With the theorbos producing wonderfully tinny clangour, especially in the recitatives, and outstanding contributions from oboist Paul Goodwin, the sound was pliant, pointing up the rhythms without over- emphasis. The chorus moved easily from the gentle humour of “Oh, the pleasure of the plains!” through to the restrained joy of advising Galatea that Acis has become part of the water supply.The soloists sang from memory (although all but Jeremy White had the music for use in emergency). Bonney’s sweet vibrato was more prominent than I remember, but the tone was as pure, the ornamentation as decorous as ever. Blochwitz sang with a better English accent than Handel apparently possessed, and with a pleasing ache in the voice; his control over Handel’s ornate lines was exact. Muller’s light tenor fell easily on the ear, while White managed to be comical without sacrificing musicality.
As the music died away on a note of ambiguous rejoicing, the silence in the hall spoke volumes for the quality of the audience’s involvement.. Serialisation, it seems, can be damaging to your health. Charles Dickens, who became hideously expert in the terrors of the monthly and even weekly deadline, knew this in more ways than one. Throughout his career his own writing commitments frequently overlapped, so that two novels would be advancing at the same time (not to speak of other journalistic writing and editing duties). Despite this stupefying work-load Dickens only once had to postpone a monthly publication, when the death of his sister-in-law (“a severe domestic affliction of no ordinary kind”) meant that the eagerly awaited numbers of Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist did not appear as advertised.
But his general determination not to disappoint his readers – either in quality or timing – came at a cost; of fatigue to the point of collapse. He described the experience of writing Hard Times, which was published weekly, as “absolutely CRUSHING”. The inexorable tick of publication could have hazards for readers too, who soon came to be as much in thrall to the publication date as the hapless author, as much tyrannised by the unyielding timetable of deferred pleasure. There are many stories told about the wild popularity of Dickens’s novels – touching accounts of workers clubbing together their farthings to borrow the latest instalment from a circulating library; the anecdote of the man whose dying words were “Well, thank God, Pickwick will be out in 10 days anyway.” But the fable which really sums up the addictive power of serial stories is the account of a Baltimore tragedy; apparently the crowd on the quayside waiting for the final instalment of The Old Curiosity Shop was so dense that several eager readers were pitched into the harbour, where they promptly drowned.
This has a faint smack of Victorian PR about it, to be honest, but the point remains the same. In those days the new Dickens was to die for.
The idea that there is a core of danger in our appetite for fictions is a persistent one. Earlier this year, several newspapers (including this one) reported on the splendidly named Jack Duckworth Memorial Clinic, a pioneering institution set up to treat soap addiction. David West, its founder, said of serious sufferers: “Reality and fiction become hopelessly confused.
