Today is not likely to be marked with a white stone.
It took me one and a half hours to travel the 20 or so kilometres from Castelldefels to Barcelona this evening.
In the normal course of events this would have worked me up into an intolerable fury. This evening I had allowed one and half hours travel time to ensure that I arrived at a reasonable time to take my seat at the opera for the performances of ‘Bluebeard’s Castle’ and ‘The Diary of One Who Disappeared.’
The Liceu has a civilized technique for dealing with those unfortunates who believed that the road system of Barcelona was designed to facilitate the movement of cars. The opera had already started when I arrived and so I was ushered, with another harassed looking individual, into a small viewing theatre where a televised broadcast of the performance was being screened.
After a certain time an usher appeared and drove us all to the lifts where, on our appropriate floors we were met by other uniformed ushers who positioned us by the appropriate doors so that we could access our seats in the short interval of applause before the second opera started.
It was smoothly done, but I still feel that I have been cheated of an opera.
Comments on the Janácek would be based on a limited experience of the production but I have to say that it looked interesting with the soloist stripped to the half in a hole in the stage. At once point he was surrounded by writhing undulating bodies – and this was after his head had been grasped in the naked thighs of the soprano!
Ah, the wonders of modern opera production.
‘Bluebeard’s Castle’ was a production with interesting moments but not, for me, satisfying overall.
There was extensive use of gauze screens which allowed a series of projections which facilitated the creation of extraordinary ‘rooms’
and, most effectively a three dimensional line grid 
to emphasise the nature of the relationship of the two singers.
The Bartók was better sung than the Janácek, but the orchestra was the real star with superlative playing throughout.
The lighting was adventurous and effective but not slick enough to be completely convincing.
The most impressive coups de theatre were in the Bartók when the barrier to the final room was a sheet of water and when uplighting from a stage floor grid provided a short of magic carpet for the singers when there was a projected overlay of a cityscape.
An enjoyable evening: if a shorter one than intended.
And after: the most expensive bocadillos ever.
I am reminded (forcefully) of a traumatic occasion when I had a cup of coffee in the next café down from the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Elysées. I made the vast mistake of taking my coffee sitting down outside. I had no idea that there was a sliding scale of extortion, but when the bill arrived I went into cardiac arrest! It has remained a symbol of rapacity throughout my life. Its status as the most expensive causal drink in my life (allowing for inflation) was almost supplanted by the extortionate beer in the arcades of Milan.
Now the bocadillo shop on the Ramblas in Barcelona is vying to become the new Café of Shame. Itemising the individual overpriced delicacies is too painful, suffice to say what should have been a snack cost a couple of quid actually cost €27 – given the present dismal rate of exchange that’s about £21! Words fail me! And the parking was £5 too.
God knows I don’t find it at all difficult to get rid of money.
It’s a sort of gift.
It took me one and a half hours to travel the 20 or so kilometres from Castelldefels to Barcelona this evening.
In the normal course of events this would have worked me up into an intolerable fury. This evening I had allowed one and half hours travel time to ensure that I arrived at a reasonable time to take my seat at the opera for the performances of ‘Bluebeard’s Castle’ and ‘The Diary of One Who Disappeared.’
The Liceu has a civilized technique for dealing with those unfortunates who believed that the road system of Barcelona was designed to facilitate the movement of cars. The opera had already started when I arrived and so I was ushered, with another harassed looking individual, into a small viewing theatre where a televised broadcast of the performance was being screened.
After a certain time an usher appeared and drove us all to the lifts where, on our appropriate floors we were met by other uniformed ushers who positioned us by the appropriate doors so that we could access our seats in the short interval of applause before the second opera started.
It was smoothly done, but I still feel that I have been cheated of an opera.
Comments on the Janácek would be based on a limited experience of the production but I have to say that it looked interesting with the soloist stripped to the half in a hole in the stage. At once point he was surrounded by writhing undulating bodies – and this was after his head had been grasped in the naked thighs of the soprano!
Ah, the wonders of modern opera production.‘Bluebeard’s Castle’ was a production with interesting moments but not, for me, satisfying overall.
There was extensive use of gauze screens which allowed a series of projections which facilitated the creation of extraordinary ‘rooms’
and, most effectively a three dimensional line grid to emphasise the nature of the relationship of the two singers.The Bartók was better sung than the Janácek, but the orchestra was the real star with superlative playing throughout.
The lighting was adventurous and effective but not slick enough to be completely convincing.
The most impressive coups de theatre were in the Bartók when the barrier to the final room was a sheet of water and when uplighting from a stage floor grid provided a short of magic carpet for the singers when there was a projected overlay of a cityscape.
An enjoyable evening: if a shorter one than intended.
And after: the most expensive bocadillos ever.
I am reminded (forcefully) of a traumatic occasion when I had a cup of coffee in the next café down from the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Elysées. I made the vast mistake of taking my coffee sitting down outside. I had no idea that there was a sliding scale of extortion, but when the bill arrived I went into cardiac arrest! It has remained a symbol of rapacity throughout my life. Its status as the most expensive causal drink in my life (allowing for inflation) was almost supplanted by the extortionate beer in the arcades of Milan.
Now the bocadillo shop on the Ramblas in Barcelona is vying to become the new Café of Shame. Itemising the individual overpriced delicacies is too painful, suffice to say what should have been a snack cost a couple of quid actually cost €27 – given the present dismal rate of exchange that’s about £21! Words fail me! And the parking was £5 too.
God knows I don’t find it at all difficult to get rid of money.
It’s a sort of gift.
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