On Hold
28 April

Currently, everything seems to be on hold.

We've had a fortnight of nothing but grey skies and rain. I had a quick trip down to London for an opera (see later) and I take back everything I said a while ago about farmers hugging themselves for joy because from the train window the fields around Stafford looked suspiciously waterlogged.

In our garden, everything has stopped. All of the clematises, roses, honeysuckles, rhibes, jasmines and passionflowers have simply stood still in protest at the lack of sun. The buddleja is half the size it was this time last year. Only the wallflowers are sailing gloriously on bringing a blaze of colour to an otherwise stymied garden scene.

What else? Well, Ross and I met up with my parents and we went over to the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight for lunch and a stroll round the artworks. This was a most pleasant few hours. Dad was not so taken with the paintings but waxed lyrical about some of the furniture and expatiated about veneers and inlays to me.

In fact, we're having a more sociable time of it generally. Last Saturday, I was supposed to go with Ross to see Kylie in Manchester. I felt bugged and tired and generally not inclined to spend an evening among several thousand people in a hot, loud and cramped atmosphere. So, Ross went with Phil instead and the two of them enjoyed each other's company enormously. In fact, I think that Ross got a better deal out of the arangement as he ended up going with someone who really appreciated the music.

Also, we've arranged to meet up with Gill when we are next in London and we're going to see Colin in Lowestoft in August.

So, maybe we are coming out of our shell a bit.

I also had that trip down to London.

I went alone but met up with John, a former UCL colleague, for a meal before the show. We had an excellent pizza together in a restaurant opposite Covent Garden and chatted amiably for nearly an hour and a half before the witching hour arrived.

At which, I headed off over the road to the Royal Opera House for a performance of Verdi's Un ballo in maschera. Well, this was certainly a case of don't believe the critics...

Andrew Clark in The Financial Times said

The other unqualified success is Camilla Tilling's Oscar, a sparkling presence who dances across the score.

Well, in the Amphi she came across as possessing a thin, tinny and very small voice indeed. Noticeably there was much more applause from the Stalls for her than from above.

In The Guardian, Andrew Clements said

As Riccardo, Marcello Alvarez belts out his big numbers but his acting is negligible; he relates only tenuously to Karita Mattila's Amelia and Thomas Hampson's Renato

Well, on Monday, his singing had an unforced amplitude with much grace and emotion. True, he's not a great stage animal but his voice does the acting.

Robert Thicknesse in The Times wrote

Thomas Hampson and Karita Mattila as Renato and Amelia share a vivid scene of recrimination but it’s hardly subtle stuff, as Mattila heaves with emotion and Hampson barks and growls.

Well, again, it was much better than they saw and was better by far throughout. I don't think that either singer is a natural Verdian, whatever that means these days. But, thank heavens for the musicality of what they do.

No-one liked Elisabetta Fiorillo's Ulrica but at least she has a properly weighted contralto. What I liked least about her performance was the fearsome vibrato but none of the critics mentioned that.

In The Observer we heard from Anthony Holden that

there is a cruciform gibbet in the great love scene, where Karita Mattila was lucky not to break her neck while stumbling around Sergio Tramonti's designer rubble

Well, no. From a more elevated position than the Stalls, you could quite clearly see that there were well designed pathways among the rubble for the diva to strut her stuff along.

And, as a whole, it was a handsomely mounted evening that gave space to the singers to do their thing.

All in all, I liked it. I won't say that it was glorious but it was up there in the range of good with a fair few sprinklings of excellent about it. With the right cast, I'd even be prepared to sit through it again and, on this occasion, I am moved to give the performance four stars even if only to spite the critics.