My pigeon is growing.  The adults leave it alone most of the time now.  I suppose they are off looking for worms to stuff down its gullet.

Amazon it seems to me used always to send stuff to me by Royal Mail but this week they used something called Amazon Logistics.  I think that's just an umbrella term they use to conceal the actual carrier.  Anyway the one who came to me must have applied the logic in the name to his task and decided that although the two little packages he had would have passed easily through the letterbox they were not letters.  So he put a card through my letterbox (stretching the definition a bit) and left my packages with a neighbour.  My neighbours are not usually in at 1pm but this chap works shifts and was at home.   I was also at home in fact so either I'm getting deafer with time or he knocked very quietly.

I complained to Amazon about the stupidity of the affair and got an email that gave every sign of having been written by a human being who had read my missive.  Either that or they've got hold of some very clever email analysis software, perhaps from GCHQ.

The Lyceum finished their season with a sparkling production of a play by Goldoni and having just been the Teatro Goldoni (not to the show that was on, it sounded dire) and the Goldoni Museum (hardly worth the 5 euros entry) I felt I couldn't miss it and I'm glad I didn't.

In The Venetian Twins the eponymous duo arrive independently and unknown to one another in Verona, one fleeing from justice and the other to marry a lady he has never met.  The other characters, who aren't aware either that there are twins around continually find themselves in situations in which they believe they are dealing with one twin when it is in fact the other.  Much confusion and entertainment results.  

The adaptation into very Scottish English abounds with humour of the seaside postcard variety,  but also has some keenly satirical fun with early feminism and male pomposity.  There's slapstick and the engagement of the audience in pantomime fashion (less the community singing I'm glad to say).  It all adds up to a splendid entertainment.

The SCO and chorus gave a totally different but equally splendid entertainment in the presentation of Haydn's Creation.  I hadn't realised before that this is a relatively lighthearted work, far away in spirit from the serious religiosity of the cantatas of Bach for example.  It was sung in English and sung very clearly by both chorus and soloists so there was no barrier to understanding and the soloists made the most of the elements of humour in the piece.  I'd heard it once before as music behind a ballet in Rio but I don't recall a feeling of lightheartedness in the dance or the music.  I expect that was a failing of sensitivity on my part.  If it's not spelt out in bold caps I'll miss it.      

The Traverse had a very good play on last week. By a Quebecois writer Right Now is the story of a young couple who appear to have lost a child and whose lives are taken over by a rather odd family living next door. Despite dealing with loss it was very amusing, terribly well performed and at the end left us wondering what was real and what was imaginary.

Two extremely bloodthirsty families are at odds in Titus Andronicus which the Grads have just presented.  I suppose the play could be considered as a 16th century precursor of Hammer horror movies and treated on that level it's quite fun but I think Shakespeare was wise to abandon the genre and move on to much more interesting stuff.

It was done in the round in what's a new venue for us, Assembly Roxy.  It's a great space and the staging in the desert was excellent. ( It took two hours for a substantial team of which I was a puny member to move that sand out on Saturday night.)  In general I enjoyed the show, all the cast were convincing and some performances such as SJ's Lavinia who is beaten, raped, has her hands cut off and her tongue torn out were truly excellent.  But what a lot of tosh.  

The Roxy set up for Titus (photo by Gordon Hughes) and how it looked less than 24 hours afterwards during a recital by Sue Mckenzie and Ingrid Sawers. Saxophone and piano make a great combination.

Minimalist music is not everyone's cup of tea but I'm a fan so went hotfoot to The Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow this weekend to enjoy a plethora of fascinating pieces from Steve Reich's monumental Music for 18 Musicians that runs non stop for an hour and demands super competent players to the same composer's Clapping Music, a five minute piece for two but which was performed by a group of school children on this occasion.

I didn't make it on Friday to hear Philip Glass's big concert nor did I grace the midnight to three art college gig and I gave the three hour Sunday morning session for kids a body swerve but I still managed to hear about ten hours of music plus a very entertaining session with Reich in conversation with Colin Currie.

It was not the first time I'd set foot in the concert hall building but it was the first time I'd attended an event there.  The auditorium is splendid and there were plenty of other good spaces for the free concerts that took place in the afternoons and for Saturday night when the RSNO were also in action in the building.

It was the first time I'd heard any of this music live with the possible exception of Chasing Sheep is Best Left to Shepherds which I think Michael Nyman's band played on a visit to Edinburgh a long time ago.  It confirmed my conviction that recorded music is a poor second best to live performance.

Hard to pick a favourite from around twenty-five disparate pieces but maybe Horses of Instruction by Steve Martland did it for me.  But I'd happily hear them all again.

During a break on Saturday I popped round to see the Theatre Royal's new front door and foyer.  It's very smart and there's a lovely staircase spiralling its way heavenwards that I couldn't resist snapping.

There are a number of displays in the foyer including a wonderful video that compresses the two day set up of an opera into two minutes and fifty five seconds by running at breakneck speed.  Here are a few stills from it.