From Paris I took the train to London to spend a few days and to see a performance of Benjamin Britten's opera adaption of Thomas Mann's novel, Death in Venice at the Garsington country opera outside of the city.
I hadn't brought my dinner jacket to Paris with me, so I arrived the day before the show to have a rental (for hire as they refer to it in London) fitted that I could retrieve the following morning.
My friend met me at St. Pancras and we had a quick lunch near the station before heading to the tailor. Once the dinner jacket had been measured and the order placed, we took the tube back to his flat in West Kensington to drop off my bags and then headed to the Royal Automobile Club for high tea.
The tea was terrific, I ordered a pot of their house blend and we split the tower which was a nice mixture of sandwiches and pastries before heading in for use of their extensive turkish bath.
Tea on the terrace of the Royal Automobile Club
In the turkish we began in the frigidarium, a large room with hard wood lounge chairs in the center with individual curtained-off beds running along the walls of both long sides; within which you can change into a robe and press a button to receive tea and food service without leaving your bed.
Within the further sections of the turkish bath, there are several large rooms at varying temperatures and with comfortable teak chairs proceeding into wet room which contains showers, a sauna and steam room and a cold plunge pool which sits comfortably around an icy 40 degrees fahrenheit.
I spent several hours unwinding between the varieties of rooms before showering and cooling off in the frigidarium, after which we went to the Long Bar restaurant, a dark-wooded room with great leather chairs in the lower section of the club for a typical English dinner of carved roast beef and potatoes.
We returned to the flat in West Kensington and I read and worked for a few hours before going to sleep.
The next morning we had a small breakfast and then I walked the pleasant mile and a half through Kensington and Chelsea to the rental place to retreat my clothes for the opera that evening. The weather was cool and pleasant in London and I enjoyed walking around the city, a place I had not seen since my visit with my grandfather in August of 2012.
Following the walk back I had my hair cut and we had a sushi lunch before showering and changing for the show.
Depending on traffic, the Wormsley Estate - which hosts the Garsington Opera - can easily be over an hours drive from London and we had reserved a table for tea beside the cricket pitch prior to the show so we gathered our items for the intermission picnic and left early to avoid congestion exiting the city.
It was a beautiful drive through the country and we arrived with plenty of time for a leisurely tea and to wander the grounds for a while before the garden party/champagne reception for opera donors.
Tents set up for reserved intermission picnics
The Cricket Pitch
Garden Party
Death in Venice follows sort of an odd, Nietzschean concept of the opposition between the Apollonian and Dionysian from his The Birth of Tragedy; and Britten's opera is an interesting adjustment as I had never previously attended an opera written and performed entirely in English.
At the intermission we retired to our reserved table near the pond for our picnic dinner. We had brought with us smoked salmon with cream cheese appetizers with a cold vegetable lentil salad as a side, and then grilled chicken and salmon for dinner along with a terrific version of a potato salad.
The second act was powerfully written and by the end of the performance I was incredibly impressed with the singers. When the show ended we all filed out of the outdoor theatre and returned to our cars for the late drive back to London.
