Before I began my seventh decade on this planet, I thought that I would make sure that I got a few last treats under my belt.
King Lear cannot be said to be the jolliest of plays but for me, giving myself up to its granite structure, is one of life's blessings. Like the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, it is a narrative of a descent into a process of scourging and cleansing followed by a return but a return into a changed state of being.
Sam Mendes' NT Live production favoured modern dress for a totalitarian state with a lot of black uniforms and black leather and grim settings. It featured stellar performances from Simon Russell Beale, whose Lear was played as living with dementia with Lewy bodies (that is clumps of proteins in the nerve cells of the brain), and Adrian Scarborough as a surly, truculent and most petulant Fool.
It was, however, the two "ugly" sisters who were given the most telling assumptions. Mendes obviously didn't see either of them as pantomime villains but as wronged women whose past history made their behaviour absolutely logical to them.
Kate Fleetwood's Goneril was motivated by principle - not principles I would agree with but she was consistent in her beliefs. Having abdicated, she was no longer taking any shit from her father and so when he persisted in abusing the hospitality of his daughter her frustration boiled over and she slapped him. Frustration had become animosity which became spontaneous anger and ultimately produced a harpy.
Anna Maxwell Martin's Regan began as a bimbo but her element of unpredictability very quickly turned into monstrous nastiness as she danced ecstatically while helping to avenge the death of her husband or seduced Oswald, one of the most put upon characters in the Shakesperean canon.
No single production of Lear is complete in itself but the same could be said of Beethoven's Symphony No9. This production, however, will stay with me and set a bar for me to judge how future productions I see depict the two sisters who tell Lear what he wants to hear and then reject him.
I enjoyed Andrew Garfield's return to lycra in The Amazing Spider-Man 2
Hocum, yes, but well constructed, efficient entertainment nonetheless.
It's difficult but not impossible to resist La bohème but Phyllida Lloyd's production for Opera North gave the audience no chance to remain unmoved before the final curtain.
The production was 1950s Parisian shtick without going for the full Robert Doisneau/Henri Cartier-Bresson. The cast were all young and ardently vocal. The music was clear and unaffected and from the heart.
You'd have had to have had a heart of stone not to heave a sigh or shed a tear.
Two operas, one film and then a concert. Pianist Saleem Ashkar gave a sturdy account of Brahms second piano concerto easily up to the pianistic demands of this work but perhaps a little four-square and pedantic. I think that there is room for a little more romance and flair. He may have been held back a little by Vassily Petrenko's view of the score which was well attuned to the symphonic aspects of the piece but maybe less accomodating of the fact that it is finally a concerto.
Prokofiev's Symphony No6 completed the programme. I love the work. I have ever since I happened upon it at a Proms performance conducted by John Pritchard in 1974. The icy wastes, the sudden changes of mood, the cataclysmic finale all played straight into Vassily's strengths as a conductor. I am so surprised that this work is not heard as often as the first and fifth symphonies.