'Norma' in the Liceu

It would be churlish to give any other title to this piece than the above, because nothing else in my day could possibly hold a candle to the extraordinary experience that the opera provided yesterday.

The quality of the piece was established during the overture when the Orquestra Simfònica del Gran Teatre del Liceu under the baton of Renato Palumbo gave a nuanced and articulate account of the music.  It received a well-deserved ovation at its conclusion and promised well for the opera.  Neither the orchestra nor the chorus directed by Peter Burian disappointed and they provided a polished and professional framework for the singers.

            The opening visual of Norma holding a flaming torch (just how do they get away with having naked flames in theatres?) was dramatic and, as the lighting rose we were given a sight of the set, constructed in wood with giant animal heads on each side of massive iron clad doors.  There was a suggestion of roughness and the primitive and, from the profusion of shields and weapons against the walls and on plinths, of violence.

         The ceremonial entry of what looked like a giant white painted, glitter frosted Christmas tree was a little odd but, at it was hoisted aloft it became clear where the sacred mistletoe was going to be harvested.

            I have to say at the outset that I was impressed by the staging, it worked well was versatile and was visually interesting – but it was, I think, a missed opportunity as it seemed to me to add little to the basic narrative.  It functioned and gave a fairly straight performing space but it didn’t complicate a fairly simple reading of the drama itself.

            This is Norma’s opera, the music gives the singer the opportunity to take the audience and claim them for her own.  This is exactly what Sondra Radvanovsky did.  In her frankly astonishing rendition of ‘Casta Diva’ she had the audience shuddering with disbelief at her ability to sing the high pianissimo notes with a fragility and delicacy which seemed impossible from a singer of such power.  At times her voice filled the theatre and could have filled a theatre a number of times larger, but that merely emphasised her extraordinary control. 

            Radvanovsky seemed genuinely moved by the intensity of the ovation at the end of the opera but, given what she had given and the quality of what she was able to give it seemed only right and proper.

            Her philandering lover, Pollione, was sung by Gregory Kunde who produced a seamlessly smooth vocal range and constantly pleased by his precision.  His performance was superb.  He can’t act and looks like a walking eggcup, but all of that can be overlooked because of his brilliant voice.  To be fair, although the part does have some excellent music, the character he plays is woefully unsympathetic and the sudden realization on his part that he really loves Norma is surely impossible to play with any degree of convincingness.

            There were no unacceptable voices in this production and the duets between Norma and Adalgisa (an unfortunate name which suggests a type of aspirin to me) were scintillating.  Adalgisa, sung by Ekaterina Gubanova was excellent and an fitting musical foil to the extravagance of Norma.

            This was, it must be made clear, a brilliant evening.  It was a privilege to be allowed to hear such amazing music making, even if I have to admit that one hour forty-five minutes until the first break was a bit of a stretch!

            
           My problems with this piece are with the realisation.  This was a clear production by Kevin Newbury, and was interesting to watch, I liked the wood and the white mystical trees and their being cut - but I wanted more.  I don’t really think that this is the sort of opera that has to be anchored firmly to the Gauls and the Romans.  It may be the opportunity to bring on a massive wicker bull at the end for the immolation, but it still kept to the basic story line.

            
           It is a story of oppression and betrayal, of faith and faithlessness, of the brutal contradictions between public and private and so on.  There are moments of true humour, the audience chuckled as the confession of Adalgisa to Norma about her lover brought her nearer and nearer to her innocent revelation that her Roman lover was the father of Norma’s children.  There were moments of black humour throughout and perhaps those should be embraced and be presented as a tragic-comedy. 

            Perhaps less respectful versions of Norma have been done.  In my mind I wondered about using a whole range of settings ranging from modern colonialism, for example in the United States or nineteenth century in Africa; the Mafia and the Roman Church; modern Africa; the Middle East; India and Pakistan; the Far East – I don’t know, but I felt that such a powerful piece of music could have weathered a more radical interpretation.

            
          But, as Radvanovsky took her bow and the gods rained down printed leaflets in adulation, it was perhaps enough to have been there and heard the musical magic that this amazingly talented company were able to provide.

Life goes on, however and I have been dealing with the responses from changing a password and having my iPhone suddenly send out failed messages from months ago to mystified recipients.  They should be, as I certainly am because I am not sure how it happened.  But, there are more things in Apple than worms – as no one has said.

            On the subject of IT, Toni has started the next courses in his studies and, as he can regard the starting and writing of a blog as a valid piece of study related work, we went out to yet another restaurant for a field trip so that he can add another page.

            Our visit, which can be seen at http://catalunyaplacetoeat.blogspot.com.es

And I look forward to many more such excursions.  The meal was truly excellent and the Xató (a Sitges speciality) was the best that I have ever eaten and all at a price that makes you weep when you think of how much you have (if you are me) spent in the UK on crap food!

Of course talking of something which is nowhere near crap, my poems (he said defensively) I am now talking daily about the publication of Flesh Can Be Bright to ensure, by a sort of sympathetic magic, that it actually does happen.  100 signed and numbered copies of this book will exist come hell and high water and, by god, they will be sold even if I have to resort to extreme measures to sell them.  Which I probably will.

            Marketing is going to be an interesting experience and one to which I will turn my mind when the present OU course is over in May and I can turn my mind full time to the niggling production matters that make the writing of the damn thing look easy!

            My new poems, or drafts of them, are available for view, or indeed for comment – though poetry seems to have an exclusion zone around it as far as comments are concerned.  The only ones that I have received have been through the relative anonymity of an email, as there I know what has been said and by whom, but the comment is not available for anyone else!  Ah well, I appreciate comment however it is delivered!  If you care to glance at them they are available here:
     http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es
(Perhaps in my next attempt to add this site, I will actually be able to make it live!)

          The deadline for the essay for the Open University course is getting nearer, but is still not near enough for the requisite quantities of adrenalin to produce the sort of writing required.  Another day or so should see the right level of panic to get me creative!

Interesting reality!

To call the two brazen criminals Rato and Blesa (who used to head the Spanish bank, Bankia) scum is, quite frankly an insult to frothy filth.  

          One of these reptilian pieces of slime has managed to evade going to prison as he has been classed as a ‘no risk of flight’ sort of criminal who doesn’t need to be locked up.  I would like to see him walk down the Gran Via and the expression of hatred and contempt that he would find form ordinary citizens of this country would encourage him to go to prison for his own protection!  Neither Rato nor Blessa dare walk down any street in Spain openly because they would be attacked by the people they have impoverished as they have stolen shamelessly from the people in the bank that they plundered.

            I live in hope that the various criminals who have been identified and accused actually end up in the sort of prison that they deserve.  Actually, I consider the ‘sort of prison that they deserve’ to be a rough cell-less penitentiary in Louisiana filled with large, rough men looking for ‘bitches’ – but perhaps my liberal credentials are beginning to slip by saying that and I should say that it is only a joke in poor taste.  But I can’t.  May they rot.  And the whole of the politico-empressorio-bankio-klepto class of them!

            

          The use of ‘black’ credit cards for the movers and shakers of Bankia in which theft was institutionalised has become public knowledge and the criminals involved have had to appear in front of judges and their laughable defence is that they really didn’t know about the criminality of it all.  They thought that almost unlimited spending upon themselves was just another little legal perk for the ‘work’ that they were doing for the ‘bank’.  Of course no one believes this tissue thin ‘explanation’ of their apparent ‘ignorance’ but our corrupt government, which they all support of course, keeps bleating on about the ‘assumption of innocence’ as if they have even a passing belief in the value of law, except in the legal system that they have politicised.

           

¡Viva Podemos!

The weather today is the sort of grudging weather that is sulkily trying not to rain, but resenting every moment without moisture.  I had my cup of tea inside the café in the swimming pool rather than sit in the cold.  I know that it is the middle of February and what the hell do I expect, but yesterday was delightful and I was that level of warmth in winter that I have come to expect in this country!  Heliophilic lust has ever been one of my most pressing characteristics!

            I’m not sure what is happening to our plans for a holiday in Gran Canaria, they seem to be on some sort of uneasy hold at the moment, but I am eager for them to come to some sort of fulfilment so that the increasingly pasty state of my skin can be rectified!

I am steadily working my way through my latest box set of Decca Phase 4 re-mastered CDs by playing them in the car and the delights are many - with the exception of the single CD of Flamenco, obviously, which I have given away.  Verdi’s Requiem being played far too loudly and with my eyes streaming with tears makes the tedium of driving just that little bit more bearable!  Their version of The Carnival of the Animals has accompanying poems by Ogden Nash and at present I am listening to Rubenstein playing Chopin’s Nocturnes.  The cheap availability of music like this is one of the delights of the post vinyl age.

            I am not ignoring live music, as this evening I am excited about going to what looks like a fairly spectacular production of Norma – which I will review tomorrow.

I started another poem last night and got a fair way with it before, as usual, it ground its way to stasis and bed seems like a better alternative to wasting any more pencil lead.  I feel refreshed today and I will try and take it a little further and, who knows, I might even take it with me on the bus and work on it on the tedious journey to Barcelona.

The life cultural knows no rest!

My recent poems may be found at smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es

One lives in hope!

Up betimes.  Sun shining, tea almost drunk and ready to indulge my true passion of shopping.  Albeit, leavened with the simulacrum of culture.  I am waiting for Irene to come and collect her now framed paintings and then we are going to sally off to the wilds of Cornellá to find out if the stories of a cultural cinema are actually true.

            We have been regaled with stories of concerts, opera and ballet, all to be had in extreme comfort and partial, indeed palatial, exclusivity in the middle of a shopping centre.  I will delay approbation until the reality has shown itself to be something worthy of commendation.

            Lightly reading through the last two paragraphs I can’t help feeling that the vocabulary used is needlessly pretentious.  Obviously this is a function of my early rising when the bullshit filters are not yet fully functioning.  Normal service will be resumed when time has exerted its pull towards sense!

What I should be doing is settling down and getting the TMA finished, or at least started.  Most of the reading has been done, it is just a matter of getting all the ideas together into some coherent argument and putting them all down on the electronic paper and sending it off.

            Although the assignment covers a long (in picture terms) period of time the actual writing is quite bitty.  We have to respond to two pieces of theoretical writing and write a discursive essay linking our thoughts to three specified artists.  This means that there is a fairly clear focus and direction and gives us the opportunity to limit what we can say from the morass (and I use the word advisedly) of writing and artistic production that litters the period about which we are supposed to be concerned.

            I would much rather be continuing my research for the project that we finish the course with, but that is simmering along in a semi-satisfactory way and that will have to do for now.  There is a real chance that everything will work out really well – and if it doesn’t I have formulated a Plan B which will work with the stuff that I have gathered so far.  So, I consider myself relatively academically safe.

As part of Toni’s new blog (catalunyaaplacetoeat.blogspot.com.es) I have dug out a ‘real’ camera for us to use to photograph the food.  Amazingly I was able to find the battery charger for my Canon G9 and so this Old Faithful has been pressed into service.  I know that I can use my iPhone, but one doesn’t get the sense of achievement in the taking of a photograph with a phone that one does with a proper camera with a viewfinder.  I have always got on well with the G9 and, although I have a more sophisticated and newer Canon, I always feel drawn to the G9.

            Finding an SD card was also an opportunity to indulge in memory as I flicked through the images that were on the card I chose.  Some of those go back to The Worst School in the World and pictures of the Carnival.  These pictures show that the SD card has been moved around a bit as some of the more ‘artistic’ shots were obviously taken on another camera which offers in-camera alteration of images – and eats up battery as it makes them.  And I have recently re-discovered the camera that does this too.  Though I cannot remember the last time that I used the machine for anything.

Talking of excess: I am bringing some sense of order to the (what is the collective noun for watches?  A time of watches?  A tick?  A passing?) quite surprising number of watches that I have amassed.  I have recently purchased a 12-watch display case.  And am considering buying another.  Which tells you something!

            Very few of these watching are actually working, and replacing the batteries is all of them is dauntingly expensive as well as potentially frustrating as I find out that each one of them takes a different and potentially more exotic battery than the last and there is a limit to the amount of footfall I want to experience just to see hands moving slowly in a case.

            If I am truthful, there are relatively few watches that I actually wear.  Though that doesn’t mean that I will not buy further watches in the future.  Usefulness has never been a prerequisite in my purchasing plans!

            At the moment I am wearing my Casio ‘Edifice’ which does all the usual things is charged by movement and the sun and is radio controlled from some station in Britain or Germany and changes to the absolutely accurate time at some ungodly hour in the morning.  I have never actually witness this alteration and I am assured that it happens.  It is a chunky watch, but satisfyingly chunky rather than too large.  It is one of these hybrid types of watch with analogue and digital details.  I like it, and it is a good watch to use in conjunction with my Pebble and my Kenneth Cole.  The former has the best watch face for my needs that I have every come across: a retro flip clock look which gives you information in large format.  The latter is a more elegant skeleton watch, with the actual watch being a circle in the centre and spokes radiating from the hour marks with the band between the watch and the outer case being transparent.  I liked it as soon as I saw it.  And that, of course, was merely a heartbeat away from buying.

            Given the watches I now possess, there has to be something really special (or vulgar!) about any possible addition to the collection.  I am always drawn to watches in shops, so there is always a real possibility of my finding something to irritate Toni with!

Irene is now late, but I am beginning to wonder if she said 10.30 rather than 10.  Doesn’t make much difference and it has given me the opportunity to write.

            My notebook is filling up and I am beginning to worry about the fact that there are unwritten poems.  On the other hand I am also pleased that some of those unwritten poems are for my next but one book!  ‘Flesh Can Be Bright’ is filling up nicely and I am confident about my bits.  I still worry about the translations and the drawings, but this week I am going to start getting in touch with my collaborators and find out what, if anything, has been done!

The shopping was not, I have to admit, a total success.  The membership cards for the cultural films were not available until the place opened in the afternoon – and we were disinclined to wait.  The tea shop, no, yet another tea shop failed to provide me with the Earl Grey roja that I crave.  The Internet calls.  The purchase of a sofa bed for Irene from IKEA was also a fraught affair.  The purchase, with attendant waiting was accomplished but the cost of delivery and construction was a staggering €188!  A €79 delivery charge and a whopping €109 for the construction of a sofa bed that we had thought was included in the price.  I would like to know how IKEA sleeps at night with such a totally unreasonable charge.

            At least I was able to give Irene back her watch which had had the screws filed so they didn’t protrude and snag in clothes any more.  A much more reasonable cost of €5 from El Corte Inglés in the centre of Barcelona!  And we had an excellent lunch with Toni able to add another restaurant to his rapidly growing blog at catalunyaaplacetoeat.blogspot.com.es with a selection of photographs of virtually everything we saw and ate.  Excellent value

Tomorrow Opera and Norma.  Tunes galore!