Opera and the majesty of the law

I went along to the High Court on Friday to follow Raymond Stevenson's case and for the third day Raymond was in the witness box and will be again today. Southwark Council is paying for a high class barrister, Lord Foulks, who has apparently being specialising recently in compensation cases against the police. Southwark Council's legal bill is already estimated at over £1 million and witnessing who was present in the court it was not surprising. Two barristers, three solicitors, two external planning experts and the Head of Planning, are all present every day for six weeks at the council tax payers' expense. Raymond seemed to be holding his all quite well when I was there during the cross examination. I understand that both Harriet Harman and my local ward councillor, Dora Dixon-Fyle, now cabinet member for Health and Social Care in Southwark in the Labour administration, are both being subpoenaed to appear.Raymond has also the former Lib Dem councillor, Jonathan Hunt, who constantly spoke up for Raymond's cause until he was sidelined, plus another former Lib Dem councillor who served on the Planning Committee at the time when many of these issues first arose. The planning experts who have been following the case daily are going to be called as council witnesses. I am going along to the court again today to catch up with the latest developments and give Raymond my support.

As those who know me well will attest, I am a big fan of opera and on Saturday evening I went to a performance of 'Faust' by Gounod at the English National Opera. I had not seen the opera for many years - it was apparently in the late 19th century one of the most popular operas in the repetoire. All that most people know of the work is the famous 'Soldiers Chorus' which originally in 1859, when the work was first performed, during the Second French Empire, was a call to arms and to French martial glory. In this production, which was set in a First World War setting, it was anything but that, and was sung by a gang of wounded and clearly disorientated soldiers returning from the battlefields of Verdun. At one point, when a photographer took a shot of the assembled soldiers for the propaganda sheet of the day, the flash set one soldier off, who was clearly shellshocked and the officer was rebuked for putting him in that position.

The peformance was also set in a post nuclear bomb world of 1945 Hiroshima, with Faust playing the role of a disillusioned scientist who is horrified at the world which he, and others who have dedicated their lives to the pursuit of physics, have created. Thus he is more than willing to sell his soul to Satan to exchange the empty and ruined world he inhabits for one of the senses and above all of love. The story of Faust still holds a deep and eternal message that knowledge or power in themselves are empty and lifeless without the redeeming qualities of love and compassion. Here there is also room for an examination of man's relationship with nature and how the artificial and seemingly advanced world of 'things' and 'possessions' can only offer short term satisfaction to the jaded soul. The performance was packed and shows that as time progresses opera constantly grows in popularity. And needless to say, the Devil had all the best tunes including some wonderful dance numbers!

And the connection between the two? In the 18th century the three areas of the law, the theatre and politics were closely linked and regarded as the three sisters. Indeed there were some, like the greatest 18th century playwright, Richard Brindsley Sheridan, who practised in all three. And having watched how barristers perform in court before a smaller but no less exclusive audience I can see the clear connection. John Mortimer, legal practitioner and writer knew the nature of the law and as when he wrote : "The glory of the advocate is to be opinionated, brash, fearless, partisan, hectoring, rude, cunning and unfair." Not for nothing was his character, Rumpole of the Bailey, one of the most loved in English fiction. He was based on what Mortimer witnessed every day in the legal profession. And politicians? For the most part they are a mixture of the actor and the advocate - the trick is being able to distinguish between fact and fiction.