A laconic message on my phone saying that 8.00 am swimming tomorrow is cancelled. No explanation.
Is later swimming OK? If people have booked later sessions, are they still available? I could of course phone up and ask, but that seems far too simple a process, while there is fruitless speculation to tempt!
And lie-ins are not an enjoyable prospect for me. As I get up at 5.45 am each day for my 6.30 am swim, the fact that I have to stay in bed until 7.15 am on the weekends because of the later starts, is something of a trial, as my body clock is set to get me to rise earlier. The extra time ‘gained’ in bed is lost to me as I struggle to stay rested and prone.
And we have just had yet another mobile phone warning about inclement weather for tonight until the early hours – though I do not think that is a factor in the cancellation of the swim tomorrow. Possibly.
Instead, I will concentrate on the performance that I am going to see tomorrow in the Liceu, the first production of the season, and starting with a Grand Opera Blockbuster – Aida! And this will be the first of the productions that will have a specially produced individual programme just for me – a touch of tautology there, but worth it to emphasise the special nature of the publication.
Aida is one of those operas that I have seen umpteen times, but I still consider it one that I do not know in the way that I would like to. Obviously, I can hum along with the famous bits, but the totality of the experience has always eluded me.
Sometimes it takes a particular performance or perhaps a truly inventive staging of the production to bring an opera firmly into my personal repertoire.
Seeing the dress rehearsal of Eugene Onegin in an 1980 WNO production conducted by Mark Ermler with Josephine Barstow and Tom Allen, with sets by Michael Yeargan and directed Andrei Serban, took an opera I had never heard before and made it an immediate part of my world. I still remember the real corn stalks in the opening scenes, the floating window for Tatyana’s dream, and the gleaming white carpet for the final duel in the snow!
Or an equally arresting production, which I again first saw in a dress rehearsal, of WNO’s 1978 production The Makropulos Case, with astonishing sets designed by Maria Björnson, the production directed by David Poutney and conducted by Richard Armstrong, with Elizabeth Söderström as Makropulos. Once seen, so known; and what some might regard as a difficult opera to take to on a first hearing, rapidly became the opera that I have probably heard and seen the most!
It is when I remember productions like these that I think of what might be my Perfect Opera Season of a dozen or so productions.
Here are the first six that came to mind, in no particular order:
The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny – Brecht/Weill
Four Saints in Three Acts – Virgil Thomson
Akhnaten – Philip Glass
A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Benjamin Britten
La Boheme – Giacomo Puccini
When I feel strong enough, I might attempt to draw up the other six candidates for inclusion!
