Singular life
The great seducer
Petronella Wyatt
The other evening I was quietly sipping a drink when I looked up and recognised someone. Eh? I looked again, just to make sure. I looked a third time. I had been right at first glance. It was he. I am speaking, of course, of Don Giovanni.
It is not every day that one bumps into Don Giovanni. I had had lunch with him a few years ago but I doubted that he would remember me. After all there must have been so many women. I walked tentatively past him. I failed to catch his eye. I walked back again. This time he looked at me. He spoke. He said, 'I thought it was you.'
He was with Mrs Don Giovanni, or Donna Giovanni, as perhaps I should call her. A pristine blonde with clear, calm eyes, she smiled at me graciously. She was probably used to women gushing at her husband. I gushed, 'How wonderful to see you again.' He nodded. I told him how much I had enjoyed his television pro- gramme on himself; Don Giovanni that is. He replied, 'My wife didn't like it. I was wearing a pair of dirty boxer shorts.'
Thomas Allen, the great British baritone, — for it was he — has sung the role in Mozart's opera for 20 years. He has sung it at Covent Garden; he has sung it at La Scala. His recordings of it are definitive. When I had lunch with him a few years ago, for a piece I was doing for the Tele- graph arts pages, he said that the costume they had given him for the production at La Scala had had a tailcoat that was weighted to stop it from flapping. This was so heavy that, after a month of perfor- mances, his back became bent.
We agreed that the original Don Giovan- ni must have been very selfish and probably not all that interesting. Oscar Wilde once said that the man who goes about trying to seduce every woman he meets is boring and vulgar. The really romantic lady-killer is the man, like Byron, who says to women, go away, I don't need you, my life is com- plete without you.
I can't think of one man around now who fulfils this criteria. Certainly not Michael Douglas. I have been inundated with abuse since I wrote last week that he is unsexy, has dandruff and very stupid views on politics. A series of sex-crazed feminists jammed The Spectator switch- board demanding my head. It's true that he may have been sexier had his views on politics been different. Warren Beatty loses his appeal once he starts opening his mouth about how great the Kennedys are. Even Humphrey Bogart looked about as appetising as a rotting kipper when he decided to speak out against McCarthy- ism, made a hash of it and then retracted when his studio threatened him with sus- pension.
Noel Coward was right when he said that actors were like puppets and not entitled to have views. In any case, one always ends up confusing their views with those of the characters they play. When I was a child I met an actor called Leo Genn. I remem- bered having seen him as Petronius in Quo Vadis. He said lots of amusing cynical things, many on the subject of a new sect which called itself Christians. On being introduced I said, 'I'm so glad you don't like Christians. My father and I think they are really wet.' Mr Genn gave me a look like a Sunday School teacher. 'Young woman, you must learn that the characters played by thespians may express views that are opposed to the actor's own.'
`Then why are the character's views more interesting?' I asked with my already highly developed sense of politesse. There was a pained silence. I pressed on. Tor example, that general you played in The Longest Day was a lot more brave than you are.' At this point my mother intervened and took me away. 'I'm so sorry,' she apologised. 'Petronella drank half a bottle of liquid paraffin this morning by accident.'
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