which she sang I began to love the songs.
Once I realised that I could become attached to an Italian madrigal it was much more likely that I would have an open mind when listening to the next one.
While still in school I remember going to a performance of Traviata, which I enjoyed, but most Grand Opera remained very much a closed book, that is until until I saw Bergman’s production of The Magic Flute on the tele in the late seventies.
I was an immediate convert, bought the triple LP and became a devoted follower of Papageno.
In the nineties we started to take our annual holidays in Provence, as we were going quite close to Orange the thought was mooted that we should go to a performance in the Roman Theatre Antique there.
The first year we decided to attend I asked a friend, a known opera buff, for advice on which of the various operas on offer we should go to. The recommendation was to go to “Lucia Di Lammermoor” by Donizetti-“if only for the marvellous sestet”.

I then did the right thing and ordered in a CD of the opera from my local record store.
I ended up playing it constantly, thoroughly loved the performance in Orange and, Yes ! The sestet is magnificent!
The following year Orange was producing The Magic Flute, no problem here and I was fairly hooked.
I managed to get similarly hooked on The Marriage of Figaro thanks to a production in the Theatre Royal here in Waterford so I now have a small repertoire of familiar operas which I love.
Mind you I have had my failures, Otello by Verdi has swept past my ears without a trace, despite trying to familiarise myself with both the CD and a strikingly modern production in Orange.

However until this week I have remained firmly on the audience side of the footlights.
This has now all changed.
Sile’s choir, Madrigallery, were asked to sing a brief chorus in Michael Hunt’s promenade production of Tosca which is on in Waterford this week.
(The same Michael Hunt who, just yesterday, was appointed the new CEO of Wexford Festival Opera.)
As they needed all the voices they could get for this and as all the singing was to be in unison, (don’t ask me to sing a harmony line!) it was agreed that I could be part of their number just for this occasion.
The result is that last night, for however fleeting a moment, I have actually appeared in a Grand Opera !
It is wonderful to still be achieving some firsts in one’s life especially in my old age.
The production is excitingly modern and Act One takes place in Christchurch Cathedral, Act Two in the Theatre Royal and Act Three, from what I gather, somewhere in between.
So far I have only managed to hear Act One from the cramped but magnificent Consistory in the back of the church but tonight we have been given tickets to see Acts Two and Three.

I will let you know how I got on.

Tomorrow is Bloomsday, here’s one you can prepare earlier.

It’s not often one gets to combine two passions but just before I finally shut the Restaurant I did a Bloomsday dinner for the English department in the WIT.
I managed to work out a whole menu from Ulysses (with a touch of “Portrait ” and “Finnegans Wake”)-which I had studied hard for my finals in UCD, 35 years previously.
(And with some help from Declan Kiberd and who pointed me to Alison Armstrong’s “The Joyce of Cooking”)

Bloomsday Dinner In Dwyers Restaurant
Wednesday June 16th 2004

Lambs Kidneys with Mustard Sherry
(“Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.“)
or
Devilled Crab with Cucumber Salad
(“A nice salad cool as a cucumber,Tom Kernan can dress.
Pure Olive Oil…God made food, the devil the cooks. Devilled Crab.”)
or
Gorgonzola Salad with Mustard Dressing
(“Gorgonzola have you? Mustard Sir?..
a warm shock of air heat of Mustard hanched on Mr Blooms Heart”)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Green Pea Soup
(“Whats in the pot?–Shirts, Maggy said. Boody cried angrily-Crikey is there nothing for us to eat? Katey, lifting the kettlelid…A heavy fume gushed in answer…-Peasoup“)
or
Fennel and Pernod Sorbet
(“Somewhere in the East….Drink water scented with fennel, sherbet.Wander all day”)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Roast Fillet of Beef with Cabbage
(“His heart astir he pushed in the door of the Burton restaurant….
.Wonder what he was eating…Roast Beef and Cabbage“)
or
Fillets of Sole de la Dudebat
(with White Wine and Mushrooms)
(“May I tempt you to a little more filleted Sole Miss Dudebat?
Yes ,do bedad.And she did bedad“)
or
Crepes of Onions and Mushrooms
(“After all,Bloom relents,there’s a lot in that vegetarian flavour
of fine things from the earth,crisp of Onions and Mushrooms.”)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Molly’s Pear and Almond Tart
(“I’d love a big juicy pear now to melt in your mouth
like when I used to be in the longing way“)
or
Brown Bread Ice Cream with Caramel Whiskey Sauce
(“Round Rabaiotti’s halted ice gondola stunted men and women squabble”
“Our Lady of Mount Carmel.Sweet name too:Caramel“)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Glass of Sloe Gin
(“…and a sloegin for me…Boylan eyed,eyed. Tossed to fat lips his chalice,
drankoff his tiny chalice, sucking the last fat violet syrupy drops“)