However, let's start off with a real triumph. We've sorted the leaking bath plug out. OK, it may not sound much but we're feeling like a couple of proper, butch handymen. And if that's not too hard to visualise, try the sight of me in the back garden planting out sunflower seedlings. I am determined to get a crop of these bloody things. So far, I seem to be able to get them to be 6" high and then they keel over.
Disappointments? Well, they have been mainly on the artistic front. Thursday brought my first trip this year to Covent Garden's Verdi Festival for il maestro's first opera Oberto. After previous years throwing up unexpected treasures like Alizira and Arnoldo, I was hopeful of something splendid here too. But it turned out to be exactly what it is - the not very good first work of someone who went on to much better things. Still it was nice to hear the Traviata quotation in the Overture.
Saturday night brought L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato - a joint venture between ENO and the Mark Morris Dance Group reviving a work from 1988. I've heard so much about this and Mark Morris's work that I was really looking forward to it and my anticipation was further cranked up by a stonking Guardian review on Saturday morning.
Good points. Well, the choreography is fine. I'm not bothered by the folksy elements and lack of jumps and lifts as some people seem to be. I like the fluidity and simplicity. I liked the use of colour both in costume and setting. I liked the music.
Bad points. Well, I've seen it all before. London Contemporary Dance Theatre did this sort of things 15-20 years ago and did it with more élan in pieces like Stabat Mater set to music by Vivaldi. They also worked more successfully with colour. I particularly remember a piece designed by Bridget Riley where dancers in bright costumes alternately clashed and sympathised with vibrant backcloths leaping between areas of colour.
I also couldn't see the point of hiding the singers in the orchestra pit. Seeing is part of hearing and, with the artists hidden, there was a conscious choice to be made - either concentrate of the voices to appreciate their work and hear the text in full or watch the dancing. I did the later - which was possibly a mistake as the singers in the pit were high calibre. I'm not very hopeful now about Mark Morris's collaboration with the Royal Opera on Rameau's Platée this coming autumn.
I was also very dubious about some of the sexual politics of the piece. Two of the black dancers appeared to be overly camping things up but the choreographer was there in person so they must have been doing his bidding. I just wonder if he got the audience reaction he wanted by presenting us with a couple of simpering, mincing queens. There was also a lot of byplay and interplay between the men that may have been significant and might not have been especially as the women didn't seem to get the same sorts of opportunities. Hmmm, I dunno. I was very uneasy.
Enough. What else to relate? Good news that Adventures in Motion Pictures, (responsible for Swan Lake earlier in the year, will be bring a new production (Cinderella) to the capital in the autumn. Must see. Ross and I had fabby sex on Friday night during a thunderstorm. We turned the lights off and left the curtains open and went for it. The garden's looking fine. Cyril's well with the world. Yeh, most things are good at the moment. Oh, and Ross and I have decided to give up smoking. I finished the last of mine yesterday. Ross's cigarettes seem to have disappeared. I rather think he's hidden them from me so that he can eke them out as long as possible - half a snout at a time. More news as and when.