Well, we are well into the Festive season now.
Today Ross and I have been over to North Lincolnshire to visit his parents and have a Christmas meal with them and the family - including Ross's sister Megan and her boyfriend Andy, Ross's brother Sam, his grandfather, an aunt and uncle and a family friend. It could have been one of those horrible, horrible occasions but it wasn't and I seem to be as much accepted into their family now as Ross is into mine.
We've set our tree up and have done another good job of it.
That's the third tree in this house. There are extant photographs of our effort in 2000 with me and Ross and the torn wallpaper in the background. Last year I was careful to photograph the tree on its own with no hint of ripped wallpaper.
We've added some arts events into the mix. Tuesday took us to the Philharmonic for the first of the four Basically Baroque concerts we will be attending. This one featured music by Vivaldi - concerti for strings, piccolo, four violins, two trumpets and oboe plus the Gloria in D major. This final work was performed by a women only chorus as it might have been at the Ospedale della Pietà which was the venue for the first performance. The sound generated was bright, intense and spiritual. A good start to our advent.
In fact the whole evening was a real palette cleanser. I don't know that I should wish to attend such concerts every year but, after the thickening textures and increasing chromaticism of the nineteenth century and the vagaries of the twentieth, it is refreshing to get back onto more uncluttered ground. If the Festive period begins with Vivaldi, it will end with Handel on 4 January next year when Ross and I attend a performance of The Messiah.
Thursday brought a trip to Manchester and the Royal Northern College of Music
for a performance in their Studio Theatre of Benjamin Britten's Turn of the
Screw. During the seven years of this Journal so far, I've already seen this
opera twice - in 1997 with Ross at the
Barbican by the Royal Opera on the day of
my sister Linda's wedding and in
2000 on my own in Llandudno by Welsh National
Opera in a performance that I acknowledged as the best operatic event of that year.
At the risk of spoiling the surprise, I already know that this performance will get the nomination as the best operatic event for this year. Something about being in that enclosed space made the whole evening quite unbearable. I wept at the end and I have never cried at this opera before. Ross and I were both quite drained.
A particular mention for Elizabeth Donovan's Governess (she sang with unstinting power, accuracy and emotional commitment) and Alexander Grove's Quint (who was very, very sexy despite playing the rôle in a way which I didn't like). Otherwise, it is invidious to try and separate out the strands. It was a collective experience.
I've already reported on the furore in the press when there was a
gay kiss in The Bill. Well get ready for much breast beating as the
two characters get drunk and end up in bed together for the New Year. At least one
of them looks reasonably satisfied.
