Encore Barcelona
13 October

As a break from the recent troubles, Roland and I made a quick trip over to Barcelona.

After the success of our last trip, I was looking forwards to it. And it was good. However, it was just too short. Fly out on the Saturday and fly back on the Monday. A bit like the Llandudno trip earlier this year. There was hardly time to unpack before we were off again.

And to make the most of that sort of mini-break, you need to be on the top of your form. And, frankly, at the moment, I'm not there at all. The atmosphere at work is understandably poisonous with all the talk of redundancies. And I've had a stomach bug from which I'm not particularly recovered. So, I had an alright time but it wasn't the joyful occasion I was looking forwards to.

The excuse for the trip was a performance of Hamlet by Ambroise Thomas at the Liceu. I'd missed this show when it was on at Covent Garden during the summer and I'm really glad that I made the effort to see it now.

It was another production by the team of Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier. From them, I've already seen Carmen, Orphée et Eurydice, La Cenerentola and Madama Butterfly. As with all their shows, it was elegant, intelligent and moved well. However, and there is always one of those as well, it was just too dark. It made lip reading impossible. And you'd be surprised, even in opera, how important that is if you are to catch the words.

The singing was mostly up to scratch although Jean-Luc Chaignaud as Hamlet, whilst having the benefit of French as a first language, was somewhat cool in the lead rôle. The triumph of the evening, however, was the Ophélie of Natalie Dessay. Of late, I have mostly raved about male voices among which have been José Cura, Roberto Alagna, Juan Diego Flórez and Marcelo Alvarez. Here, for the first time since Sutherland and Caballé, was a female voice to get excited about. The audience thought so too. They gave her mad scene a five minute standing ovation.

It's a voice with no breaks, beautiful of tone, agile, fearless and utterly committed to the histrionics. Word has it that she will be doing Donizetti's La fille du régiment at Covent Garden in a few years time. I think that Ross and I should go.

So, to sum up, a work that was new to me in a more than exceptable production in an opera house that I love easily rates four stars. Natalie Dessay on her own gets five.

Given the time constraints, there was time for little else. We did a little shopping. I bought nothing. We ate a lot in a number of very good eateries.

And we went up to the Monastery of Pedralbes which was very restful. The art gallery had a number of intersting religious works but nothing that was truly outstanding. But it was a pleasant oasis in a busy couple of days.

And, all to soon, it was back to work again.