Operatic annoyance

This morning I went to St Luke and celebrated Mass for half a dozen people in Fr Mark's absence. Then in the afternoon, we went to the Millennium Centre for our second opera outing of the season. Verd's 'La Forza del Destino, which neither of us recall seeing before. The music was unfamiliar but so beautiful, the story a bit far fetched, about the far reaching consequences of a tragic accidental shooting, but the chorus and all the performers sang superbly. 

The set was minimal and abstract, albeit cleverly designed to represent the various scenes. I took exception, however, to the portrayal of the chorus, in one scene, supposed to be a choir of monks at a religious ceremony, which had all two dozen singers wearing white mitres. They were supposed to represent a community of friars for whom wearing a mitre plays no part in their life. Not even a global assembly of Benedictine mitred abbots would see that number of white mitres used in one place at worship. It was a vain pointless expression of 'artistic liberty', that would un-necessarily bewilder and distract a liturgically ignorant opera goer.

Come to think of it, I was equally annoyed at last week's 'Tosca' performance at the end of the first act where a congregation is assembling for a festive Te Deum, to see that the liturgical procession resembles an old style Papal procession where the Pontiff is carried aloft by bearers, wearing conical white hoods after the manner of Spanish 'penitentes'. Sure these costumes are used in Sicily, which was rule for a couple of centuries by Spain, but this is Rome. 

The mise en scène is the Roman city centre church of San Andrea in Valle. It's not a place where the Pope would turn up and take part in a parish event, in those days, when his life would have been confined to the Vatican and St Peter's. Once again, annoyingly inappropriate and un-historical use of church ritual and symbols, when the actual liturgical conventions, properly used are just as dramatic and powerful. It's now the third time I've seen this production, and nothing has changed. I should have complained before!