Morse has an epiphany at a performance in which a Welsh diva is singing Wagner. The next morning he's still a bit high and indulges in a good-natured exchange with Lewis. But, like those of Stephen Daedalus, his epiphany is knee-capped when the diva, part of a procession at Oxford, about to be awarded an honorary degree is shot down in a courtyard. The investigation takes him into the inner workings of the university and into the world of an opera superstar. Opera fans will hear some nice excerpts from Wagner.
I've been working my way through the boxed set and this is the most enjoyable episode so far. The actual plot is as convoluted as ever, and opera has nothing to do with it, but in its first half the story comes close to being a comedy, despite a murder and the shooting of the singer.
Rachel Weisz is a beautiful young student. Her legs are a little shapeless. None of her features can explain her attractiveness, not by themselves; but as a gestalt, her face is greater than the sum of its parts. (An earlier episode had Elizabeth Hurley dressed as a school girl. Yum.) The best lines go to John Gielgud, older but more animated than he's been in years. The part of the stuffy and blatantly superior Chancellor of Oxford suits him well. Nobody is better at the cutting remark, the straightforward dig. Here are two examples, both of which had me laughing out loud.
Gielgud, an American doctor, and the Vice Chancellor are walking across the campus. Gielgud carries on about how Wagner can't be blamed for the concentration camps simply because he was Hitler's favorite composer. "I happen to like Cole Porter. What does that make me?" The doctor is quick to respond: "A closet gay?" "Eh, what?", says Gielgud, who is hearing challenged. The Vice Chancellor interrupts with the observation that lunch is probably ready. It helps to appreciate the joke if we understand that both Porter and Gielgud were gay themselves.
Another example. Gielgud is carrying on in his snooty way about how readily doctorates are awarded these days. The American he's talking to says that he's a doctor. Gielgud snuffs him, saying that he's only a medical doctor and couldn't pass the examinations at Oxford. American: "I have two honorary degrees." Gielgud: "I have fifteen, if you don't count the one from Yale." American: "I'm FROM Yale." Gielgud: "There you are -- two a penny."
As a matter of fact there are quite a few deliberately comic scenes in this episode that hinge on homosexuality. Harry Ditson does a splendid job as a flamboyantly gay vocal coach or whatever he is. As Sergeant Lewis interviews him on a park bench, Ditson keeps throwing out hints and scootching a little closer to Lewis, who moves away pari passu. Finally Ditson takes umbrage at one of Lewis's question, looks him up and down, berates him for his "shiny suit," and barges off through the shrubbery, exclaiming, "You'll get nothing more from me." Lewis turns to his notebook and mutters, "You won't get anything from me either." I suppose a lot of the humor is politically incorrect but I think it will probably go over successfully in the gay community -- and it IS terribly amusing, especially considered within the brackets imposed on the series by previous episodes.
Not that it's all fun and games by any means. The rehearsal pianist has some cogent remarks to make about his own mediocre talent being a gift that's made it possible for a genius to become a success, for instance. And there are the shootings, of course, but they're more of a nuisance than anything else, except for one hypothetical question given by the murderer at the end. It's a question Morse can't answer.
Gielgud is preparing a speech, dictated to his wife, to be given at his retirement ceremony. "There are many Oxfords," it begins, and then he names them -- New Zealand, Mississippi, New York, and so on -- "and perhaps they are beautiful and perhaps even seats of learning." His wife stops him, saying that the word "perhaps" is insulting. Gielgud struggles to rephrase the opening. You ought to hear him trying to keep the contempt out of his voice. I'm laughing as I write this.
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