Adventures of a 00 Agent – The Herzog Affair

 

Why don’t we do it in the road? Why not indeed, Mr. McCartney.   While we’re at it why not in Paddington Station, the jungle or an old car parts factory in Digbeth?

Let me beat you to the blush, I’m referring to the joy of singing, not sex, opera not operatics. For opera has long been making love to its audience in the strangest of places.

One rendezvous in the early Noughties, orchestrated by an unlikely matchmaker, BBC3, was at Paddington station. At 9pm a flash-mob dressed as football fans converged upon the concourse and belted-out Madam Butterfly. A year before, The Birmingham Opera Company staged Bernstein’s Candide in a dilapidated manufacturing plant.  Hardly the setting for romance but both critics and the local community were love-struck.

So where’s the oddest place you’ve done it? This was the first question I put to Werner Herzog when interrogating him at the beginning of the week. As you know, this week Werner Herzog, that madcap and terribly German filmmaker friend of mine, kidnapped all the world leaders. All, that is, except for Medvedev. Putin yet again picked his pet tiger over the President for a seat on the plane. My M16 task was to find them all which was not difficult as, incidentally, Putin’s tiger, Mashenka, has a GPS tracking system built into her collar.

So where was the oddest place Herzog had done it? The Amazon Basin, naturally, at the glorious Teatro Amazonas. And that is where this week’s journey took me: a trip into the heart of darkness to see the Opera, a little touch of Werner in the night.

The Amazon Theatre in Brazil took 17 years to build, can take 17 days to reach by boat and is a secret, sumptuous monument to the Belle Epoque.  Built in 1896 at the height of Brazil’s monopoly on the rubber trade, for years this opulent opera house stood smouldering in the heat of the tropics after the boom went bang and the area plunged into poverty.

Herzog’s film, Fitzcarraldo, briefly brought its marbled halls and red velvet seats into the light of the silver screen in 1982, but throughout the intervening years the Opera House remained deserted. Whilst companies in the Europe moved towards post-modern, site-specific staging of operas in public spaces and dilapidated buildings, Teatro Amazonas stood empty; a white elephant with a stage used for football games and an auditorium in which cans of petrol were stored amongst the 701 red velvet seats.

So, as I have it from Werner himself, he flew the leaders to the Teatro Amazonas in a plane piloted by the bear from Grizzly Man. Arriving only hours after they touched down I surveyed the scene through my binoculars and a wily seat in the Gods. MI6 was particularly vexed that Werner might make the leaders each eat one of their shoes as he himself once did as a gesture of protest. They needn’t have worried. It looked like Herzog was simply planning to film an opera with leaders for lead roles.

Obama was already centre stage practicing his arias, Sarko was serenading Angie with a Carla Bruni hit, whilst Merkel in turn was mining disgust; Gordon Brown was suffering from stage fright. Unfortunately, a gaggle of bankers, having financed the enterprise, had tagged along. Hearing some heckling, I glanced up to behold these drunken extras hanging by their underpants from the chandelier. They had strung David Cameron up like a piñata and were beating him in the vain hope that sweets might rain from his bottom.

Eventually I would have to round them up and take them back but I thought it best to let Werner make his film first and watch from the comfort of my private box. After all, the leaders seemed glad of the holiday. That was until my cover was blown. The door behind me creaked and an Italian accent crooned ‘why don’t we do it in an opera box?’ Why not indeed, Mr. Berlusconi.


Posted

in

by

Tags: