After the interval of last night's Opera North production of Othello in Manchester, an apparatchik came out on stage to make an announcement. One of the singers had picked up a bad cold in Belfast last week, it appeared; he asked for our indulgence. Another, the apparatchik said, was a little hoarse because he had been "shouting his support for Wales all afternoon".
There was certainly plenty to shout about. In the Six Nations decider at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium Wales thrashed England comprehensively. They outplayed us in every department of the game - line out, scrum, breakdown, handling, kicking, decision-making, the lot. The 30-3 scoreline did not flatter the Welsh. I found it almost unbearable to watch. It helped of course that the majority of the crowd - the best part of 100,000 - passionately wanted Wales to win. Or that their dislike of England borders on the visceral.
What would be the prospects of a similar announcement being made at WNO in Cardiff? "Joe Bloggs would like you to know that his voice is hoarse because he has been cheering on England during this afternoon's thrashing of Wales". I can't see it happening personally. Our desire to stick it up the Welsh is not quite so intense, for one thing; and although the audience at the Lowry laughed last night, a Welsh audience would not have been so kind. Knowing that, the announcement would not have been made, or perhaps even suggested.
No doubt the Welsh today have some good reasons to feel resentful of the English. If one disregards events so long ago that Wales, properly speaking, was not yet a nation, I can't think offhand what those might be. Nationalism - and this is particularly true north of Carlisle - is always the same toxic mixture of sentimentality and fascism - sentimentality because it relies on a historical narrative which is false; fascism because one of its principal motivating powers is dislike of other people.
Here is the truth about the English. We are actually a bit pathetic. Particularly middle-class English people like me. A hundred and fifty years ago we were the workshop of the world, and ruled a great deal of it with a mixture of adventurism, greed and a misapprehension that Johnny Foreigner would be better off doing things the white man's way. Having expended a great deal of manpower and specie defending Europe from tyranny, we then saw the error of our ways, and gave most of our colonies back. Nowadays we have neither the resources nor the self-confidence to knock the skin off a rice pudding. That's why you can say in England that you have been cheering on the biggest rugby humiliation our team has suffered for years and an English audience will laugh politely.
A month or so ago my daughter took part in a fantastic evening the Halle put on - a concert performance of Act III of Meistersinger with extracts from the first two acts tacked on at the beginning. As the opera winds to its conclusion, Hans Sachs utters a famous defence of German art, warning what would happen to Germany if "foreign vanities" were planted in German land. Knowing how German history turned out, it's impossible to listen to this without a feeling of foreboding, but that doesn't stop the opera being widely performed.
What would be the chances of getting an opera put on in which the word German and Germany were replaced by English and England? Zero. No matter how magnificent the music. And anyway an English Hans Sachs would say, "English art can be jolly nice. But the best bits are the bits we've borrowed from other nations. And if they want to bring their art in to our country, we're totally OK with that! As for foreign culture, that can come in too. It makes our country so much more interesting and rewarding to have a diverse mix!"
The English are as embarrassed by English nationalism as they are indulgent of other people's. You could regard this as weakness. On the other hand perhaps we deserve more credit than we get for disdaining nationalism so thoroughly. It's good to be good at something after all. Even if it's not rugby.
PS The scorer of Wales's two tries, Alex Cuthbert, was born on 5 April 1990 in Gloucester. Yes, that's Gloucester, England.
