Last Saturday brought the first artistic outing of the new autumn season and
it brought Gilbert and Sullivan's much-loved i gondolieri del Manchester.
We liked it.
We are well into what can only be described as an Indian summer.
In fact, since we bought the garden furniture which Jamie so roundly scorned, we have sat out in the back garden more often than we had in the whole of the summer previously.
A further gloss on this is that, for a fortnight, the neighbours who live in the first floor flat over the top of Jamie were away on holiday. It would be kind to say that they are loud. They also have a habit of leaving their windows open so the whole community is well aware of their relationship difficulties. It is a living soap opera in that tow socially disfunctional people are offering themselves up for the entertainment of the populace.
Her voice could probably remove the froth from a grande latte at a distance of five tables. In fact, we nickname her the foghorn. She could probably get a second job swinging on the Brocklebank marker buoy off the coast of Crosby. Anyhow, their absence also provoked a mellow silence that was much appreciated by all - that's all within a quite considerable radius.
Last Saturday brought the first artistic outing of the new autumn season and
it brought Gilbert and Sullivan's much-loved i gondolieri del Manchester.
We liked it.
Ross particularly liked the setting. He
felt it was simple and apt. I thought it did the job without over-dressing the piece.
It was in the greatest of contrasts to Die Fledermaus the following
Saturday.
The band was quite sprightly for us but thank goodness we heard them at the beginning of the tour. I can't imagine what they'll be like by week 8 with 7 performances a week. I thought the chorus was rather good. Some nice voices among the women and I was taken with but not by one of the men. Ross liked the deckchair scene and the natty swimming costumes. His intake of breath as he copped a look up the leg of the cute one's shorts caused the curtains to billow. (He thinks I don't notice these things)
We dwelt with particular satisfaction upon the coarse queen in the chorus. Every set piece and he was there right up front with his eyes and teeth and too much Leichner No 5 - he seemed to have decided that all Italians must have a tan whereas no-one else had bothered. We liked the fact that his boots kept slipping down and caused him embarrassment in the first scene.
Of the performances, we liked Bruce Graham as the Grand Inquisitor and Simon Butteriss and Nuala Willis as the Duke and Duchess of Plaza Toro but they are pretty indestructible roles. We had the second cast Gianetta and she shrieked. If I can tell that she was out of tune, then anyone with a good ear would have suffered greatly. Otherwise, they were good company performances.
I wasn't overly smitten by the work. I wouldn't object to seeing it again but I wouldn't rush. It felt rather formulaic. I'd like to see one of G&S's earlier mould-breaking works now to get a sense of what the excitement was about.
The following day we were both over to Irby to see my parents and Linda and Mary for a meal. It was exceptionally pleasant.
We dropped in on B&Q on the way back to see about getting something to fix a scratch to the bath enamel. Ross's electronic bath chair had slipped earlier in the week and produced what we thought at that stage was a scratch though it turned out simply to be a stubborn smear. This proved lucky as the only product that would have done the job below the water line would have had to be imported from the USA via the Internet at a cost of £50. It was only one of a number of things that have made me despair about progress recently. Like the damp patch in the kitchen ceiling caused by what the plumber discovered was a dripping out pipe from the bath. Damn that man who organised the repairs before I purchased this place.
In the kitchen, the filling, sanding, coat of white, filling, sanding, second coat
of white, third coat of white is now completed. I've made a start on the sanding. Oh,
this is never ending. At least we've now got organised to get someone to come
in and paint our front room for us.
WNO's Die Fledermaus was a dispiriting occasion. The publicity material
gave the game away by dubbing it as.
A raunchy romp of disguises, mistaken identities and infidelities at the heart of a corrupt society. This dark exploration of human weakness and depravity is juxtaposed with some of Strauss's most sublime waltz music.
This is not the work that Strauss wrote in the aftermath of a stock market crash and financial scandals in Vienna in 1874. He wrote it to take people's minds off the austerity. Yes the social criticism is there but it is in the background. The trick with a work like this is make people think they are enjoying an entertainment and to still stick the knife in rather than stabbing away at random. And someone should tell the management that saying "fuck" onstage is no longer shocking, particularly when it's at odds with the aesthetics of everything else around.
In the event, a cast including Geraldine McGreevy as a voluptuous Rosalinde, Natalie Christie as a pert Adele, Donald Maxwell as a stalwart Frank, Richard Whitehouse as an unusually aggressive Falke and Wynne Evans as a laddish Alfred did as much as they could to serve the music. Claude Schnizler's conducting was flabby and unstylish. Probably one of the worst evenings I've spent with WNO in a very long time. Company wags called this The Bat Out Of Hell.
After the Clinton/Spacey axis visiting the Labour Party conference last week, the Conservatives just had to go one better with Edwina Currie's revelations of her affair with John Major. I can't be alone in shuddering greatly as a very unpleasant image crossed my mind.
And then there was IDS trying to look cool. It really looks as though he's subjecting that poor, unfortunate lad to a military inspection.
