I saw David McVicar's new Glyndebourne production of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail as a webcast held over from the recent live broadcast to cinemas.
One of the great dichotomies of my life is my love of high art and my love of the bodies of young men preferably in a state of undress - and, of course, there are occasions when the two of these do indeed coincide.
I saw David McVicar's new Glyndebourne production of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail as a webcast held over from the recent live broadcast to cinemas.
It is a handsome enough affair in a very old-fashioned way (and I mean no disrespect in that regard). It presents everything in a very straight-laced way without delving too deeply into either the gender politics or the cultural tensions of the piece.
Musically, Robin Ticciati made sure that the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment were elegant but sprightly in tempo and buoyant in rhythm. Emperor Joseph II’s famous critique was that there were "Too many notes, Herr Mozart". It didn't feel like that here.
Sally Matthews and Edgaras Montvidas were a finely sung pair of lovers, Konstanze and Belmonte. Tobias Kehrer was wonderful as Osmin - for the "villain" of the piece, he really does have some of the best tunes.
I just couldn't warm to any of it. Maybe it was watching it alone on a computer screen. Maybe those old-fashioned virtues simply didn't include making me care about what was happening.
I went to FACT to watch Polly Findlay's Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Merchant of Venice.
It's an odd play when you come to look at it.
You've got a romance fairy tale where a love match is decided by the opening of three caskets (rather than answering three riddles as is the case with Turandot). And you've got a tale of legal contracts being used to exact physical revenge only to be thwarted by a legal nicety.
Yes, both plots are about commercial transactions but it's really a case of two plays running side by side with sundry characters appearing in both.
The element which I think beggared the production from the start was that Venice and Belmont were not sufficiently differentiated. I think it's wilful to try and weld both stories into one narrative. The two stand alone and in opposition commenting on each other.
You've then got one of literature's great outsiders in the shape of Shylock but I feel it is a mistake to see the play as either upholding or critiquing anti-semitism. The point is that it does both. You can either feel compassion for the man or hatred in equal measure.
And I didn't feel that any of that was being explored at any level beyond the perfunctory.
I met up with Shane who lives on the far side of Manchester. In fact, I'd started chatting with Shane whilst I was in Buxton.
He really does have an ass that is that shapely. It is a thing of awesome majesty.
My problem was that he wouldn't shut up. It really felt that he was trying to filibuster the meeting so that I had as little time as possible in which to penetrate his posterior. I shan't be going back.
It would seem that young Nick Jonas is looking to extend his singing career with a little acting on the side and, as has become common, one of the selling points for Careful What You Wish For is the amount of Mr Jonas's flesh which is on view.
It's modestly done you understand (it's not good to drop all the veils on the first outing) so there are plenty of opportunities for more and different another time.
Many more young men elect to be photographed with few or no clothes on - Chris Mears delights in looking lush, Max Whitlock doesn't mind being shown off as twink cuteness on a stick and Dan Osborne sticks to the tried and trusted formula of reviving a flagging Reality TV Star's career by getting his buns out for the camera.
And then, just when you thought that the consumer society could not get any more ludicrous, there's another new gob-smacking surprise for you.