I'll cut to the chase and tell you that I've had a brilliant few days in London for my birthday.
Ross and I had an excellent time together. We met up with Chris, visited Somerset House, took in a couple of operas and collected our new car from my sister, Linda.
Seeing Chris again was a pure delight. We had an evening drink on the Thursday and lunch on the Friday. Before journeying to London, I had said to Ross that I wondered if this would be the last time that we would see Chris. It had been a while since we'd all been in contact and, let's face it, things do move on. Chris has a high profile, high pressure job. He's got a great deal of creative work that's bubbling away. He and James are in the process of buying a house together. So, finding time for the extras is always a problem for him.
And, of course, he's remarkably ruthless. Ultimately, nothing will come between him and his work.
I wouldn't, therefore, have been angry or demoralised if it had been time for all concerned to cut their losses and move on. Happily, my concerns were unfounded.
And Chris is still charm and cuteness on a stick.
Somerset House on The Strand is now home to a number of Art
Collections. On Friday morning, we went to The Hermitage Rooms to see some works by
Caspar David Friedrich and other German artists of the period held in the Russian
Imperial Palaces.
It was, frankly, a disappointment. The Friedrich works were very minor and not
particularly well executed. The figure painting in On a Sail Boat (right) was
about the best. In other works, it was downright amateurish. Symbolic couples abounded.
Luminescent skies prevailed. All to no apparent good sense or taste. I had the feeling
that I'd been conned into attending.
Works by other artists demonstrated how tacky and sentimental most collectable Teutonic
art of that era was. Of interest was a series of illustrations by Adolph von Menzel
commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Festival of the White Rose. This had
been a celebration for Tsarina Alexandra when she returned to Berlin for a visit in
1829. The whole thing seems to have been Teutonic kitsch of the highest order.
Festival at the New Palace (right) gives you some idea. You can see where
Wagner got it all from.
A quick trip across the courtyard brought a completely different experience at the Courtauld Gallery. I liked Lucas Cranach's Adam and Eve and Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Flight into Egypt. I didn't like most of the Rubens room (Baroque is not where it is at so far as I am concerned). Even there, however, were treasures - The Descent from the Cross with its striking diagonal construction, the intimate portrait of the Family of Jan Bruegel the Elder and the astonishing Landscape by Moonlight of 1637-38 which could easily have been produced some 150-200 years later and still have felt modern.
And then we came to the upper floors with their two rooms of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works. Well, I got so excited I was near meltdown. Not, as Chris remarked, a pretty sight at the best of times.
There were works by Renoir, Manet, Monet, Degas, Cézanne, Gaugin, Suerat, Van
Gogh, Sisley, Pissarro and Toulouse-Lautrec. It was almost a rôle call of the
great and the good. And many of the paintings were those you'd have seen reproduced so
many times in so many places. I was gobsmacked. The painting of Antibes by Claude
Monet (right) does not do justice to the quality of what was on display.
I was briefly taken back to the Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts in San Francisco where, in March 1999, I went to an exhibition entitled Impressions in Winter: Effets de Neige. I think it must be that period of art that does it for me every time.
There was, for example, one corner of the room at the Courtauld which was a miracle of hanging. A group of Cézannes. In a row, they shaded from green to blue. And the green. The green will stay with me for many a month. In two of the paintings, blocked in with a series of parallel brush depressions, in one, spread in great swathes with a pallet knife. I just trembled.
And, if that had been all that the weekend contained, I would still have been well pleased. However, there were also two opera performances of more than usual worth.
On the Friday night we took in La Rondine which Ross and
I had seen in October 2000 given by
Opera North. As on that occasion, I still think that it has some absolutely gorgeous
music. It is like being dipped in warm chocolate.
Our stars were Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna who I'd last heard in 1996 in
La Traviata. I'm not sure that I would
run to catch them again unless it was a work I wanted to hear. They both walked through
the evening until the final 15 minutes and then they decided they were in Tosca
and unleashed a torrent of sound which completely imbalanced the piece.
Mind you Gheorghiu's final note was an extraordinary piece of vocalism. But I liked the work as performed by Opera North much better. And Alagna has lost most of the sweetness of sound that he possessed when I heard him sing in Roméo et Juliette in 1994.
Charles Workman's Prunier was, for me, the best performance of the night. Cinzia Forte
made a very pert maid, Lisette. The sets were opulent beyond expectation and realism.
The conducting brought out the jazziness of the score and indulged the evening's
headline stars.
It was an evening of high octane entertainment, like a first class
Broadway musical (and I don't mean that as a disparagement). It lacked true sentiment
but that's my only complaint. I would go and see it again with a different cast and
enjoy it again.
We rounded off the weekend with a matinée performance of Il
Trovatore which was exciting and affecting. Not a perfect performance but as
enjoyable a performance as I should hope to witness. I clapped and cheered at the end.
It's one of my favourite works to listen to but I've generally speaking been very
disappointed with it in performance. I was delighted to encounter the real thing
in the theatre.
Our tenor was José Cura who, even in the short space of this Journal, I have
already seen perform in Samson et Dalila and
Tosca at Covent Garden and in concert
performances of Carmen and
Otello with the London Symphony Orchestra.
Yes, he sometimes looks as though he disengages from the performance around him
and he's not the greatest of stylists. But he has a virile, manly voice and
presence and he is still my favourite tenor at present for this sort of repertoire.
Our soprano was Veronica Villarroel who I last hear in July 1996 in Alzira where she brought the house down with her full throated commitment. This was a different performance. Not all of the bel canto aspects of the rôle were within her compass and she struggled with some intonation. But it was streets ahead of Carol Vaness who I heard sing the part in 1989 and sing it dreadfully and dreadfully boringly. Villarroel had her problematic moments but was committed throughout.
Yvonne Naef was a youngish, light voiced Azucena who sang the rôle beautifully rather than snarling it. She got the biggest cheer at the end. Vladimir Chernov was engaging but not really engaged as di Luna. Tomas Tomasson's Ferrando was the best of the smaller parts. Carlo Rizzi conducted an exemplorary performance whilst Elijah Moshinsky's production, updated to the Risorgimento in 19th Century Italy, gave us big pictures to look at.
And it had the things I felt were so lacking in the
La Vestale a few weeks back, passion,
commitment, energy, voices in full flight. I was wrung out and sweaty by the end
of the performance. In fact, during one of the more climactic moments, I involuntarily
managed to relieve myself of the discomfort of trapped wind.
And then we went to Waterloo station and caught a train to Epsom. Linda met us. We grabbed a bite to eat and then drove back here in our new car.
Which ended a great weekend of birthday treats.