Day Trippers
11 May

The alarm went off at about 6am.

Colin and I assembled in the kitchen to breakfast. He'd stayed overnight. We'd had a lovely meal, vegetable curry prepared by Ross and a fruit salad prepared by me, the previous evening (That's three people we've had to stay recently, which feels a bit more like the hospitality I've felt for a long time that we should be offering).

A short while later Roland arrived in his car and the three of us headed off to Runcorn station to catch the train to London. We were at the start of a day out that would take us into the West End and off to Covent Garden.

We all made purchases around the city. We had lunch in Gaby's on Charing Cross Road. We chatted, dozed and read on the train. All in all it was an enjoyable day out and we all agreed that we would be happy to do it again another time.

Our reason for making the trip was to attend Luisa Miller by Verdi. Colin and I attended a concert performance of this at the Edinburgh Festival some years back. Of particular interest was the tenor Marcelo Alvarez who Ross and I heard in Rigoletto in the autumn of 2001. He was very good and his aria Quando le sere al placido was rightly acclaimed. He deserves four stars to himself.

The rest of the cast were quite acceptable. Roland and I didn't really like the soprano Angeles Blancas but Colin thought that her voice sounded appropiately woodwind-like. I thought the best female singing came from Tove Dahlberg in the very small rôle of Laura. I also liked Phillip Ens's very creepy Wurm. The conducting by Maurizio Benini was very elegant but lacked fire and pace. This was disappointing because he was very good in Un giorno di regno and La sonnambula and a La Cenerentola which I heard on the radio. So the rest of the performers deserve three stars.

Olivier Tambosi's production was pants. Like La Bayadère, it's no good criticising it for being something that it is not. The basic design evoked the idea of an Alpine setting by giving us an upwardly curved white platform which was traversed with steps. Centre stage was a building shaped rather like a Monopoly house which was used for a variety of purposes. Suspended above this was an enclosed walkway which was sometimes horizontal and sometimes dropped at one end. My guess is that this was something about a balance or fulcrum and events which rocked back and forth.

I'm not going to criticise it for being something I didn't want but from a simple stage craft point of view. Singers don't like lots of steps. It's difficult enough to perform opera without having to tread gingerly for fear of falling. The house was ineffective. Every time the doors opened there was a new interior. It was like a children's TV show. The enclosed corridor simply blocked the view of anything upstage to anyone sitting higher than the Grand Tier. The movement of the people was amateurish (I could have done as much). Frankly it was substandard for a major opera house. A simple one star is all it deserves.

The following day Ross and went over to the Wirral to see my parents. Which was very pleasant. And on the television that night was a recording of Massenet's Manon starring Renée Fleming and Marcelo Alvarez no less. It's on video for later enjoyment.