Cultural challenges?

 

 

Well, a second viewing of Aida in the Liceu last night has not changed my opinion of the production – though musically (orchestra, chorus, and soloists) it was as good as my first experience.

     As my second viewing was with friends who were seeing the production for the first time, I kept my negative views to myself until the interval when I was able to add a certain amount of my sored and repressed venom to the general rejection of what the director, Shirin Neshat, had presented.

     The irritation with the front-of-curtain processions, the appearance and inexplicable nature of the veiled characters in black, the one-note moral argument, and the static quality of much of the stage work, all came in for fully justified criticism – while the music producers were as justly lauded.

     This time around I felt much more irritation about the use of film projected onto the blank surfaces of the hollowed out rotating cube that constituted the scenery.  It seemed to me that the director was caught between metaphor and reality and did not give any sort of coherent argument for the differing portrayals of action on stage or indeed on ‘screen’.

     The March of the Zombies, that comprised the last of the front-of-curtain processions before the final scenes, did not provoke the slow handclap and boos that accompanied my first view of this charade, and the conductor was not called on to quell incipient mutiny by the audience with a hard stare.

     Musically this production is redeemed by the quality of the music produced but not justified!

 

 

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Our second foray into the music scene is due to be a lunchtime performance in the Palau, but our plans may be derailed by bad weather.  If it is only a spot of rain, then I couldn’t care less, but some of the downpours that we have had recently have been tropical in their intensity, and given the lunatic level of driving normally, I do not want to be on the road in challenging conditions with The Driving Death Cult!  We will see.

 

 

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In my Huxley research, the second researcher that I have contacted with a view to looking through the Chatto archives in the University of Reading, has explained that she is fully booked until some time next year; so back to the drawing board.  Though I do have a list of further names of people centred in the area who are contactable, so all is not lost.  Yet.

     The irony of a wide-ranging research project focussing down to a single footnote, which will be used as the basis for an entire research paper, is not lost on me.

     The problem of having a topic so narrow is that the information that is central to my ‘thesis’ and that will be the original element, is contained in an archive that is not readily accessible to me, though it would be just a car drive away were I still living in Cardiff.     

     Well, that is something that I should have thought about when I was doing the original research all those years ago – like half a century ago!  Dear god, it does seem extraordinary writing sentences like that, and even more so when I unearthed my original research and started reading through extensive notes made by someone I barely recognized as myself! 

     I am sure that there is a moral lurking somewhere in those last sentences, but I can’t be bothered to tease it out!

 

 

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With all the apocalyptic talk of hurricane-level storms for tomorrow, outside, now, there is bright sunshine and the temperature is a more-than-acceptable 23C.  And we are preparing to go out for a menu del dia – something I feel I deserve given the demands of an evening performance of a Grand Opera last night.

     As I am now used to going to the opera for the Sunday afternoon series (and therefore getting out of the theatre at a reasonable time) it was a shock to the system to find myself hours past my bedtime before head finally hit the pillow.  And, to make matters worse, it took me some time before I finally got off to sleep, so I felt more than justified ignoring the raucous interruption of my reveries by my mobile phone urging me to gird my loins and get to the pool for an early morning swim.

 

 

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     Everyone is entitled to a leisurely day from time to time, and this is one of mine.