A show to remember

A show to remember

Every year Monte Carlo holds a Spring Arts Festival, but this year is different. The Princess Caroline of Monaco decided that instead of holding it in the city itself they should do so in Kinshasa. Yup, Kinshasa, that jewel of central Africa which resembles Monaco only in so far as gambling is big. The gamble to make enough money every day to feed your children.

Be that as it may, when word got around that the Princess was coming, society was in a twitter. Who would get invited to meet her? And when and where? We were brought into the net by a social-climbing friend who said she thought she might be able to swing a ticket to a special performance for Her Royal Highness by the Kimbanguiste Orchestra. They are the self taught orchestra with home made instruments (for more about them see “School of Hard Knocks” and “Rumble in the Rubbish”). Tickets duly obtained, it was a bit of a let down (socially speaking, of course) on the night when we found that the concert was, in fact free and open to the public. It was held at the open air amphitheatre that Mobutu had built in the grounds of his palace, and where James Brown had given a famous concert in the 70s.

The programme had three warm-up events, local tribal dancing shows, and we arrived late in the hope that we would miss them. No such luck: we sat through two extraordinarily bad performances and one, by a new youth group, quite exciting one. The events were introduced by two MCs at a level of decibels that was truly deafening. The princess, sitting in a VIP section at the front, clapped politely at the end of each performance.

While the dancing was taking place a man climbed onto a wall behind the stage to set up a projector. It was clearly not an easy job to balance on top of the wall, focus the projector and aim it at the back-projection screen, but he did it.

The serious part of the evening then started with a performance by the Monaco String Quartet. There were no programme details so we could only guess what they were playing. It sounded like Strindberg. The problems were (a) how was a tiny quartet to be heard in such a huge amphitheatre, and (b) the very cerebral music was way above the heads of the audience. Of course there were microphones, but by this time the sound engineer seemed to have slipped off for a drink because although the microphones were definitely working the sound was so low that we couldn’t here the music. All we got was the squeaking high notes of the violins. People soon stopped trying to listen and a low murmuring of people discussing who was who soon took over from the music.

After the Strindberg there was some Schubert, so at least one could pick out something of a tune, but only just. The string quartet ended its performance with the customary bows and much shouting from the crowd. The Princess looked round in delight at the enthusiastic response to the music. What she didn’t pick up was that people were saying “enough”. Anyway, the normal encore was duly played, followed by more clapping and shouting. The leader of the quartet asked whether we wanted more. “NOOOOO” came the rowdy reply. The Princess looked round again, he face alight with pleasure at the happiness their performance had brought. The quartet played another jolly piece and asked again whether we wanted more. “No, No, No” the crowd roared. Thus encouraged, the quartet played a final piece and was about to start another when the MCs (who had definitely understood what the crowd was saying) politely ended the performance and and introduced a film about the Kimbanguiste Orchestra’s trip to Monaco the previous year.

During the string quartet’s performance the projector had been turned on and was showing ads for the sponsor of the event – a local bank. Now we understood what it was really there for. But fate was against it – the film was showing but there was no sound. We dutifully watched the first five minutes in silence until it was ignominiously stopped. The Princess tried not to look disapproving.

This was followed by a choral performance while the seating was being arranged for the orchestra, who finally took their seats to huge applause. The highlight was a cello concerto, with one of the Monaco players as the soloist. At last, something to enjoy.

A show to remember, for several reasons.