Summer Break
26 July

Frankly, by the time it came to it I was ready for the break.

I saw out the couple of days' work which involved introducing the networking module of our training course and then I left Mitch to it. He is technically very able so I have every confidence that the customers will receive a better technical course than I could ever give. How the pedagogy goes is quite another matter. Still it's a baptism of fire and I'm glad to be away from it.

Thursday, I popped the training materials for next week's course into the printers and then Ross and I headed off for Llandudno for another of our opera holidays. Lucky that we had been there before because the weather for most of the three days was intermittently bad. Our foreknowledge meant that we knew which coffee shops to hang out in. So, we mostly read and relaxed.

First up from Welsh National Opera was a new production of La Traviata. What to say? I'm not so sold on Nuccia Focile as a performer as most of the critics are. Like most singers who pull out all of the stops in the final two acts of this piece, she was less at home with the coloratura of the first act. However, it was a more than creditable assumption. Peter Wedd was an ardent Alfredo, looking young enough to be a believably gauche lover but without much reserve for the bitter anger of the second act. Christopher Purves presented an excellent characterisation of Germont Snr but was somewhat dry of tone. Julian Smith's conducting was very edgy, needle-sharp and highly strung, presumably taking his cue from Tugan Sokhiev who started the show off, very far from the elegance that I normally associate from this great man.

So, why am I hedging my bets? Well, I just didn't like the production although I have to say that Ross did. Having seen so many Traviatas I might normally have passed on another but this new production was by Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser whose work is generally well thought out and presented. I thought that this was a dud. Updating this piece just doesn't work. The dilemmas are all bourgeois 19th Century dilemmas even if the emotions are universal. Without the social setting, the motivation of the characters is nonsensical. So, regrettably, because there were many good things in the evening's performance, I'm only going to give this two stars.

Nothing to do with critical appreciation but there was a very strange moment in the final act. Sian Meinir, who played Annina the servant, had a change of outfit and suddenly looked unfortunately like Jane Goody, of early Big Brother infamy. Peter Wedd entered and looked strangely like Rory Bremner. Finally, Christopher Purves came galloping in wearing a tweed jacket and a flat cap and, blow me, he looked like René out of 'Alo 'Alo. There was a stage full of lookie-likies.

Not expecting very much, we took ourselves along the following morning to the Mostyn Gallery for a show entitled Native Land comprising recent landscape work by North Wales artists. In the event, we were pleasantly surprised. I really liked Peter Prendergast's Orange Sunset for the vibrancy of its colours. Iwan Gwyn Parry's River Dee Triptych was full of texture and light. Helen Jones's Cartrefle took the simple idea of spreading a leather patchwork quilt over sheep fleeces to create a landscape which was its of comment on Welsh terrain. It was a good way to spend ninety minutes.

Meantime, I polished off Whatever You Say I Am by Anthony Bozza, a biography of Eminem. I don't know that I know an awful lot more about the performer from reading this book (it was given to asserting how great a creative artist he is rather than showing us how that may be) but I think I have more of a feel for how Hip Hop fits into American sociology. But the man sports one of the best bubble buts in the music business and that's all that counts, isn't it?

Whilst we are in this frame of mind for a moment, let's just take a moment to ask whether it was wise for Darius Denesh, late of Pop Idol, to eschew his drawers under his kilt whilst on stage in the auld country.

Meanwhile, back at the theatre, we finished off our brief stay with Carmen. Ross and I first saw this production back in 1997 when he visited Liverpool with me for the first time. We loved it first time round. We loved it again. This was Caurier and Leiser at their very best.

Nora Sourouzian presented us with a very sultry, sexy and fallible Carmen. She was also very mezzo so we actually heard all of the low notes for a change. Rafael Rojas was a bit wooden to start off with but he became more and more heroic of tone as the evening wore on and his final descent into murderous rage was shattering. Daniel Sumegi as Escamillo got the biggest cheer of the evening but I found his presentation coarse and vulgar. Camilla Roberts was a bigger voiced Micaëla than we normally get and was the better for it - no mousey voiced prig here, she was a peasant woman of the earth who was fighting for the love of her man with every trick she could muster. An easy four stars here.

And that just about wrapped it up. We won't be back next year. After five seasons in a row, it's time for a change. And also, frankly, looking at the repertory that WNO are bringing to Llandudno in 2004/2005, there isn't enough to warrant the excursion. So, we'll do something else. I'm hoping to persuade Ross that Amsterdam beckons.

So, we got home and cleared the washing out of the way and I prepared for the training course and we thought "What do we do next?".

Well, Spiderman II had just opened so we went to see that. And it was quite, quite excellent. Not often that you get a sequel that's as good and even better than its predecessor but this was one. Alfred Molina made such a good villain and Tobey still looks good in red and blue spandex.

Then it was down to the Westwood Training and Conference Centre to give another of the regular training courses that I have given over the years with Phil. It went really rather well, nothing outstandingly special but more than professional and competent and it was a real pleasure working with Phil again.

I filled in between sessions by reading Patricia Cornwell's latest Scarpetta novel, Blowfly. It was as poor as I expected it to be.

By the time I returned, Ross had gone off with his family to holiday with them down in Cornwall so I was on my own. You would have thought that I should have had enough of gallavanting but no, come the Saturday night I was over to Buxton.

The Buxton Festival is one of the highlights of my operatic year as it always turns up something new, Gioachino Rossini's Il turco in Italia. I can't say that this was anything special but there were some lovely musical moments and the performance was sprightly under the baton of Wyn Davies. All performers gave competent, nicely attuned Rossinian performances. Donald Maxwell shone like the trouper he is. A good night out.