A posy for the New Year’s lunch table, Janus faced: snowdrops and roses simultaneously fresh from the garden – symbols of a confused planet?

At the turning of the year, I remember with intense affection and admiration one of the very few public figures who one may unstintingly admire: Vaclav Havel. Against a mighty and brutal Empire he attacked only with words, words that exposed the truth and denounced the lies of Soviet culture. Truth is an elusive attribute. One particularly self-deluded colleague of mine pronounced himself recently as a “fanatic for the truth” – little realising that this was in itself a great lie. Truth is many sided, but fanaticism one eyed: the two cannot co-exist side by side.

One phrase of Havel’s I particularly admired: “The resistance of the type-writer” and it got me into a great deal of trouble. When I directed Verdi’s Macbeth in Zürich, I made Banquo become a dissident, horrified by the tyrannical development of his friend Macbeth. When he entered for his aria with his son, Fléance, the son carried a typewriter which he hid in the floor, and then proceeded to pin up typewritten “Samizdat” posters about the “missing” people, murdered by Macbeth’s regime. Banquo sings: “Watch your step, and we shall escape from this darkness.” All very logical, I thought.

At the end of the opera when Fléance reappears, having escaped Macbeth’s murderers by fleeing to England, he carries the typewriter in honour of his murdered father, and the chorus at this point are called “Bards” –one of Verdi’s few concessions to what little was known of Scottish history in Risorgimento Italy.

When the production went to San Fancisco, the stalls exploded with rancour about “that Goddamn typewriter” – “What the hell did it mean?”   

Strangely enough, the answer lay right under their noses. In the Napa valley there is a famous Winery run by a Swiss patron, Hess, which includes part of his extensive and very impressive modern art collection. When you emerge from the lift taking you up from the taste of wine to the art of good taste, the first thing you see is an early twentieth century typewriter with real flames bursting out of it. The artist explains that he thereby honours his grandfather, a journalist who was a notable campaigner for workers’ rights and democracy in South America. Voilà! Being somewhat unnerved by the intemperate conservatism of the San Franciso opera public I asked someone at the bar what had become of all those radical gay 1960s advocates of a new culture. “They all got married!” came the answer.

Havel managed the trappings of presidency and power with an admirable blend of irony and panache. After all, he was an artist, a playwright. Not many people with such serious artistic qualities have risen to high political office. Verdi was briefly a member of the Italian parliament, and his name was famously the acronym for the establishment of the Piedmontese monarchy: Vittorio Emanuele, Re D’Italia. Paderewski, the virtuoso pianist and composer was premiere of Poland. Churchill’s decent amateur painting skills seem slender by comparison, not to mention Ronald Reagan’s 2^nd rate acting career. Havel indulged his theatrical flair by ordering hilarious chocolate soldier uniforms for the Palace Guard at the famous castle from the man who costumed the film Amadeus, and beefy new rock tunes for the guard to march to. He was one of those rare men who can exploit but not be overwhelmed by their high office. Chapeau!

Havel's Chocolate Soldier!