Firstly, we had one on the Metropolitan Opera's regular cinecasts at FACT.
A glow of culture illuminated these dark but lightening days for me.
Firstly, we had one on the Metropolitan Opera's regular cinecasts at FACT.
I had been looking forward immensely to Bizet's Les Pêcheurs de Perles and I wasn't disappointed. It's an effective but slight work which is not disliked but is seldom staged (in fact it's over twenty-five years since I last attended a performance). However, in the moment, it is absolutely fabulous with its elegantly exotic music and ample opportunities for some fine lyric singing.
The central trio of Mariusz Kwiecien, Matthew Polenzani and Diana Damrau brought the house down supported by the attentive conducting of Gianandrea Noseda. I passed a more than pleasant afternoon in the dark with the piece.
I do, however, have one major caveat. The piece is an example of opéra comique not Grand Opera (as is Carmen but that's a whole separate discussion). It is really not intended for a venue as large as the Met and, to do it well in a venue of that size, you have to use heavier voices than were intended and slow everything just slightly to keep those voices underpinned and cushioned.
Furthermore, a stage of that size demands a production big enough to fill it. Dick Bird's staging was big and spectacular and a number of visual coups were pulled off with some aplomb. However, Penny Woolcock's direction was somewhat hampered by taking place in a series of locations which severely restricted movement.
So, not perfect but very enjoyable none the less.
Looper was great fun - with time traveling bounty hunters. I lurve Joseph Gordon-Levitt and, with the aid of quite a bit of facial prosthesis, he almost managed to persuade me that his character would grow up to be Bruce Willis.
The movie hurtled along at great pace, inventively and entertainingly.
Only later did I start to pick holes in the premise. The Bruce Willis character must surely have known that he was onto a winner being sent back in time to be executed since his younger Joseph Gordon-Levitt self had already lived through the whole experience.
Anyhow, it didn't matter at the time.
After opera and film came concert music with a Friday matinée at the Liverpool Phil.
The main attraction was Boris Giltburg's accounts of both of the Shostakovich piano concerti given either side of the interval.
The more substantial second concerto was given in the first half and Giltburg was equal to all of the bravura challenges of the outer movements while the central Andante was rapt, hushed and wistfully melancholic. The first concerto with trumpet also came off very well. Between the two of them Giltburg and Petrenko achieved a chamber-like balance which allowed the work to be precociously rambunctious without descending into a percussive clatter-fest.
Starting us off was Prokofiev's brief and breezy First Symphony complete with a carefree, frolicking finale. This was in complete contrast to the first time that I heard Petrenko conduct this work back in February 2009 when I described his interpretation as "perverse".
We finished off Khachaturian's Suite No 3 from his relatively unknown ballet score Gayane. That said, the work does include the Sabre Dance which is pretty much Khachaturian's signature piece. It's not included in the third suite but Gayaneh's Adagio is and, film buff's take note, this is the piece of music that is the background to the astronauts' life aboard the spacecraft Discovery One in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.