Autumn in Llandudno
2 November

Well, back again.

Only a few months ago, Ross and I were here in the blazing sun for Welsh National Opera's summer season by the sea. Now we're back for the first autumn season at this graceful holiday resort. It was chillier to be sure. The leaves on the trees were crimsons, oranges, citrus yellows and fawns. But it was good fun and a tonic to the system.

Before I get too far, though, I must report after my angst-ridden previous post that I now have an interview at last. This is for a job with Liverpool City Council working on their IT HelpDesk. If offered I shall take it but I have reservations. I'm not sure who who the client base is, what the range of support offered is and (most pertinently) whether or not the expected working hours are 24/7. But, hey, let's get the interview over with first, shall we?

So, the hotel. Well, we decided to drop a class from The Imperial where we have stayed previously and we stayed at the two star Esplanade. Now, I have to say immediately that the staff were very pleasant and the room was clean and the food was more than adequate. But (you were waiting for the but, weren't you) there were a couple of things that we noted. Firstly, the hotel was decked out with Christmas trimmings - tinsel, baubles and trees everywhere. Secondly, and this is probably the reason for the first, the clientele were (and there's no politically correct way of writing this) much more common.

And the operas? Well, the first was Mozart's Marriage of Figaro. I was very surprised to realise that, during the course of this Journal, I have not once attended a performance of this quintessential opera. Well, Thursday 30 October changed that.

Let's be up front straight away. WNO is not a company on the crest of a wave at the moment. You have to go to Opera North for a company with that extra élan. WNO may have the edge with orchestral finesse and a chorus of depth and vigour but ON produce rounded performances so that, even if I disliked the Rusalka, I could not help admire the commitment. With WNO currently, I don't find my self actively disliking. But I don't find myself actively advocating either. Everything is reasonably OK but nothing is outstanding.

This Figaro, for example. Well, there were one or two good performances. Christopher Purves' Count was very good value. As I noted in the summer, he is growing in stature. Geraldine McGreevy as the Countess sounded stretched but then she shouldn't have been singing a Flower Maiden in Parsifal in the same season. I quite liked James Rutherford's Figaro. He gave all the right notes but he didn't really come over the footlights. Natalie Christie gave by far and away the best performance of the evening as Susanna. The rest of the performances were more than adequate.

I liked Rinaldo Alessandini's historically informed conducting. This new term basically means Not as slow as performances in the 1950s but not always as quick as the first reconstructed performances of the 1980s. The singers had time to breathe and there was a dramatic pulse to the work. I liked the production's look. Some naughty anachronisms in a basically 18th Century setting (a hair drier in the Countess's boudoir) but they were fun rather than distracting. I liked the way that the women looked as thought they were grooming Cherubino to be the Count of the future. I was not sure about the way the Countess was played as though she had not matured from her days as Rosina in The Barber of Seville but it was an interesting take.

What I did feel most definitely was that I had not experienced the pain of disillusionment quite so poignantly in this work quite so acutely in any previous visit to this work and, for that alone, I simply wanted to go out and hear it all over again very soon, preferably in English so that I could follow the text more closely. So, a good three star performance.

I enjoyed this performance of Verdi's Il trovatore more than the one we saw at Covent Garden last year. It wasn't as vocally alluring but David Rendall made a good fist of Manrico and Patricia Bardon was a committed Azucena. Elena Lasovskaya had all the notes for Leonora. She was more assured than Veronica Villarroel at Covent Garden so we weren't living in fear of the notes cracking but then she didn't have Veronica's committed attack. Yuri Nechaev seemed to have different views on tempi from the conductor, Julian Smith.

The production was dark and gloomy and lit by fire which was all very apt. It moved at a great pace which was also apt. I probably had move enjoyment out of this evening than I did out of Figaro which, although by far the greater work, is not the simple unalloyed pleasure of great melodies in the service of an authentically exciting tale. Another well merited three stars.

Ross and I have been to see no Wagner together since the disastrous Flying Dutchman at the Coliseum in 1997. I wondered if he'd get through all five and a half hours of it and he managed very well.

I'm not going to hold the proceedings up. It gets another three stars. The production was not traditional but not so affected that it detracted and, in most respects, I could understand why decisions had been made. The really good thing was that it did not deny the Christian basis for the genesis of the work. It was an all round company success but Alfred Reiter's Gurnemanz and Sara Fulgoni's Kundry were world class.

The best thing about the evening was the conducting of Vladimir Jurowski. He treated the massive score as though it were chamber music and required the singers to treat their parts as lieder singing. The result was some of the most beautiful and transparent Wagner I have heard in a long time. I am still not a re-convert and Ross is steadfast that he will take a lot of persuading to go to another Wagner opera even if this experience was streets ahead of his first experience six years ago. However, I am glad that the trend for slow and overly reverent performances is being over-turned.

We also took in an interesting gallery event at the Mostyn Gallery. Laura Ford's sculptures made out of everyday fabrics were very eye-catching. There were two displays. The first, of cartoon-like deer and polar explorers, was silly and fun. The second was much more disturbing. It was a room full of child-like boy figures dressed in very middle-class Next for Kids type garments. They were all slumped and slouched in postures of extreme dejection. Each had a donkey's head. Ross said it reminded him of the bad boys' island in Pinnochio. We both agreed that something dreadful but unspecified had happened to these children. It was quite simply harrowing.

Most of the rest of the time was just spent relaxing. And, for that relief, much thanks.