It is a little before six in the morning. A cold, damp Saturday with a hint of autumnal London fog. Tonight the Sadlers Wells Opera Company is performing the Marriage of Figaro. The box office opens at nine a.m. and we need to be in the queue by six thirty to be sure of our favourite seats in the Amphitheatre. It is too early for the tram and anyway we are loathe to pay the two fares we would need to ride all the way. So we walk through Spitalfields, past Hawksmoor's graceful, neglected church, a reminder that Spitalfields was once a prosperous district. Three hundred years ago Huguenot refugees brought their weaving skills and settled here just outside the City walls. Street names like Fleur de lis Street and large decaying houses behind the market are all that remain of their stay.
Across the road in the busy bustling fruit market there is noise and light. Raucous porters laid crates onto trucks; heaps of discarded vegetables and fruit litter the gutters. There is movement in one of the piles and a rat streaks out. Later the human flotsam existing in the crypt and churchyard will scour among this jetsam to pay for the alcohol they live on and that is slowly killing them.
We cross over Bishopsgate into the dawn quiet of Great Eastern Street. In the misty near empty street our footsteps echo off the blank shuttered shop fronts and workshops. On a wall somebody has chalked, "Arsenal for the cup". Somewhat premature this, the soccer season being a mere three weeks old. At City Road we catch the first tram to the Angel.
The destinations of London trams are known by Public Houses; The Princess Alice, The Boylen, The Crooked Billet, The Angel, although the last is now a Lyons restaurant. Alas we are losing our familiar, cheap trams which are gradually being replaced by trolley buses. To ease traffic congestion say the authorities, but we believe it is a long term preparation for the war we are convinced is not many years away.
The heart of London's theatre land is Shaftesbury avenue. If you follow up that street and continue approximately north east you will, with luck find Rosebery Avenue, where at the very end stands the Sadlers Wells Theatre. An unpretentious rectangle on an island site in unfashionable Islington. It is about as far from London's commercial theatres as it could be and still be within reach of ardent theatre goers. It has a long history, the first theatre there having been founded in the 1680Ős at about he time our Spitalfields Hugenots were fleeing from France.
We arrived to find that we are not the first; half a dozen aficionados have already staked their places. Familiar faces from many previous Saturday morning vigils greet us quietly. We are queuing for the Amphitheatre, actually the first rows of the gallery but with upholstered benches divided into separate seats by rails. Our ears and more persuasively our pockets, convince us that they are acoustically the best seats in the house. We are all in our late teens or early twenties. Most seem to be middle class, that is, not workers in factories or rag trade sweat shops; students perhaps or office workers. I suspect that opera is all we have in common.
We have two and a half hours until the box office opens. Some try to read in the dim light; flasks of tea are produced. Places are held while we wander over to the coffee stall. We talk; mostly about music and especially opera. Some name dropping - Joan, Lilian. Joan is Joan Cross our favourite soprano, Lilian is Miss Bayliss, revered as the moving spirit behind the Opera company. The queue grows.
A young woman - a girl - derided the conventional belief that there are no world class English singers. "Joan Cross", she claims. "is as good as any of the continentals they get at Covent Garden". Joan Cross is singing tonight.
A ma about our age, thin, bespectacled, takes up the thread. "Even here Joan is recognized as a great soprano, but some of our other British singers are also world class". This man is different. Middle class by our standards, but Jewish rather than Anglo Saxon middle class. Musically literate, he talks with knowledge of singers and opera productions from Britain and overseas. No, he has not seen Figaro before; he knows the opera well but from recordings. Record I assume purchased new from the HMV shop in Oxford Street; clean, pristine. Not the slightly worn, occasionally scratched disc we buy cheaply from back street market stalls.
At eight o'clock there is an announcement. With concern for its most ardent supporters the box office will open half an hour early. This is followed by less welcome news. We are to be allowed two tickets per person instead of the usual four. This is awkward; we want to book for a party of six. Some hasty enquires reveal two people who only want one ticket each. By nine thirty we are on our way to the municipal baths where we can relax and catch up on our lost sleep.
York Hall baths in Bethnal Green provides a touch of oriental luxury for a shilling or so. First I visit the dry hot rooms, three of these and follow on to the steam rooms. Then a plunge in the little pool and a rest on one of the canvas stretcher beds until the masseur is ready for me. I feel good after that and order egg on toast. I feel even better when I am asked to join a game of solo whist and win half a crown which about pays my expenses.
In the evening I join the others and we make our way to the theatre. It has been a long day but we feel quite pleased with ourselves. To see and hear for the first time "The Marriage of Figaro" with its comedy, impeccably constructed complicated plot, its social comment and of course and above all glorious music was well worth that early rising and long cold wait. I have since attended more elaborately staged, perhaps better sing performance but that is the one that remains in my memory.
Harold Rosenthal, opera critic, Covent Garden archivist and editor of 'Opera' magazine, in his autobiography "My Mad World of Opera" tells of queuing for the 'Amphi' at Sadlers Wells to see The Marriage of Figaro. The cast included Joan Cross, Arnold Matters, Peter Hemming and Winifred Lawson. The conductor was Warwick Braithwaite. Mr. Rosenthal writes that there was a prejudice against British singers, it being thought in Italy and Germany that the English were unmusical and he believes that most of the above did not get the international recognition that they deserved. It is a pleasant thought that unknowing, I queued and discussed music with the future editor of 'Opera' magazine. I know that I shared with him a rare feeling of delight that night after experiencing Figaro for the first time.
John Braham