I took Roland to see The Rake's Progress as his Christmas present.
Glyndebourne Touring's visit to the Liverpool Empire was a cause for a double celebration.
Firstly, I had not been in that theatre since Scottish Opera's visit in January 2017 with Le nozze di Figaro. Secondly, I had not attended a live opera performance since Opera North's visit to the Lowry in March 2019 with Street Scene.
I took Roland to see The Rake's Progress as his Christmas present.
It was in the summer of 1975 that this famous John Cox/David Hockney production of Stravinsky's work saw the light of day.
My first encounter with it was as a Proms performance that summer and, at the time, my reaction to the musical idiom was one of complete incomprehension.
These days, I sat in the Liverpool Empire thoroughly enjoying the pastiche style, the musical jokes, the sprightly string playing, the burbling and chortling wind band, the occasional brass (as in the Graveyard Scene à la Mozart) and the ballad style vocalisations culminating in Anne Trulove's Gently, little boat sung with ardent simplicity by Soraya Mafi.
I enjoyed Sam Carl's Nick Shadow (cavernous of voice in the Graveyard Scene and sly in physical movement slickly appearing on cue as if from nowhere) while Frederick Jones's assumption of Tom Rakewell had great stamina for a lyric voice and maintained the character's basic naiveté until the very end.
The second offering that I saw was Donizetti's Don Pasquale which is tuneful farce at its best and I was absolutely delighted with the performance and the production.
It was excellent entertainment. Mariam Battistelli gave a stellar performance as Norina and Konu Kim was not far behind as Ernesto. Ricardo Seguel and Constantin Suchkov took the patter duet faster than should be G&S possible.
All in all, a cracking night out.