Across Europe, people gather this month to get the blood pumping through the veins with some grand music and good old patriotic tunes, perhaps leading to the odd touch of mass hysteria. Angela Long surveys the London Proms, while Derek Scally reports on this year's row at theBayreuth Festival.
It's August, it's London, it's sweltering, and red-faced people all around are brandishing mini Union Jacks and lustily singing along to William Blake's Jerusalem. Where else could this nightmare scenario be taking place than the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington, the monument to Queen Victoria's beloved Prussian husband, and what other anachronistic scene could it be but the unrelenting summer series of concerts called the Promenades, or Proms.
In the midst of all this nostalgia and jingoism it is surprising to encounter a gender hero. Moustachioed Sir Henry Wood, the conductor who died halfway through the last century, is the godfather if not originator of the series. And it was he who allowed the first female musician into a symphony orchestra.
The image of the Proms is Establishment, with all that says about the roles everyone and everything played in the grand old days of Empire (or Oppression, depending on the pervasiveness of your political opinions).
Anachronistic? Only in that other institutions, such as the monarchy, are anachronistic. And in the year which saw such surprising enthusiasm for the jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, the Proms (shudder) will no doubt end on an even higher and more ebullient note than ever.
The Proms are one of the distinguishing features of August in London. The series began on July 19th and it finishes in mid-September, but most of the action is in August, when there is a concert every night.This year the theme is Spanish music, featuring conductor Manuel de Falla, or music inspired by Spain, including composers such as Ravel, Debussy and Rimsky-Korsakov. Tonight, for example, the main concert is a double bill of Spanish operas: Granados's Goyescas, a fantasy about a goodtime girl, a soldier and a toreador, paired with Basque-born Ravel's L'heure espagnole, described as "a risqué comedy about a sex-starved Spanish wife's race against time". That should get them in from the Home Counties.
Events such as the Proms might not be wildly fashionable, although they are always extremely popular. But now the trend in marketing Britain has swung to "everything old is new again" as the Cool Britannia image, associated with Tony Blair's party when it was still New Labour, gets tepid and tatty. Now ad campaigns are emphasising knights and castles, sweet thatched cottages and cups of tea in flowered bone china cups. Snotty rock stars and glass-walled rooftop restaurants have receded.
Good solid Britpop is associated with the whole season, which consists of over 70 concerts spread over the six weeks, and these days a whole raft of ancillary events, including poetry, and this year a "Blue Planet" concert of music linked with the spectacular BBC television series about the world's oceans.
The first Proms concert took place on August 10th, 1895. The concept was the brainchild of the impresario Robert Newman, manager of the now defunct Queen's Hall in London. In February 1895 Newman offered Sir Henry Wood conductorship of a permanent orchestra at the Queen's Hall, and of the first Proms season.
Dubliner William Shanahan, a psychiatrist who has lived in London for the past decade, is a confirmed Proms-goer. "I used to go to 14 or 15 of the concerts, but now I probably only make it to two or three. But it's great fun."
He enjoys the traditional repartee. "At every concert, as soon as the piano on stage is opened, the downstairs crowd shouts 'Heave!' and the response from the balconies has to be 'Ho!'" This, to bemused tourists, is the famed British wit. But there are certain set-pieces that go with the whole experience, Dr Shanahan says, and one of them is sweltering. "It gets so hot in there during August, and of course there is no air-conditioning."
He notes that the jingoistic element has been played down in response to heartfelt criticisms from the music world. "They don't do Rule Britannia any more, but I think, after last year's much more muted event, Land of Hope and Glory will be back, and Jerusalem."
Last year, the last night was on September 15th, four days after the terrorist attacks on the United States, and the mood was sombre indeed. Tickets start at £4 sterling.
For further information, see www.bbc.co.uk/proms and www.visitbritain.com/ie
