Proms, 9/11 musical offer different takes on the glories of live music

My father lands at Heathrow tonight from a small town in mid-Missouri. He already has seven outings booked in his six-week visit: two musicals, one opera and four orchestral concerts. His home may be the state capital, but it's still a tiny place with limited possibilities for live music. Especially on a big scale. So when Dad comes to England, he indulges himself.

It's something those of us who live in the orbit of London forget. We have so many opportunities, they're easy to take for granted. And until you're starved of it, you can forget just how different live music is from the recorded alternative. Whatever the quality of your audio system, nothing compares to being in the same room with the people making the music.

I was twice-blessed with such magic this week, first with Wagner night at the Proms and then at the musical Come From Away.

The latter is the story of how tiny Gander, Nova Scotia and its surrounding communities coped with 7,000 passengers from re-routed planes grounded by the terror attacks on 9/11, 2001. We saw it on September 11th, which made an inevitably poignant evening even more so. I can't think of any better way to mark such a grim anniversary, since the story celebrates the essential goodness of human nature. In times of real crisis, people tend to find their best selves and take care of each other.

The staging is reminiscent of Hamilton, with a sparse set, a handful of props and a large turntable put to clever use. An ensemble cast of about a dozen slips in and out of characters with simple costume changes, doing a remarkable job of playing both villagers and the "plane people". I assumed they'd copied the more famous musical, but Come From Away's origins pre-date Hamilton by at least a year. Score one for the Canadians.

Score quite a few for the Canadians, actually. This is as fine a piece of national promotion as you can get. The storylines of stereotypical New Yorkers and Los Angelenos being transformed by the wholesome goodness of their friendly neighbours to the north might be a bit hackneyed, but it's heartwarming. The show is essentially a series of short vignettes stitched together, all based on real people. Though the authors created some composite stories to move the plot along, many are pretty much as they happened: Beverly Bass, American Airlines' first female pilot, doing her best to take care of her plane, crew and passengers; Hannah O'Rourke, mother of a New York firefighter (who was later confirmed amongst the lost); Gander's heroic Mayor Claude Elliot; Bonnie Harris, the manager of the local animal shelter who defied airport lockdown regulations to get to and take care of dogs, cats and two rare bonobo chimps stuck in aircraft holds. There's even a real-life love story of a Dallas divorcee and a workaholic, lonely Brit whose lives are brought together by the madness, and end up together after it.

Most of the music is toe-tappingly infectious, drawing heavily on Celtic melodies and at its best when the whole cast breaks into a ceilidh. Though there are a few traditional musical theatre belters ("I am here" as Hannah longs to hear news of her son, "Me and the sky" as Beverly tells the story of her life), the tunes aren't memorable enough to send you out humming. Like the cast themselves, the songs are an ensemble brought together in support of the greater story.

It's not all sweetness and light, and doubtless wouldn't be taken seriously if it was. The initial stress of the passengers as they're locked inside the planes for long hours with no information is stomach-churning, especially for frequent fliers. Though set only 18 years ago, Come From Away reminds us that there were few mobile phones then and none of them "smart". Have tissues ready to mop up your tears when the plane people finally learn what happened. And there's a dark, important storyline of the Muslim passengers who were suddenly treated with suspicion and cast out as others react in fear. It's an important reminder that the worst part of terrorism is how the fear we carry with us afterwards can change us. Few respond as well as the residents of Gander.

One wonders how Siegfried would respond in a modern crisis. Wagner's hero, despite achieving a happy ending, had to rush off on more adventures, trash his relationship and ultimately bring down the old world order. Fortunately he did it to one of drama's most stirring soundtracks.

The 68th Prom of 2019 was Wagner night. Promoted as "the world's greatest classical music festival", the Proms make a bumper crop of concerts (75 this year) accessible to the general public. Our upper circle tickets were just under £17 per person, the equivalent of a couple of drinks in a London pub. You can spend more, but the point is: you don't have to. Proms are also broadcast on TV and radio, so people who can't be there in person can get in on the fun.

It was the joy of "in person" that brought us, of course. All music sounds better live, Wagner even more so. Regular readers will know that our affection for the bombastic German extends to patronage of Longborough Festival Opera, England's Wagner specialists, and we travel there for one Wagner production each summer. Their work has become justifiably famous and Wagnerian conductor Anthony Negus is regularly praised for his orchestra. But the Royal Albert Hall does things on a very different scale. The orchestra of almost 100 players, complete with four harps and a jumbo percussion section, would have trouble fitting inside Longborough's entire opera house, much less its orchestra pit.

The result was a sensuous blanket of romantic sound. I defy anyone not to tremble with emotion when hearing Siegfried's death and funeral march in such surroundings. It was, quite literally, breath-taking. The whole programme was a delight, enhanced by bringing in composers who influenced, or were influenced by, Wagner's work.

The first half brought the theme of the enchanted forest to life, anchored by a piece from Siegfried called Forest Murmurs in which our eponymous hero has acquired the ability to understand the forest birds and listens to their conversations. It's magical. Things had kicked off with a bit of Carl Maria von Weber, and ended with a fantastic Cesar Franck piece called Le Chausseur Maudit (The Accursed Hunter). I'm a big fan of music that tells a story, and this one is a corker. A French nobleman skips church to go hunting on a Sunday, breaking the laws of God and man. The devil turns up to dispense justice and the hunter becomes the hunted for all eternity. Hunting horns, waves of strings, escalating tension: this is a piece that deserves to be better known.

Part two pulled together the best parts of Gotterdammerung, the last of Wagner's ring cycle, into a continuous run of music for about an hour, with singers giving us a bit of Siegfried and Brunnhilde. The joy of live isn't just the big, bold bits, but the quiet as well. If you've ever listened to Wagner (other than the continuously energetic Ride of the Valkyries) you'll notice that he builds drama by interspersing the bombast with quiet, gentle parts. You end up either constantly fiddling with your sound levels to hear it all, or missing whole sections. In person, you get it all and appreciate the magnificent scope of the music.

We made a night of it by eating in the Elgar Room inside the Royal Albert Hall, which you can book at the same time you get your tickets. The irony, of course, is that we spent about three times as much per person on food and drink as we did on the music, but I suppose the profits all go back into keeping entertainment like this functioning so we can feel worthy about it. The Elgar does a three-course set menu for £35 with upscale British bistro food. It opens at 5 giving you time for a leisurely two courses before heading to your seats, then you can return for pre-ordered dessert at the interval. They helpfully provide plastic cups for you to take remaining wine with you into the hall.

If Dad's upcoming experiences are anywhere near as good as these, he'll have plenty of great memories to take back to Jefferson City.