Two Operas
30 April

With the late onset of spring, everything has come on in a rush and suddenly trees are green and the white may flowers are everywhere to be seen.

Work has been difficult. We have an induction week going on, Steve had been off on holiday and Ian went off sick with laryngitis. But it passed. The main thing is that I have been able to argue successfully that we are now no longer resourced to the level where we can operate as we have previously done. Everyone else agrees and so we shall start to make a root and branch change to the way we organise ourselves.

And then Ross and I were off to London on the Thursday. This was a trip that we planned back in November of last year when my world seemed a more settled place. When all of the redundancies were intimated, I very nearly cancelled the trip as an expensive distraction. I'm glad I didn't. As things have worked out, I've been able to do all that was planned. But I think that we shall have to be more cautious about these trips in future. We've sort of taken them as a right rather than as a definite treat.

The journey was fine and we are used to the Travel Inn by Euston now.

After a very good meal at a Pizza Express on Southampton Row, we settled down in our seats at the Coliseum for a performance by English National Opera of Offenbach's La Belle Hélène. I'd seen Opera della Luna give this piece in 2004 and was looking forwards to hearing it again and I was hoping that my Rossi would enjoy it too.

In the event, it was not to be. Ten minutes into the performance, the curtain came down. A snag in the electronics backstage, had meant that various scenery had failed to be lifted out of place. The decision was taken to fix the problem and to take an extra interval. By the time we got to the first interval, it was half past nine and the performance was on target for finishing at eleven o' clock.

So we left early. It was a disappointment but not a major one. And it left me thinking that, perhaps, I could have been cleverer about my choice of special treats to travel for. I can't say that, from what we saw of the production, I was going to have enjoyed it more that the one in Buxton.

Nevertheless, it was good to have heard Felicity Lott sing again (I'd last heard her as the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier at Covent Garden in 1995). Toby Spence was also outstanding as Paris. Since hearing him sing in Rossini's Barber of Seville in 2001 and Handel's Messiah in 2003, his voice has grown in size without losing any of it sweetness. Even so, I don't think that I can rate this performance because we didn't sit through it.

So, we had an early night and a lazy start to Friday. I did some yoga. Ross bought a newspaper. We strolled down Charing Cross Road, had coffee in the Starbuck's in Borders, bought some books in Blackwell's and ended up for lunch at the National Gallery.

We had a pleasant hour or so with the permanent collection.

We started among a small, free exhibition called Bellini and the Orient which showed the links between Italy and the Islamic world of the Turkish Empire. I was struck by portraits of Muhamet II and Caterina Corsaro; not because of any intrinsic value in the paintings themselves but because both individuals provide titles and main characters for operas by Rossini and Donizetti respectively.

I fell to musing as to how opera was once a medium for transmitting a collective consciousness about European back history. Film should be the current medium but this is mostly under the control of the American dollar and has little to do with recent history let alone anything of interest from further back.

Ross then went off to spend time with the Impressionists whilst I went off to look at rooms I rarely visit. I ended up with Tintoretto and Veronese and the Mannerists.

They are not pieces which I feel drawn to. This one of Christ Addressing a Kneeling Woman by Veronese seems to me to be particularly mawkish. It was a style and colour scheme much favoured by sugary Sunday School tracts of my early years.

Tintoretto's Origins of the Milky Way may be a bit racier but is still fairly naff when you come down to it.

I did prefer his Christ washing His disciples' feet on the opposite wall. It is altogether darker, more roughly finished.

And it occurred to me that this work was never intended to be seen in full daylight on a gallery wall. It was intended to be read as a part of a spiritual experience in the dark recesses of a church. In fact, all of the paintings in the room had been lifted from out of churches or the houses of the wealthy. It made me wonder about their various stories. How did all of these commissioned artworks come to be presented so far out of context? So, another good few hours spent with our national collection of art treasures.

Ross took a taxi back to the hotel for an afternoon rest whilst I headed off down Whitehall to do something that I have been promising myself for a while - I visited Westminster Abbey.

I learnt some interesting things - like the fact that Elizabeth I and Mary Tudor are buried in the same tomb (though Elizabeth is on top) - but I honestly didn't like the space. It is like a lumber room for the great and the good of yesteryear. The place is an unholy clutter of statues of politicians, epitaphs for dead gentry.

I suppose that they all have to go somewhere but it really didn't feel like a place of worship. I did like this ceiling of the Lady Chapel commissioned by Henry VII, however. All in all, a frustrating experience.

Friday evening's meal was at Gaby's and was by no stretch of the imagination the best meal that I have had there. There must be yet another change in the kitchen. No doubt it will pick up some time.

We sat in the same box at English National Opera. This time for a performance of Monteverdi's Orfeo. It was very good.

The title rôle was taken by John Mark Ainsley who I last heard singing with the San Francisco Symphony. He was quite sensational and, rightly, received a loud ovation at the end. Other rôles were well taken and I particularly liked Elizabeth Watts as Music/Hope, Brindley Sherrat as Acheron and Tom Randle as Apollo.

Musically, all was fine. Mostly, the production was good. I'm not sure that the East/West fusion worked quite as well as the critics would have had us believe. I found some of the dances very distracting and the stands with the various fruits which kept being brought on and off seemed pointless. But none of it distracted from a good three star evening.

However, I have to confess that this music is still beyond my compass. I would have said the same about Handel even ten years ago. It's just that, although it is clearly full of melody, there are no tunes and no development of tunes in the way that happens later in musical history. The style is basically declamatory and I have a difficulty with that.

Nevertheless, I may well go and see the piece again when Opera North do it next year - which will in fact be its 400th anniversary. Even if only to continue comparing and contrasting it with Gluck's take on the same legend which I've seen in various productions by ENO, WNO and Opera North.

The Gluck piece ends happily. Orpheus has been through his trials and has shown himself worthy of achieving happiness. Love conquers all.

Monteverdi has none of that. To overcome the tribal grief, Orpheus has to set off as an individual into his own personal hell. As before, he is told the route to salvation but cannot follow it through. This time there is no consolation through the society around him. His only way through the grief is (literally) to rise above it and to follow his spirit heavenwards towards the god Apollo.

Well, that's how it appeared to me. I shall be interested to see if that approach to the work withstands a second outing.

We had another good night's sleep at the hotel, stored our bags there and headed off to the British Museum. We'd already had a look around some of the British exhibits back in 2003.

This time we chose to head off into rooms to do with ancient eastern cultures. We hired an audio guide and positively avoided the usual tourist traps of the Egyptian and Greek rooms. I liked the wall sculptures taken from an Assyrian palace. Ross liked the moon vase from Korea.

We both liked the religious artifacts from India and China. I liked the feel of the items from the Hindu background rather than the Buddhist background and both of those a lot more than Shinto or Confucianism. There just felt to me to be more grounded energy in the earlier two. And the more the Chinese got involved, the more head orientated it became. I preferred the earth energies of India such as these images of Shiva and Vishnu.

That said, both pieces below are of Buddhist origin. On the left is the ceramic figure of a luohan or disciple of the Buddha and on the right is a Sri Lankan bronze figure of Tara, a figure associated with compassion.

In legend (and I'm not using that word disparagingly), Tara was created by a Bodhisattva. I'd not consciously registered these beings before. In the Buddhist tradition, they are people who have reached enlightenment and who could, therefore, leave the world behind. However, they choose to remain in order to look compassionately on the sufferings of the world and to lead souls to salvation.

Two hours passed very quickly. I bought a book offering seven tours of religious objects within the Museum so that I can plan my own tours in the future. It was a lovely way to spend the morning before returning home.