Let's Go With Aaron On Tuesday at Covent Garden (reports
an alert colleague) I overheard a curious remark from one excited critic waving his pencil at another— incidentally the entire audience, both voyeurs and opera-lovers, who generally divide into distinct conversational camps, seemed to spend the interval of Moses and Aaron talking about the production, partly perhaps because the orgy was still to come. The orgy, of course, had an in- fallible appeal on two fronts; not only strip- tease, ritual sacrifice, and naked rape, but also all manner of diminutive animals from donkeys and goats to a regal bull—a kind of Shetland Ayrshire—who had been seen earlier holding his own press conference from his chauffeur-driven 'van in Floral Street. We had seen honey-tongued, blandly lyrical Aaron disarm the grumbling Israelite mob with various spectacular short-term devices, such as turning water to blood. We knew that in the second act he would prevent the people from rising up to overthrow his leadership by dis- tracting their attention from their grievances to the Golden Calf. `Do you know who Aaron reminds me of?' said the gentleman in front of me. 'No, who?' said his friend. 'Harold Wilson. The resemblance is uncanny. I think I shall use it in my piece.'
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