i was a cultural girlie for the night

classical music fans know how to party

Hello all! There are officially over 100 of you here now, firstly, I’m nervous, secondly, I’m ELATED. It’s so wonderful to have a lot of new names and faces here! I hope you’ve all had a lovely start to your week <3

So what are we quietly reflecting on this week? I went to my first classical music concert the other week and it was such an incredible experience, I decided to play music journalist and write about the whole thing for this week’s letter. I loved it so much, and I can’t wait to go to another. Have you seen any classical music live? I’d love to hear your experience!

I hope you like today’s post and don’t regret subscribing :)

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When we first arrived, we sat in our seats and squinted.

Before we left the house, we deliberated taking our glasses but we were going for the music, there wouldn’t be too much to see. The evening was for our ears and if we were lucky, our souls too. 

When André Rieu entered the arena and led his orchestra to the stage, our main focal point became an amalgamation of pastels and shimmer. We should have brought our glasses. The audience that sat in the centre of the arena immediately stood to greet them, and for some reason I was surprised. I think I went to the concert feeling like some sort of outsider. It was no different from a pop concert, standing up as soon as you see the performer, bodies rushing with excitement like opening the top of a fizzy drink, bubbles rushing to the surface.

The digitalised curtains were lifted and Julius Fucik’s “Entry of the Gladiators” began to ring in our ears while everyone on stage took to their seats behind their music stands. The audience clapped along. The night was starting to come alive.

The orchestra had their moment, unaccompanied by human voices. We got to admire the sounds we can make with only bits of brass, bronze and wood. Soon, one by one, opera singers would float onto the stage in elegant ballgowns that looked like they were peeled directly off the screen playing a Disney princess film, men in well-fitted tuxedos.

I was a bit panicked beforehand about what to wear myself. My mind immediately went to the pair of heels I wore for graduation and haven’t had an excuse to wear since. Then, after doing a bit more “research” (pausing videos on social media when glimpses of the audience were shown), I found it was a lot more casual than I thought. So I opted for some shorter block heels I wore for my birthday a year or so ago and haven’t found an excuse to wear again since. They hurt my feet but my mother’s voice rang in a corner of my brain somewhere, “beauty is pain”.

I was going to wear those shoes with a champagne-coloured dress and a cardigan to tone it down, so from afar I didn’t look like I tried too hard. I wanted to dress up (I always want to dress up) but not too much. Then C showed me another piece of “research” where I saw people wearing jeans and I got out my Mary Janes and wore a satin dress with a couple of unnoticable-unless-you-look-really-close tears from H&M.

Although it seemed like an event you would dust off a heel for, it was just a smart casual event, like most things nowadays.

As much as I wish I was a person who could just ignore polite/social conventions and wear the dress or wear the heels, I am not. I still could never stoop as low as jeans, though.

A few songs played and I enjoyed this new thing I was doing. The excitement of hearing André conduct famous classical pieces of music radiated around the entire arena, even from right in the back in the centre where we were sat. The arena was smaller than I imagined but it turned out to be quite comforting. Not so many people I’d feel anxious, imagining an emergency and everyone suddenly having the exact same thought, “Get out immediately, by any means possible”, but not so few that if I did wear my graduation heels I would most certainly have been spotted and possibly laughed at. We sat quietly camouflaged within a large lake of faces and bodies you could just about see the edges of.

André brought on a sixteen-year-old girl who stopped time with her voice. The entire room was transfixed. I could tell by the lack of small glows from the audience’s phone screens in the lower levels. They lit up like street lights at Christmas time, never seeing the moment they’re mounted or switched on for the first time, just suddenly appearing. They would multiply like fireflies when more well-known songs would play and then die down again, some dimmed, some not born yet when lesser-known songs played. But for hers, I don’t remember seeing a single one. I don’t think I’ll ever forget how big her voice was.

Somehow, perhaps in the space between her two songs and the audience stinging their palms with applause, I thought about how fun it must be to perform for a living, have a schedule etched with locations and dress fittings and being backstage alongside the nerves and excitement and lights and the rush of it all. A path I was put on myself when I was young and if I believed in myself enough, could have lived too.

Some thoughts have the most annoying timings.

coping with ugly feelings

The people beside us were annoying. You can never get a full packet of grapes without one or two squished or bruised ones. Unfortunately, we shared vines with the squished ones. They talked through songs and spoke way too loud to each other, my eyes began to ache from the amount of rolling they were doing. Once the show had been well on its way, we noticed seats in the upper left and right-hand side were mostly empty. Would anyone notice if we moved?

The interval came and went and suddenly we could just about make out the facial expressions of the opera singers and their dresses became individual colours instead of a blur of pinks, lilacs and baby blues.

We were criminals of the night, cheating our way through this classical-music-filled evening, the beginning of a completely different concert.

These seats are where we clapped frantically and freely, moving our bodies in time with André’s right hand guiding the orchestra’s tempo. These seats are where we were free to hold each other, arm in arm, me draped over his shoulder, bodies angled in the direction of the stage, feet free to rest wherever. It’s where the audience and André became old friends, him teasing us with false endings and us screaming for more, him creating an atmosphere giving us permission to forget for a while and completely immerse ourselves in the joys of music. These seats are where we danced when the waltz came on, André giving us no choice, threatening us with patriotic embarrassment since “every other audience I have played this for immediately got up to dance, every. single. one.” 

I wanted to jump up immediately. I saw old couples take to the aisle, assume the position and waltz together, gazing into the same eyes they must have been gazing into for decades. Everyone’s eyes fell onto the dancing couples in the middle, some couples looked hesitant, some completely reluctant. One woman danced on her own as her partner remained seated, attention on his phone screen. I looked over at C, he looked a bit on edge but to my surprise, he got up with me to join the club of brave dancers, of people who want to grab joy with both hands and put that joy over everything else, even watchful eyes. At risk of sounding cheesy, it was magical. This was different to when we dance together in the privacy of our living room, a live orchestra and a room full of people feeling all the same things at the same time is something completely different, like baking bread at home or picking your own flowers.

Some people went home when it looked as if the show was coming to an end and missed nearly an entire hour of what I can only describe as a party. Pretty much everyone was out of their seats towards the end of the show, a bull chased a woman in red out of the audience (recorded below don’t you worry), professional dancers spun their partners about, children danced with their mothers, tipsy men made their girlfriends laugh, opera singers sung and swung with glasses of wine in their hands, the arena was filled with laughter and utter joy. Even The 1975 didn’t have me up like this.

Happiness sometimes feels like it’s placed high up on a shelf, much too high to reach, but I felt like I was staring it right in the eye in that moment, perhaps because our (new) seats were so high up, nevertheless, I saw her face.

I suppose we have the squished grapes to thank for that.

the view from our criminal seats

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