Cabined, cribbed, confined!

 

 

 

Day 3 without the car, and I am having definite withdrawal symptoms!

     It’s not as if the car wasn’t working, it was only the air conditioning and while that is an important component in comfortable driving, it doesn’t stop the wheels turning!

     It is also a worry that each day has a financial element associated with it.  I mean, given that the air con can (please God no!) cost over a thousand euros to replace I am willing to wait for them to discover that it is, eventually, only a valve or minor part in the set up that has to be replaced.  The ‘easy fix’ of recharging the system (whatever that means) has already been ruled out and the actual fault is (obviously) proving difficult to discover.  And with each passing day I become more apprehensive about the rising cost, because in the world of the car, even failure comes with a price.

     But even more worrying than the cost is the clamp that has suddenly been put on free action.  You do not realize just how much you are dependent on the car until you do not have one at your beck and call.

     Yes, I know that I have my bike, the bus and taxi, as well as the extreme alternative of actual walking.  But my bike is ruled out by my questionable equilibrium given my two new knees, the bus is not readily accessible, and taxis are ruinously expensive to use for ‘run-about’ excursions.

     So, we are now, stay-at-home carless people, moping about and resenting every house bound moment.  Luckily, we are well provided with the essentials of life and do not (at the moment) need to do any emergency shopping.  Which is just as well, as the nearest supermarket shops to us are car trips away rather than walks.

      Our one sort-of super (!) market was part of a parade of restaurants that for some inexplicable reason have suddenly closed.  So, pizza restaurant, pollo a last, bakery, ordinary restaurant (with a fair menu del dia), and corner shop – all gone, or at least all closed.  To me it makes no commercial sense at all as all the elements in the business seemed to be thriving.  It is set on a main road, has a hinterland of domestic dwellings houses and flats, and is near a camping site that always has food needs.  We have often tried to work out the Reason Why behind the changes, opening hours, closures, and change of business that happen in Castelldefels – and have failed to find any logical justification for some of the decisions made by owners and managers.  But, there again, what do we know of commercial pressures – one fears that it is a murky world behind the smiling faces and clean table napkins.

     I remember once asking a friendly waiter in our local commercial centre if the Mafia played any part in the criminal life of our town, and he answered, “Which Mafia do you mean?”  And then rattled off a list of nationalities who all had a criminal stake in our town.  I keep telling myself that despite the awful state of our roads, we live in a very wealthy city, where house prices are sky high and our residents include the very wealthy in enormous houses behind over-the-top security to guard them.  And us of course!  Those families would not have just the one car, and so would not feel as bereft as we do!

 

However, there is one bright spot amid the static misery of carelessness.  Yesterday I took delivery of my new robot cleaner!

     I must admit that I have owned a number of these devices and while I am enthusiastically in favour of them in principle, in practice I find that they are lacking and woefully lacking.

     When they first came out, and I bought mine from Kickstarter or some such enticement, I was more than happy to have the thing suck up dirt.  I was prepared to empty the machine each time I used it, and I felt that I was in the forefront of what used to be science fiction in those glossy projections in the 50s about what the future would hold.

     As is the way with gadgets like this, each innovation that I read about made me less and less satisfied with the pedestrian nature of my own machine, to the extent that I was glad to have it give up the ghost so that I had (had) to buy another one.

     I will not go through the sad procession of inadequate machines that I cherished and then despised, before, after extensive research, I bought a machine (at a reasonable price) that purported to hoover and mop at the same time, with a self-emptying facility as well.     

     The key indicator that I should have noticed with this machine was the “reasonable price”.  It did indeed do what it said on the box.  It hoovered, it emptied itself and, when you filled it up with water it did (sort-of) mop.  But not particularly well.

     Eventually, I stopped using the ‘mop’ function because it was so ineffective and cast glances of contempt at it each time I passed.

     At last, it stopped working, and I was able to cast about for a replacement.

     I did do some research, and used Chat to help with evaluation, and this time I looked for what I wanted rather than looking for a “reasonable price” i.e. cheap.  What I wanted was not available for what I paid for the last one and so I have now ended up with something that hoovers, mops, cleans the mops, dries them, uses AI for god knows what, and is equipped with an onboard light and a camera!

     I am too afraid to look, but I suspect that there are short films on line which show the cleaning from the point of view of the machine.  I know that on the mobile phone that runs the thing, I can click a button and watch its progress.  I have to admit that there was something strangely fascinating to see your house at floor level, and a little shaming as well as, equipped with a light and a camera there is no hiding place for the underside of lower unit doors nor for the insalubrious division between floor and white goods.

     The machine is not plumbed-in, so you do have to fill the reservoir with water and empty the other one with the dirty water, but everything else is automatic with occasional beeps to show that it is still working.

     It is far too soon to give a thumbs up or down for the things yet, but its first trial run (apart from the usual glitches in the technology of getting the thing paired with the phone) it was excellent.  And since it will have to be used daily (and perhaps more than daily) to justify its price, I will soon have much experience to give an authoritative evaluation of my outlay.

     And that last bit of writing at least took my mind off what might or might not be happening to my car.

 

Nothing lasts!

 

The new cultural season has started with the first in my series of Orchestral Concerts in the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona.

     My first challenge is thinking about exactly when to leave.  Traffic in Barcelona is usually something of a nightmare and the approach roads to the centre are usually traffic jammed so, although the journey is a relatively short one (with clear roads the trip to the city takes about twenty minutes, or thirty minutes tops the actual centre) normality is much longer.  I tell myself that I will leave about an hour and a half for the 19 km journey and that I can fill in the time to the start of the concert if I arrived early by having a snack and a cup of tea.

     Parking is not usually a problem.  There is a car park within a few minutes’ walk of the Palau and even the parking under the cathedral is not that far away, and I have never had to look elsewhere for a parking space, except of course when there are demonstrations and all bets are off, as I venture further and further into Barcelona Unknown in an increasingly desperate search for a space outside my normal ken.

    And parking spaces come at a hefty cost as I find that a normal concert length stay usually works out at about 15 euros for the privilege.

     Yesterday was generally clear, with the only holdups being the traffic lights and drivers who are obviously in the centre of Barcelona for the first time and attempt manoeuvres that do not meet with the wholehearted approval of habitual Barcelona drivers.

     There are always roadworks that throw logistical spanners into the car’s progress.  And nowadays roadworks seem to last for months if not years before things get back to normality c.f. St Boi!

     Anyway, I got to my final destination, or at least a near parking space, with plenty of time to spare and so I was able to pop into the café I use if I get a place in my car park of choice.

     I had a wrap of some sort with a mixture of things, most of which I could identify, and a cup of Earl Grey tea of such insipidity that I was ashamed to drink it.  I must remember to have an emergency tea bag to add to the pap they expect customers to drink so that I can fortify it with a bag of real Yorkshire Tea from my compendious stash at home.

 

I did make an abortive attempt to change my ticket for a concert on United Nations Day (when I have plans other than an evening concert) for a performance of Brahms Requiem tonight, but the seats available were not ones that I felt would give me a true appreciation of the work and so I decided to find something else to swap with my unusable ticket.  I should discover something before next Saturday, because that is my next scheduled concert and that would be the perfect time to change things around.

    

The Concert itself was excellent, with a theme of Emperors and Empire.  It started with Ryuichi Sakamoto’s music from The Last Emperor – the Bertolucci film – and the music trod a path between a soft lilting beauty and an echo of the martial music of majesty conveying the uneasy progression from decadent tradition and the new regime of Communism.

     In my view this was the weakest piece in the evening’s concert, but it was a rousing and melodic introduction.

 

     Beethoven 5^th piano concerto, usually called The Emperor was a different experience entirely.  The orchestra, that I felt was a touch uneasy at the start of the evening had become much more assured and the playing of Alba Ventura spurred them to greater heights.

     Her playing was precise and clear, there was a purity and a crystalline quality to her sound that almost made one believe that one was listening to the music for the first time!

     Her hand movements before putting her fingers on the keys ware histrionic, but with playing such as hers she can wave about as much as she likes.

     Her reception by the audience at the end of the piece was tumultuous, and rightly so, with her encore piece of Debussy’s Claire de lune showing that she was capable of a lightness of touch and a lyrical flow that was in stark contrast with the bombastic nature of the concerto!

     The second part of the concert opened with Lera Auerbach’s Icarus (1973) a piece I was particularly looking forward to because of its use of the Ondes Martenot.  This is one time that I actually did some homework for this piece that I did not know and listened to the performance on the artist’s website, so I was expecting the Ondes Martenot to occupy a firmer place in the soundscape that it did in performance.

     The music was modern, but approachable and there were clear harmonic lines of development as well as the usual pyrotechnics that one expects from the percussion section of an orchestra performing modern music!  A jolly piece.

     The evening ended with The 1812 Overture, where the overriding point of interest is “How are they going to do the cannon shots?”  It was fairly obvious that a big bass drum had been sited to the far left of the orchestra well away from the other members of the percussion section and, when we got to the moment of the first shot, a spotlight illuminated the enthusiastic drummer who thumped his way through the exhilarating ending. 

     The roar of acclimation that the piece received and I have to admit that my eyes were moist with the response to the sheer exultation of the music.  And gratitude to the conductor Andrés Salado a true favourite with the audience!

     Reality came back with the trip home and the usual lunatic driving of those tired of life!

 

Are you sitting comfortably?

 

 

 

Even though we are at the fag-end of the year, something happened today that will be the defining feature for me, and possibly for a few others too.

     My ‘creative space’ is not my brain, it is a ‘squalid corner’ of the third floor where my desk (cluttered) is hemmed in on one side by a sawn-off storage unit, a plastic segmented bookcase and a queeny printer; on the other by a series of CD box vaults, the back of an IKEA bookcase and an Anglepoise (knock-off not real) lamp; behind three low-rise bookshelves, a bewilderingly large number of plastic mini-shelved units and a lopsided arrangement of Things Too Large to Put Away Properly; in front is a low wall and the stair well.  And this altogether conducive-to-creation ensemble is finished by a high-backed office chair that is literally falling to bits, with the faux leather coming away in specks.

     Enough, I said to myself, I said, is enough!  A new chair is necessary and, furthermore, it will be something that can sweep up my Christmas and Name Day offerings into one coherent present.  The ‘Name Day’ thing is important in this part of the world and you ignore the recognition-through-presents at your own risk, it therefore follows (as the night the day) that reciprocation can work together for good.  As my Name Day is actually Boxing Day a seasonal personal present objective makes sense, so I thought a new chair would concentrate minds and contributions.

     Having tried a selection of chairs in all the main superstore outlets in the vicinity and found all of them lacking, Toni actually discovered a dedicated office furniture outlet with ‘sale’ prices in Cornella, a place a few towns along one of our motorways and a place passed through by me on my daily journey to the School on the Hill.

     Today was the day we visited the place.  I had (in mind and written in my notebook) a list of desirable attributes of the New Chair.  It had to have  i) a base of five wheeled feet  ii) a high back  iii) gas suspension  iv) be ergonomic  v) be made of leather  vi) have no arms or have removable arms  vii) look ‘the business’.  I did have a vague sort of idea of what sort of cost it might be, but I decided to be adventurous.

     The end result of much sitting and trying this and then trying that, was that the ergonomic trumped the leather.  The seat that I have decided on, and indeed ordered for delivery in January looks a bit more medical than office-like, but it is comfortable and virtually everything that can, adjusts.

     And the cost.

     Toni was and still is shell-shockedly stunned that any sentient life-form could even contemplate paying so much for what is, after all, at the end of the day, an office chair.  Well, I have.  Or at least I have paid a deposit.  And even the 20% deposit was large.  So, you can imagine that the whole thing (the other 80%) is, well, monstrous.

     In my defence, I would opine that my complete lack of smoking is a major factor in allowing sums of money which would have gone up in smoke and been ingested in tar to be used for something that is much more (much more) useful and necessary.  But is an awfully large sum of money.  For a chair.

     And, as its main material is a sort of mesh (to allow for air flow and healthiness) you don’t even get plush, buttoned leather for your money – in spite of the fact that the money you have paid could easily have allowed wheels to have been fitted to a handmade ottoman and still have had money left over.

     And I don’t care.  I have got (or at least will have) what I wanted.  And it is something that will be used.  And used constantly.  And, and I think I am trying to persuade myself here rather than any reader.  And so, I will stop.  But I (and that is the important pronoun) I, think that it is money well spent.  And I sincerely trust that I will be saying that in twenty years’ time (when I am still using the bloody thing) and then dividing the price I paid in 2020 by the number of years I have been using it and saying to myself, “It’s a bargain!” and “My back has never felt better!” and so on.

     I am further encouraged by the fact that the person selling me thing was actually using one of them as her own office chair.  And that has to be good.  Doesn’t it?  Yes?

     What the AOTC (Advent of the Chair) will necessitate is Doing Something to the chaos of the third floor.  Such a splendid beast must have space in which to dominate the surroundings.  The detritus behind me at the moment must go.  Where?  I know not, but somewhere not behind me.  The Chair will be brought unto me by the lackeys of the firm and they will Construct The Chair, presumably by bringing up the pieces to the third floor.  There is no room whatsoever to do any construction so, what years of nagging by Toni have failed to do, the AOTC will force me to do: create space where no space exists.

     My last and latest attempt to Clear Up the third floor comprised checking through long unopened files and junking and shredding irrelevant papers.  This created gratifying large bags of rubbish, but not any appreciable space as I had been excavating rather than bulldozing.  Something much more radical is called for, and to be frank, I am not sure that I can muster up enough iconoclastic zeal to do the necessary.  Toni has, bless him, offered to do the ‘tidying up’ for me, but I know that I would have to ‘dispose’ of him after the event when I realized what priceless pieces of ephemera he might have got rid of!

     So, the next few weeks are going to demand a positively Dominican level of material rejection from me if I am to make any impression on the cluttered chaos.  Wish me luck or wish me the equanimity to see the AOTC as setting a diamond in the dross of attic confusion!

     And yes, I am well aware that I have not actually told you the price of the thing.  And yes, I have no intention whatsoever of so doing.  I may be happy (if that is the word that I am looking for) with what I have done, but I think that I can only convince others by denying them specific totals.  Better to speculate with lurid imagination rather than condemn in black and white!  And you will have noticed that I chose a generic chair for illustration rather than something more identifiable.

 

 

 

 

And talking of the unjustifiable, Johnson is trying to have his cake and eat it: he fulfils his promise to allow us to celebrate Christmas but wants us not to do it because it will fuel the increase in Covid infection.  So, what this appalling man is actually doing is putting the onus on the British People.  He lacks the courage to admit that he was wrong to promise a variant on the “it will be all over by Christmas” (that always works out well!) and instead of imposing legally enforceable restrictions he is leaving it all up to us.  He will then, of course, wash his hands and say that it was made clear by the government that there were risks involved and people were warned, but people will be people and therefore you have only yourselves to blame!  He truly is repellent.

     Here in Catalonia and in Spain things do not appear to be much better.  Our prime minister has had to self-isolate because of his proximity to the French president and we all know that all hell is going to break out after the Christmas period.

     We have gone through a year when normal has been taken out roughed up, lightly killed, spat at, insulted, trampled on and general bad mouthed.  I think we know that we are in the final stretch, and I further think that we know that the final stretch is not going to be measured in weeks but rather in months.  And probably quite a few months.  I am telling myself that I will be lucky, very lucky, if I am vaccinated by April.  And since I tick a few of the ‘at risk’ boxes, I think it is going to be the end of the summer or the middle of the autumn until a majority of the country is close to having had the jab.

     Given those expectations, Christmas is neither here nor there, it is just an odd date in the unrelenting sequences that we have been subject to during this pandemic.

 

But my chair will be here in January.  Something concrete to look forward to.

Ease of expression

New Lockdown, third week, Monday

 These are the first words that I have typed with my new keyboard.  After many years of good-natured abuse of my previous keyboard, it has finally, if not quite given up the ghost, then it has decided to be whimsical with it allowing certain key keys to work.  It is difficult and frustrating to have to check every word that contains an ‘e’ or an ‘i’ to find out whether the damn thing has worked.

     Rather than allow my default position to come into play (i.e. buying new immediately) I allowed myself to be influenced by Toni who suggested (not unreasonably) that, armed with cotton buds and wet wipes, I attempt first to clean the thing.

     A determined cleaning of a keyboard is immensely shaming because of the sheer amount of filth that you are able to dislodge from between the keys (in spite of the fact that you had, you really had gone over the keyboard regularly with moist tissues to clean it) and the shocking amount of detritus that falls out when you turn the keyboard upside down and gently knock it about a bit.

     And, I managed to convince myself, it all really made a difference.  Except it didn’t, and wishful thinking does not supply missing letters, but Amazon does.

     So, within hours of placing the order, I am now the proud and much poorer possessor of a new Magic Keyboard. 

     The new version of the keyboard is smaller and thinner that what I suppose I ought to refer to as my old ‘vintage’ keyboard.  The function keys are the same size as the letter keys and the rechargeable battery is built in and charged via a lightening thingy.  There is less key travel than in my old one, and the old separate tack pad looks as though it comes from a separate universe and is nothing like the same size and colour as the new keyboard.  But it works and I am damned if I am going to pay Apple prices for purely aesthetic cosmetic reasons – which possibly shows that I am not a ‘true’ Apple owner!

      So far, so good.  The keyboard appears to be working well and it is a relief not to have to look at each word with suspicion to see if the most common vowel has made an appearance!

 

 

 

There is something deliciously ironic about Johnson having to self-isolate while averring that No 10 is a Covid-secure environment, in spite of publicity photographs released showing Johnson without a mask and inside the appropriate physical distance from the MP who later proved to be Covid positive.  Johnson doesn’t really seem to learn from past infections.  But then ¡he doesn’t really seem to learn essential lessons from anything, so perhaps no surprise there.  Again.

     And to think this was the week that Johnson was going to re-set his chaotic ‘government’ after breaking friends with his bestie and finally going to get the easiest trade agreement in history.  Withering contempt does not even come close to what I feel for that vicious charlatan.  Well, he won’t have Cummings to blame for things going less than well (!) when the end of the year finds the UK totally unprepared for anything that is likely to happen.

 

I spent my time on the bike this morning wondering if I would get back home before the rains.  It was one of those day when what you thought the day was going to be like depended on which direction you looked in: to the south east the sky was bright and there was some glimpses of sun; to the north west the low cloud cover was dark and, as I cycled nearer to Port Ginesta I actually put my lights on!

     In the UK, I would have said that rain was inevitable, but by the time I had turned around at Port Ginesta and started to make my way back, the sun came out and, although not entirely convincing, it hung around for a while to make the journey more positive.

     Now, we are in the customary ‘brightly dull’ weather at which Castelldefels excels. And which gives hope for future sunshine.  I hope that is frequently realized, even when things look hopelessly dank!

 

The first steps have been taken towards making a Catalogue Raisonné of my ‘artistic’ holdings a reality.  I don’t think that there is any point in producing a purely academic version, so I think that I will make it a chatty one and use the art described as a way of encouraging more discursive writing.  The technical bits I can attempt to make as academic as is required, but the descriptions can be a little looser and, as ever, a trifle more self-indulgent.

     I can tell that I am going to have problems with dates and names.  Most of the art works are not dated and the names are either indecipherable or not there.  And for the single piece of Ewenny Pottery that survived my childhood fingers – how to describe it and date it?  And if pottery is included, why not glass, even though most of my glass is commercially produced and at the moment it is in storage because neither of us is drinking very much wine at the moment? 

     And china, even my everyday plates and bowls are now no longer produced, perhaps they merit inclusion! 

     And what about my discarded ‘vintage’ keyboard, that surely has a right to be catalogued, though as I no longer have the box I cannot get full dollar for its resale value!  And the keyboard suggests that old computers and aged but not discarded mobile phones should be candidates for inclusion.  But, perhaps I am getting beyond myself and I should stick, at first, with the more conventional elements of art.

     The research for this is going to be fun!  And I hope informative, though the accusation of cui bono could always be levelled against such an enterprise.  As if mere logic and utility have ever been compelling guiding principles for me!

 

It’s the thinness of a piece of pork lion that makes the difference.  At least this is what I have been told by Toni, who has rejected the present pieces of meat that we have and demanded daintier.

     And that gave me an opportunity.  There was no way that I was going to throw out a whole tranche of loins (or lions as I first wrote) because they were a few millimetres too big.  So, I decided to make a stew.  It’s a long time since I’ve made a decent stew and I am looking forward to dinner this evening when Day 1 of the stew will be sampled.

     The real joy of stew is not the Day 1, run-of-the-mill offering that you get (satisfying though it often is) but rather the Day 3 or Day 4 version with the delicious accretions that make each Day of Stew wonderfully different.

     It will, alas, be a singular pleasure as Toni deigns to eat such things – and it is also the reason that the stew might last until Day 4!

     At some point I always weaken and add curry powder and perhaps a few pieces of pasta to the softened potatoes already there and, together with a few nuts and some dried fruit always give it a bit of a zing!

     Just in case all of the preceding sounds a little too professional, I have just realized (having taken the finished stew off the hob) that I have added no onions, garlic or leeks – which were specifically bought in our last jaunt to the shops (to get out of the house) to add the flavour that all expect.  I am now debating whether to go back downstairs and add the ingredients that nobody (nobody) forgets or wait until tomorrow to give an entirely different taste to the experience.

     The hell with it!  What’s an extra hour with a slow cooked stew?  I’ll add them before I settle down to a little artistic research!

     Essential ingredients duly added – roll on dinner!

Put it down to experience!

An underwhelming evening at the opera

I am constantly aware of how niche going to the opera is, especially sitting as I do in one of the more expensive seats in the Liceu, surrounded by the good and the great of the cultural scene in Barcelona.  I do my bit for egalitarianism by wearing sandals and jeans, but it doesn’t alter the fact that I am (generally speaking) surrounded by the white, the elderly and the middle class.  Count the number of balding men exiting a performance at the opera and you will begin to fear for the survival of this art form after another generation or two!

            It doesn’t have to be like this of course.  In some parts of the world going to the opera is a normal and relatively inexpensive experience.  But there is no way of producing good opera cheaply.  Think about it: there is an opera house, seats, a stage, sets, lighting, soloists, costumes, a chorus, technicians, an orchestra and so on and so on.  Opera is an expensive business and it is only ‘affordable’ with subsidy.  That subsidy is either via ticket prices or via public finance.  I am well aware that, expensive as my ticket might be, it would be a damn sight more expensive without government help!

            It all comes down to whether you think that opera as an art form is worth subsidising to make it more available to a greater range of punters.  As far as I am concerned, opera at its best successfully combines so many different art forms that the resultant melange is exhilarating.

            And sometimes it isn’t.

            And the performance of La Clemenza di Tito by Mozart in the Liceu last night was one of those underwhelming evenings that makes you question the expense.

            La Clemenza is an opera seria: a serious opera, historical and heavy with moral worth and interminable continuo.

            The legendary ‘mercy’ of the Emperor Titus was chosen as a subject matter to flatter Leopold II as part of the celebrations for his coronation as king of Bohemia.  Opera seria was the preserve of the nobility and played to their predilections, but it doesn’t necessarily play to ours.

            Even though the opera includes love, fidelity, betrayal, rebellion, arson, confusion and moral dilemma it is a fairly static piece with most of the real action being the inner turmoil of the individual characters expressed in recitative or decorated aria.

            At the end of the first act I understood why this opera had had a century and a half of obscurity before its modern rediscovery.

            The opening of the opera gave an opportunity for the Orquestra Simfònica conducted by Phillipe Auguin to show its ability in the playing of the overture and in this, as throughout the opera the playing was nuanced and authoritative.  While the orchestral playing was excellent the stage picture of the opening of the opera was less convincing.  The scenery was drab and literally clunky and the sombre, black uniformed figures of the praetorian guard formed a circle around a shrouded figure and did nothing else for minutes until, towards the end of the opening music they pushed the plinthed figure into an alcove up stage and allowed Roman architecture on wheels to form a frame for the opening numbers.

            Myrtò Papatanasiu as Vitellia had a good stage presence but I felt her voice sometimes lacked conviction.  She certainly rose to the occasion in her final aria, but I remained unconvinced.  Stéphanie d’Oustrac as Sesto moved around the stage well and had a dramatic presence, with a tendency to melodrama and a voice that was more than competent.  Annio, sung by Lidia Vinyes-Curtis, was always a lively presence and, although I found her voice a trifle too nasal for my liking, she played her part well.

            The eponymous role of Tito Vespasiano was taken by Paolo Fanale whose lightish tenor voice was pleasant within the middle range but became harsh at the top end of his register.  He lacked the commanding quality that would have made his presence on stage striking.

            For me, the stand-out voice of the evening was that of Anne-Catherine Gillet singing the role of Servilia, a voice that was thrillingly immediate.

            The chorus were their usual characterful selves, and it would have been good to have had more of their work enlivening this drawn-out entertainment.

            The end of the opera had a moment that I wished had informed more of the preceding couple of hours.  As the tediously magnanimous emperor walked upstage after forgiving everyone for everything, his praetorian guard suddenly turned on him and the last stage picture was of a suggestion of another rebellion.  This ‘false note’ runs counter to the thrust of the original intent of the piece but it did add a (tragically too late) indication of how the staging could have been more interesting.

            If this review seems unduly negative, then that’s how I feel.  There were good things in this piece, and some of the ensemble music was captivating – but recitative leaves me cold and I left the opera with a feeling of shaking the dust off my sandals and hoping that this is a production that will not see a revival over the next decade or so.

And I was ripped-off for the Indian meal that I had before the start of the performance.  But let it pass.  Let it pass.

The next opera is Lohengrin which I am ashamed to admit I have never seen in a full performance!