A Day at the Opera
14 June

This has not been the easiest of fortnights.

Working on my own in the training room even with a room full of reasonably biddable people is not good when you are right out on the limits of your knowledge and just hoping that someone won't get uppity and try to catch you out.

Still I'm hanging on in.

I've had my eight weekly meeting with the doctor and we've both decided that now is just not the time to be thinking about coming off the medication. For me, this is a bit of a blow as, up until I came back from holiday, I felt that I was getting right back on track. But Dave leaving has sort of thrown things back up in the air again and I don't want to jeopardise the progress I've made by attempting to do too much at once.

So, it was with a gladsome heart that I made my way over to the Lowry for a day's treat of watching four one act operas as performed by Opera North. They really are a most inventive opera company and I was really looking forwards to the variety whilst accepting that it was bound to be a very mixed bag.

Il tabarro was the piece that I was least bating my breath for. Part of Puccini's Il Trittico, I had only accepted the ticket because it came free with the other three that I wanted to see. In the event, it was sensational and probably the best overall performance of the day - quite spine-tingling at the end when the lover's body is revealed by the cuckolded husband to his wife.

Jonathan Summers was quite magnificent as Michele and Nina Pavlovski scored as Giorgetta. Right up there with them was Leonardo Capalbo as Luigi, possessed as he is of a ringing Italianate tenor and tweetsie good looks. An early four stars.

This was followed by Love's Luggage Lost - a re-working of Rossini's L'occasione fa il ladro. I have to say re-working because what we saw on stage bore absolutely no relationship whatsoever to what Rossini intended and was a complete mish-mash travesty. The audience started to laugh at the beginning but this very soon dried up as embarrassment took over. I'd like to be able to say nice things about the singing but, honestly, I turned off to such an extent that I couldn't tell you what any of it sounded like. And this was one of the ones I was looking forwards to. I feel hard pushed to give it even one star.

Der Zwerg was more problematic. This was musically excellent with splendid conducting of the sumptuous score by David Parry and a star performance from Paul Nilon as the Dwarf with good support from Stefanie Krahnenfeld as the Infanta and Majella Cullagh as Ghita, her maid. The production from David Pountney was bold and imaginative. I just couldn't take the message at the heart of the piece that to have a deformed body means that you have a deformed soul. I think that I can just about give it three stars.

The final opera was La vida breve and was the one I was most looking forwards to and I was not disappointed. It was a searing experience. Mary Plazas probably doesn't have the fullest of voices for this role but she acted her heart out. Leonardo Capalbo returned as the lover, Paco, and was just as good and tweetsie second time round. Susan Gorton was monumental as the grandmother. It was an excellent end to the day.

There's also been some films to report on.

Mystic River was a riveting and disturbing as everyone has said it would be. Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon and Sean Penn were all quite superb in their various roles as teenage friends now grown up but with a shared history. I was kept guessing by the plot but in a completely believable way. A good film.

The Day After Tomorrow came as quite a surprise hit for me. Let's say straight away that the last third of the film with the father going to save the son was really quite bad in terms of plot but the opening two thirds were fabbity. I really enjoyed destroying Los Angeles by tornadoes, killing off the British Royal Family through hypothermia and drowning New York under water. I know that we've had CGI films until they are coming out of our ears but this made use of the medium to pack a message about the misuse of the planet. There were some really nice tongue in cheek moments such as US citizens crossing the Rio Grande to escape into Mexico. An excellent entertainment.

Troy, however, was a complete disaster of a movie. Not even Orlando Bloom's torso and Brad Pitt's buttocks could salvage this sorry mess. They even changed the story killing of Agamemnon at the end and thus short-circuiting the story of the house of Atreus. Once again, I'm pushed even to award one star.

And last comes Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Having enjoyed the first two movies so much, I was let down by the change of emphasis in this film. This was a movie based on the book rather than a telling of the book in movie form. Given that the book is probably twice as long as the first book in the series, the movie was probably 20 minutes shorter. I don't necessarily think that long is good but so much of the plot was left out, like how Sirius knew that Wormtail was back, like how he escaped from Azkaban, like who Mooney, Padfoot and Prongs were. It was probably a better Hollywood film. But it was not what I wanted. Still good though.