Following on from the success of our trip to see Welsh National Opera's production of Janáček's Věc Makropulos in Llandudno last October, Colin and I agreed to attend their new production of Bernstein's Candide there this summer.
Well, I'm still not feeling myself - and both readings of that are correct. I've well and truly lost my mojo this time and I feel as though I'm just letting time slip through my fingers. I'm certainly not living my best life.
I'm sure that in the fullness of time I shall bounce back as I'm really quite resilient. Whether or not I shall bounce back better this time I don't know. Maybe it'll be more like bounce back different.
Nevertheless, there is much to communicate in the form of glad, bad and indifferent tidings.
Ross is going on holiday with his family in August to Dubrovnik. This is the one that I declined to attend when invited last year. Since then Ross's mum, Glenda, has been in and out of hospital with gall bladder problems and has been told that she must have an operation to have it removed. She did almost have the operation performed at the end of May but, much like my cyst operation, she was at the mercy of others in greater need and so the opportunity passed. My understanding was that she was scheduled to have the operation in July thus giving her time to recover before flying but there was no news from the palace.
Then came the announcement of further strikes within the NHS. I asked Tom if he knew anything but he too was without information. So, I took it upon myself to find out - we two sons-in-law-of-sorts must stick together when the sons have their heads in the sand.
So, I spoke with Glenda and Trevor and discovered that Glenda had been given a date for her op some time back. (Tom bristled as I had when I told him this) We all agreed that it might need a following wind but it may actually take place. We all also recognised that, if the operation didn't go ahead as planned, then the strikes would screw it up until after the holiday.
That was when I took a deep breath and popped the question as to whether there was any chance of the holiday being called off. And the answer came back that, whatever happened about the operation, Glenda's treatment would increase the insurance premiums. Trevor and Glenda would just have to bite the bullet and shell out.
Then Glenda said...
I'M FINE. I'M FINE. I'M FINE. I'VE BEEN TO THE GYM. I'M FINE. I'M FINE. I'M IN NO PAIN. I'VE BEEN TO THE GYM. I'M FINE. I'M FINE. THE GYM. I'M FINE. NO PAIN. I'M FINE.
Tom sighed and said he understood. She's doing a complete denial job for the sake of the family. "She's going to collapse on day three, isn't she?" I predicted. Tom was quick to respond, "At least we'll have a doctor in the hotel." I hope Sam reads up on gall bladders before they take off.
I watched a fascinating video on YouTube about differing regional vowel sounds and the effect that they have on anyone singing in a choir. The guy presenting the video talked about the situation in Tudor times but I guess if still holds true for today. His point was that if someone who sings in a choir and has a strong regional accent (say Newcastle Geordie) changes location to somewhere with a very different local accent (say Taunton in Somerset), then sound of the vowels in their vocal delivery makes it difficult for them to blend with the other singers.
Leo too was interested and thought he might pass it on to a friend who sings in a choir. He also pointed out that, from the nineteenth century onwards, many variations in regional dialect were the product of a form of natural selection based on local industries. He gave the example of the Barnsley accent which he said was a variant of the Yorkshire accent specially adapted for talking over the sound of textile machinery and that it stood in contrast to the "up hill/down dale" and "da’n pits" accents. I thought that this was a fine subject for a linguistics PhD - "Workplace determinants in the development of Yorkshire accent variants during the Nineteenth Century."
Following on from the success of our trip to see Welsh National Opera's production of Janáček's Věc Makropulos in Llandudno last October, Colin and I agreed to attend their new production of Bernstein's Candide there this summer.
I think it's a wonderful hodge-podge of a work with some absolutely fabulous melodies that hang around in your head for days afterwards.
Unfortunately, high hopes were dashed. Candide is one of those works which was re-written and revised and has been chopped and changed about through any number of variations. It's not surprising therefore to attend a performance and be told that you are attending a mash-up of any number of editions with additional dialogue here, cuts there and textual emendations to remove references which might cause offence to modern audiences.
On this occasion, we were informed that we were attending the Lonny Price Version.
That meant nothing.
What as very obvious, however, was that an awful lot was missing (the whole of The Old Lady's speech explaining how she lost one of her buttocks, for example). The plot is picaresque and peripatetic in nature but a lot of the binding material was lost which made for some awkward jumps and explanations as to how characters who were killed in one setting were alive and living in another were cut completely. Most of the thread of philosophical discourse was dropped so there was little link between The best of all possible worlds and Make our garden grow.
I've since discovered that Lonny Price is a scion of Broadway and created this version for a one-off event with a specific cast aimed at a concert going audience (ie you are in an out of the concert hall in two hours thirty minutes max). The event was a concert performance given in 2004 with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Marin Alsop, who studied with Lenny. Among the performers, Patty LuPone was The Old Woman and Thomas Allen was Pangloss. It was not intended as a version suitable for the theatre.
We also felt that there was a high degree of uncertainty happening on stage. The show had been given three performances in Cardiff before bouncing around a number of one night stands at odd intervals. This was the fifth showing after a week's gap and it felt a bit like a dress rehearsal. I absolutely did wonder if they'd had real problems getting the show on stage because it was a very complex show, very fast paced needing the cast to hit very precise marks (and there seemed to be few of those on the stage floor) in order for tight lighting and precise projections to work exactly. Mostly, it all happened to plan but within a context of a lot of controlled panic.
Grégoire Pont's videos and animations were a great talking point and added enormously to the enjoyment. James Bonas directed a frenetic show with plenty of good gags but didn't have enough musical or textual material to give Make our garden grow the emotional climax it surely should be. Karen Kamensek made a decent job of conducting the onstage band but I'm honestly not sure what the combination of instruments was. I could see two horns behind just two violins on stage left and at least two double basses on the right. There were some very oddly balanced moments as a result but I don't think that that was necessarily the conductor's fault.
Which brings us to the singing - a bit late in the day for an opera really. Ed Lyon's Candide was a marvellously sung and presented performance. Claudia Boyle acted the role of Cunégonde well but only came into good voice in the second act by which time all of her best moments had gone. I enjoyed both Mark Nathan's Maximilian and Francesca Saracino's Paquette but they were the victims of swingeing textual cuts. Madeleine Shaw was fabulous as The Old Woman despite losing many of her best lines. I don't know at all about Gillian Bevan as Pangloss. She honestly didn't seem to know her lines and completely lost herself once.
Several days later, Colin still felt cheated by the version and what flowed from that choice. For a company that used to bruit its adherence to full textual fidelity, I think that WNO were somewhat parsimonious with the truth about this summer's offering. Nevertheless, we were all glad of the outing and the chance to see live performance. It was worth the effort of organising and driving for the company alone.
When I showed this cartoon to Linda recently, she enquired as to who had upset me, wondering privately, I guess, if I was getting ready to deck someone.
I explained that nobody had recently but that this was exactly what had happened to Ross the previous day.
Again, Linda was concerned but, this time, she was concerned that I was the recipient. Quickly, I explained that someone had behaved rudely at a Pelican Crossing invading his space and that he had pushed their arm away from in front of him. What I didn't explain was that this had left him in a bit of a state and that, when he arrived back home, he had greeted me with the immortal line "I've just punched an old lady in the face". It took a while to unknot that one.
Linda's response was a pragmatic suggestion that, since people are so rude, we should get him a taser and she sent love.
I read Linda's reply to Ross and he laughed out loud - always a loving tonic in itself.