A journey to Preston led us to the Charter Theatre at The
Guildhall and English Touring Opera. Their offering was La Traviata.
My birthday period has continued with a few more treats.
A journey to Preston led us to the Charter Theatre at The
Guildhall and English Touring Opera. Their offering was La Traviata.
Longtime readers of this journal will recognise that Traviata is one of my favourite operas - this being the fifth performance I've attended during the seven years of writing.
Previously, there's been the dull Covent Garden outing
with the Alagnas, two visits to the ENO
production (the first being a moderately
good performance of a new production and the
second being a five star revival blazingly conducted by Paul Daniels and
wonderfully sung by Sandra Ford, John Hudson and Christopher Booth-Jones) and then
an extraordinarily moving performance by Opera
North with Janis Kelly, Tom Randle and the late Keith Latham.
English Touring Opera I last heard perform Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment back in 1999. I enjoyed that. I was looking forwards to a good night out.
In the event, it was a very mixed bag. None of the singers really cut the mustard. Louise Cannon had most of the notes for Violetta but her tone spread and her voice wobbled well beyond a vibrato under pressure. And you could hardly make out a word she was singing (this being a 500 seat theatre). Pretty much all of the consonants disappeared into a melisma. Dewi Wyn as Alfredo was the best of the principals but even he was taxed by his rôle. Simon Thorpe was a very dry and reedy sounding Germont père.
The production was a sort of cut price copy of Welsh National Opera's from the 80s. The party scenes were far naughtier than the supposed orgy at the beginning of the Royal Opera's Rigoletto but that's a young cast for you.
The real stars of the evening were the orchestra and conductor and thereby the music itself. One of the bonuses of hearing a pared down orchestra is that the inner part writing becomes much more audible. I am just astonished that the man who wrote this was writing Il Trovatore at the same time. They hardly appear to be by the same composer let alone that they were created in parallel. It's as though one painter produced a Constable landscape and a Gainsborough portrait at the same time. Astonishing creativity.
I can also report continuing enjoyment from Channel Four's Edwardian House. Fantasies about the male participants abound.
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| Ken the Hall Boy - with his floppy hair and boyish manner | Charlie the 1st Footman - who takes his duties very serious | Rob the 2nd Footman - who is more likely to let his hair down than is Charlie | Mister Jonty from upstairs - the young master of the household and a student at Magdalen College, Oxford where Oscar Wilde was an undergraduate | Tristan the stable boy - the strong and silent one with whom Mister Jonty goes riding |
On Thursday Ross and I watched Spy Game
on video. Brad Pitt and Robert Redford went through their paces. It passed an couple
of hours.
Other pleasures this week have included lunch with Joe from work, listening to Sibelius's Karelia suite, reading David Leavitt's novel Martin Bauman which Ross gave me as a birthday present, organising the dedication of three trees for my papa's birthday and watching the garden grow.
We have had the patio done. It's been the cause of some anguish as it has not come out the way that Ross and I discussed and decided on. The challenge now is to make the best of a bad job.