The Spanish Embassy Puts on a Disappointing Event

Siam Society.  Bangkok, Thailand.  October 15, 2013.  It takes a little thought and organization to put on any event, and I hope that the Spanish government does better in Spain than it did in Bangkok

with the zarzuela concert it sponsored as part of a Spanish cultural week in Bangkok.  I wouldn’t ordinarily have known what “zarzuela” is, but on a visit to Spain once, I acquired a CD of zarzuela songs and it is now among my favorite CDs.  Zarzuela is a form of Spanish operetta, maybe something close to folk opera, but its defining characteristics in my mind, are its lightness, beautiful melodies, and immediately likeable orchestral music.  This evening at the Siam Society, in the presence of the Spanish ambassador, was going to be my first ever live performance of zarzuela.

Well, it turned out that the only zarzuela music there was, was relegated to the end of the evening and comprised a relatively short part of the total program.  For the first 75% of the quite long program and one very long intermission, we listened to a succession of Spanish lieder, that is, Spanish art songs, performed by eight young Thai singers, whose voices were pleasant enough, but whose repertoire of art songs (where was the zarauela?) was not even hinted at in the advance publicity I read about the evening.  I felt it was like “bait and switch.”

Guest star Lluis Llaneza belted out some zarzuela songs a la Ethel Merman

I’m sure I was the only one in the audience who cared.  In fact, many audience members were too busy doing other things to really notice what was happening on stage.  The very well dressed Spanish gentlemen seated in my row and three seats to my right, spent the first 25 minutes during his country’s musical heritage, buried in his smart phone on email, texting, and surfing, while his bright screen distracted everyone around him.  In the first row of the audience, seated there so that they could get an unobstructed view of the stage and so that the audience behind them could get an unobstructed view of their bright screens, were two ladies who kept their cameras elevated and turned on throughout the evening.  The fellow slightly in front of me was a still photographer, who repeatedly turned his camera on and off, up and down, so that he got his photos every minute or so.  Then, from throughout the auditorium, were the many intermittent flashes from those who thought that this event was a great photo opportunity.  And so it went.  It wouldn’t have been so bad, except that many in the audience were invited guests of the Spanish ambassador, and all of us were kept waiting in a 30-minute queue, while embassy personnel tried to figure out who was on the invitation list and who was not (I couldn’t see that it made any difference).  I expect that these embassy employees did their basic training at Thai immigration. 

I like to say something good about all events I attend and I can do so for this ridiculous one:  It was free.