To a stiflingly hot Cirque Royale this evening to see La Monnaie’s new production of  Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia, with a mise-en-scène by Guy Joosten. It is the season of coughs and colds. Singers are as vulnerable as anybody else. But when do you pull the plug on a performance and refund the audience or re-schedule? This evening Lucrezia Borgia herself (soprano Elena Mosuc) was so ill that she could not even take the stage to mime. Her notoriously demanding role was admirably sung by one lady (we didn’t catch the name) and physically replaced on the stage by another (Joosten’s assistant) but, not knowing the libretto, the latter did not try to mime. It was, for us, an absence too far, which was a distracting shame. This is Joosten’s fourth femme fatale (after Lucia di Lammermoor, Elektra and Salome) and Borgia’s passively mute presence fatally undermined Donizetti’s (and Joosten’s) portrayal of the smouldering dynamics and vicious undertows surrounding Lucrezia Borgia. I have written before about the temptation to engage in gimmicks and more-or-less otiose references to popular culture and they were here a-plenty: the droogs from Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, pigs’ masks – from the Saw horror movies maybe?, nuns wearing sexy underwear, an ubiquitous revolver, and gratuitous representations of the sexual act. The real Lucrezia Borgia, ancestress of, among others, Juan Carlos I of Spain, Albert II of Belgium and Henri, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, almost certainly got an unfair press but as a character this treacherously obsessive poisoner is a fascinating creation, the original fatal attraction.

All day today the European Economic and Social Committee has hosted a rich and animated conference designed to celebrate Civil Society Day 2013. The conference, entitled ‘As European as we can get! Bringing the economy, solidarity and democracy together’, brought to the Committee’s Jacques Delors headquarters building – the house of civil society, as more than one participant pointed out – an impressive array of representatives from civil society organisations, the academic and media worlds and the EU institutions, to debate such themes as ‘how to make local civil society heard at European level?’, ‘how can the effective exercise of economic and social rights reinforce active citizenship?’ and ‘active and participatory citizenship for a more legitimate Europe.’ The conference ended with concluding observations from European Commission Vice-President Viviane Reding, based on the results of a recent Eurobarometer survey with, for the first time, questions specifically addressing the issue of Europeans’ engagement in participatory democracy. The picture shows the opening session, jointly chaired by EESC President Staffan Nilsson and Jean-Marc Roirant, President of the European Civic Forum and of the European Year of Citizens Alliance. Others on the podium: Christophe Rouillon, Mayor of Coulaines (France), Vice-President of the Association of French Mayors and a Member of the Committee of the Regions, Antigoni Papadopoulou, Member of the European Parliament and rapporteur for the European Year of Citizens (2013), and Anthony Allen, Research Director at TNS Opinion, which carried out the Eurobarometer survey. Together with the Eurobarometer poll findings (which demonstrated very clearly the important underpinning role played by civil society organisations in our democracies), I was very much interested in the findings of Thomas Persson, Associate Professor at Uppsala University, who used the Reach directive as a test case to demonstrate that whilst civil society involvement may improve democratic representation, it may also increase political inequality, because (a little self-evidently) some groups have a much better chance of influencing policy/legislation than others. His clear conclusion, however, was that the involvement of organised civil society is an important flanking support to representative democracy. All-in-all, it was a fascinating day’s reflections.

Two days ago I posted a piece on this blog about a pleasant and poignant evening spent with two British composers/musicians, Frank Renton and Nigel Clarke. This evening I was supposed to be joining them for the consummation (if I can put it like that) of our creative relationship. Alas, work prevented me from being at the recording studios, though it didn’t really matter. With his innovative spirit Nigel has put together a project involving himself (as composer), Frank (as narrator), me (as ‘poet’), Luc Vertommen (as conductor) and the Brass Band Buizingen (as musical executor), together with several brilliant solo musicians, in recording a double CD of music (mostly Nigel’s) and poetry (mostly mine, ahem) performed to an extraordinary level of excellence by Brass Band Buizingen. In the picture, Frank is reading one of the poems in the recording studio. When it comes to his inspiration, Nigel can be a magpie. The City in the Sea, for example, was inspired variously by Debussy, Edgar Allan Poe and the fate of the Suffolk city of Dunwich. Writing poetry to accompany Nigel’s compositions is a challenge and a privilege and, above all, a pleasure. You can hear a rough recording of Frank reading my poem, The City in the Sea,  here, and of gifted musician Glenn Van Looy rehearsing an excerpt of Nigel’s composition of the same title with Brass Band Buizingen here. There’s a Frank Renton interview about the whole experience here. He is interviewing conductor Luc Vertommen and brilliant young musicians Glenn Van Looy and cornet player Harmen Vanhoorne, both of whom will figure largely in the double CD. Watch this space!

Today I was proud to receive a complementary copy of a new text book about the European Commission by Manuel Szapiro, a young official in the European Commission and a lecturer at the College of Europe (Bruges)  and Sciences Po (Paris). The book is entitled: The European Commission, A Practical Guide – What It Is, What it Does, How It Does It and it does just what it says and is therefore priceless to anybody working in or with the institution. On the back-cover blurb Commission Vice-President Marius Sefcovic praises ‘the book’s pragmatic approach and lively content… this in-depth practical look from the inside contributes to fighting … a persistent lack of knowledge regarding this one-of-a-kind institution.’ It is the latest product from the ever-excellent stable of John Harper Books and I commend it warmly. I confess to a personal interest. When I became a professor at the College of Europe in 2000, I was given as assistant a very bright young Franco-Spanish gentleman who had finished top of the previous year as a student. Together, Manuel Szapiro and I built a course (about the European Parliament) from scratch and then implemented it. One of the challenges busy practitioners face in teaching at Bruges is a sheer lack of time to survey the literature. With Manu (as he is known) as my assistant that was never a problem. It was an immense privilege to have Manu as my assistant and I am hugely proud of, though not surprised by, his latest achievement.

This morning I met Christian Weger, an EESC official and, by chance, one of my former students at the College of Europe in Bruges. He had come to inform me about a wonderful project on which he will shortly embark. He plans to take a year’s unpaid leave and set off around the world. His idea is to install himself in different cities around the globe, staying in each for a month or, in some cases, maybe two. He has a number of art projects, from photography to writing (a blog and a journal), and, in some places, where he speaks the language, he plans to do some voluntary work, offering to help out local NGOs. He is still working on his itinerary. He will use two round-the-world tickets to enable him to zig-zag back and forth between the hemispheres (also so as to avoid winter). His planned route at present will take in Rio de Janeiro, Santiago de Chile, Buenos Aires, Melbourne, Auckland, Japan, South Korea, Tel Aviv, Istanbul, Montreal, Seattle, Mexico City, Hawaii, Hong Kong, Mumbai, and Cape Town. I think his idea is brilliant and I am warmly encouraging him to go for it. For, in effect, Christian is about to live our dream. I am frankly admiring of Christian’s courage and the discipline and determination he is bringing to this self-imposed task (boiling his possessions down to a suitcase and a carry-aboard bag, for example). Bon voyage!

About once every six months the EESC organises a series of information sessions for newcomers and I am traditionally invited to speak last on the first day. It’s not exactly the ‘death slot’ (that’s the first hour after lunch, when eyelids droop). Nevertheless, it is always a potential challenge to talk to a group of people who, if not already punch-drunk from speeches, have had a long day. My messages are simple ones. I tell them why and how I came to the Committee myself and why I still believe in it. I tell them about the role they will henceforward all play as members of the European Union’s communication team, in the sense that their behaviour away from work will either confirm or confound prejudices about ‘Eurocrats’. Above all, I tell them about our members and about their unique authenticity, based on the fact that they are true volunteers who spend most of their time out in the ‘real world’ (not Brussels) and who do not get a salary for what they do. What this means is that they rarely, if ever, ‘go native’ and retain their critical faculties about the European Union. This is a priceless attribute, since our members are not there to say what people would like to hear but what they feel needs to be said, and this on the basis of their expertise as representatives of civil society organisations. Many of them are passionate about the European cause and very supportive of the integration process but they frequently express that passion and support through constructive criticism, surely the best sort of criticism there can be.

This evening I had a most entertaining and at times moving supper with Frank Renton, a musician (a distinguished trumpet player), conductor and broadcaster and host for the past fifteen years of BBC Radio 2’s programme, Listen to the Band, and fellow British composer and musician Nigel Clark. A good friend, Nigel (his blog is here) has plotted a collaborative project for the three of us and a group of Belgian musicians, about which I shall write more in a subsequent post, but this evening was more one long extended sequence of anecdotes and reminiscences. I sat enthralled, for Frank and Nigel seemed to have met and/or worked with most British post-war composers and musicians. One I knew less about was George Lloyd, like Renton and Clarke a soldier musician early in life and in many ways a tragic figure. Frank told the extraordinary story of the wartime experience which was to tinge his work with a tragic tone for ever afterwards (his Royal Parks Suite, for example). As his wiki entry describes it, “Lloyd served in World War II with the Royal Marines as a bandsman. On board the cruiser HMS Trinidad on Arctic convoys he was one of the Bandsmen manning the Transmitting Station, which was situated deep in the hull of the ship. In 1942, the ship fired a faulty torpedo which travelled in a circular track and hit the ship, fracturing a large fuel oil tank. Many of Lloyd’s shipmates were drowned in the fuel oil, and he was the last man to escape from the compartment. He suffered severe mental trauma.” Of all the ghastly ways that ghastly war created for people to die, drowning in engine oil must have been particularly attrocious – thirty-two men dead, and all from the absurdity of a faulty torpedo. The ship, HMS Trinidad  somehow managed to survive the incident, only to suffer an enemy attack as it limped home (losing another sixty-three men, including twenty survivors from another sunken ship). She was scuttled by her escort north of North Cape. During a long convalesence, recovering from this trauma, Lloyd (picture) wrote his Fourth Symphony, entitled “The Arctic” and which he prefaced with the description “… a world of darkness, storms, strange colours and a far-away peacefulness”.

On 8 January I was very happy to note that David Bowie had resurfaced majestically. There’s further good news for music lovers: Nick Cave has a new album (with the Bad Seeds) out (Push the Sky Away) and it is also a return to form. Indeed it is one of those exceptional albums where every single track is very good or better and it is still growing on me. My better half described it as a work of maturity, with none of the bolshie bad boy business of the hard rocker. We’re closer here to the Murder Ballads.  For a taster, try Higgs Boson Blues. Now all we need is for Paul Auster to publish a novel up there at the same level as Moon Palace or The New York Trilogy.

Thanks to a generous and very timely gift from E (thank you!), yesterday evening I watched Nanni Moretti’s Habemus Papem. Without wishing to give away too much of the plot, a brilliant Michel Piccoli plays a reluctant Pope on a sort of Roman holiday, Vatican-style. Pope Benedict XVI, now retired, said that his 2005 election to the role felt like ‘a guillotine’. The fascinating opening passages of this film display wonderfully well how younger front-runners and favourites among the college of cardinals may be gradually abandoned in favour of the safer choice of the wisdom of age. Certainly, age may bring wisdom but it also brings infirmity.  In his statement, Pope Benedict who was 78 when he became Pope and will be 86 in April — said he had come to the certainty “that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.” It is a massive job to take on at any age but must seem particularly daunting to somebody nearer to 80 than 70. Listening to Sunday on BBC Radio early this morning I was reminded that, technically, any Catholic male who has reached the age of reason, is not a heretic, is not in schism, and is not “notorious” for simony can be elected pope — there is no other requirement for election. It might even be technically possible for the cardinals to elect a non-Catholic male, if they had reason to believe that he would immediately convert to Catholicism. The election of the pope almost always takes place in the Sistine Chapel, in a “conclave” (so called because the cardinal electors are theoretically locked in, cum clave, until they elect a new pope). Three cardinals are chosen by lot to collect the votes of absent cardinal electors (by reason of illness), three are chosen by lot to count the votes, and three are chosen by lot to review the count of the votes. The ballots are distributed and each cardinal elector writes the name of his choice on it and pledges aloud that he is voting for “one whom under God I think ought to be elected” before folding and depositing his vote on a plate atop a large chalice placed on the altar. The plate is then used to drop the ballot into the chalice, making it difficult for electors to insert multiple ballots. Before being read, the ballots are counted while still folded; if the number of ballots does not match the number of electors, the ballots are burned unopened and a new vote is held. Otherwise, each ballot is read aloud by the presiding Cardinal, who pierces the ballot with a needle and thread, stringing all the ballots together and tying the ends of the thread to ensure accuracy and honesty. Balloting continues until someone is elected by a two-thirds majority. Truly, nobody can know what the result might be. This film addresses a serious theme (the (un)readiness for (un)expected leadership). Moretti does not so much pull his punches as provide a surprisingly affectionate portrait of a venerable institution in one of its periodic leadership changes. My grouse is that sometimes Moretti cannot resist the reductio ad absurdum lure of farce, but I accept that it’s a cultural thing. The Italians love their slapstick (notably, in this case, cardinals playing volleyball and a Swiss guard profiting from a stay in the papal appartments) and are very good at it.

This morning’s Financial Times carried an article that was both fascinating and frightening and certainly futuristic, prompting one reader to inquire whether the article was a month early. Scientists, the article reported, trained rats in Durham, North Carolina, and Natal, Brazil, to work together to solve problems. Electrodes picked up the brain activity of the first rat, the ‘encoder’, as it solved a problem of some sort and fed it over the internet into the brain of its geographically distant partner, the ‘decoder’, facing the same problem and with no visual clues. The best decoder rats mimicked their encoder partners 70 per cent of the time. This was, in other words, telepathy. Frighteningly, one of the professors involved in the experiments said that the discovery could lead to ‘a biological computer – or ‘brain net’ – linking multiple brains; we cannot even predict what kinds of emergent properties would appear when animals begin interacting as part of a ‘brain-net’. In theory, you could imagine that a combination of brains could provide solutions that individual brains cannot achieve by themselves. One animal might even incorporate another’s sense of self.’ Certainly, the decoder rats in the experiment began to represent the encoders’ whiskers as well as their own in their tactile cortex: ‘The rat created a representation of a second body on top of its own,’ said the Professor (Miguel Nicolelis, of Duke University). As science fiction film fans will recall, the existence of such a neural network (of human brains) is the basic plot device in The Matrix film series. The future is upon us.