I'm something of an agnostic as far as opera is concerned but some I do enjoy and one of my favourites is Tosca. Scottish Opera have a production running at the moment and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The music is unbelievably lush and the drama gripping. Despite knowing very well that she's going to jump off the battlements when the moment came it caused me a sharp intake of breath in shock and just about brought tears to my eyes. Great stuff.
In contrast I was not terribly moved by Mathew Bourne's take on Romeo and Juliet. Prokofiev's music is super though I prefer it live rather than canned and the dancing and staging were nothing short of admirable but somehow the emotions didn't overcome the disadvantage of this being a screening and not a live performance. The fact that the only connections with Shakespeare's play were the characters' names and the death of the lovers may also have had something to do with it.
Other wonderful dancing came from Carlos Acosta's Cuban troupe, Acosta Danza. Their closing number, Rooster, (which despite not remembering at the time I now realise I have seen before) is a dance set to music by the Stones in which Carlos himself plays a major part strutting around as the eponymous bird. I'd only recently seen the biopic about him. How true it is one doesn't know of course but it was rather the opposite of Billy Elliot. Carlos was a boy who didn't want to dance. It was only the pressure exerted (sometimes physically) by his father that kept him at it. If my parents had only enforced my attendance at piano lessons when I was eight instead of weakly letting me off the hook after a couple of months I might have been a concert pianist today, I don't think. Musicwise I'm actually just completing ten years with the saxophone and still enjoying the struggle.
I had a few days in Keswick staying at Connor's B&B with Siobhan. Her daughter Miriam has just left school and has gone with a chum to work in a restaurant in the town. Her chum's aunt lives there and the two of them are lodging with her. It's sort of a gap year enterprise though I think they plan to work and save over the winter and then do something more exciting before heading on to university next October. They both seem to be enjoying the experience and getting involved in things outside work as well. I think Siobhan was reassured by the visit.
While we were there we went to the lovely theatre they have by the lakeside to see a show called The Children. It was an interesting piece set in the aftermath of an accident at a nuclear power station, well suited to a Keswick audience with the Sellafield plant only a few miles down the coast. Anyway the argument of the play revolved around the setting up of a team of engineers and scientists of mature years to take charge of cleaning up operations in the plant to spare younger people from exposure to the dangers of such an undertaking. Not all the characters in the play were prepared to be quite so selfless. I think in the Fukushima incident older people did step forward.
Other theatre visits included Catch 22 produced by the Grads. It was terribly well choreographed and had lots of delightful caricatures. I particularly enjoyed Lawrence Waring's pop-eyed Major Major climbing in and out of his office window. The Barber Shop Chronicles at the Lyceum was a riot of colour, action, fast paced scene shifting and man talk set in barber shops all over Africa and back here in Blighty. A scene from Claire's work in progress featured with three other writers' work in From Page to Stage at the Roxy. All four pieces entertained and raised interesting and one hopes useful comments from three theatre luminaries there to give feedback.
Theatre of a different kind was provided by stand-up Ardal O'Hanlon who held the Queen's Hall audience's attention for an hour or more with his ruminative and mostly gentle wit. He owes his fame I understand to a long gone sit com Father Ted. A word of praise for his warm up act, a girl from Glasgow whose act was funny but definitely post watershed. I thought she was called Sue Riddle but Google doesn't know her so I must be wrong.
Another couple of girls who did well for me in recent weeks were Anna Clyne whose Prince of Clouds and Sound and Fury graced an SCO concert and a lady whose name I can't recall who gave a most entertaining talk in and about Scots at the Portrait Gallery.
On the music front apart from the SCO I revelled in Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony from the RSNO. I just love that man's big, loud noise and his soft sweet noise as well. It was preceded by a percussion concerto that reached the parts other instruments can't get to. Review here.
Then there was jazz. Tommy Smith with piano, drums and bass at the Queens Hall paying homage to Coltrane and a number of excellent players in a weekend of music at St Brides. I particularly enjoyed the guitar playing of Ben Macdonald and I'm not a guitar fan. On my own instrument, the saxophone, Matt Carmichael who is still at college was amazing.
A quick rundown of films. Meeting Gorbachov reinforced, despite its somewhat hagiographic style that here was a great man who was cut down before he could do all that he might have done to improve our world. It Must Schwing.... was a fine tribute to the men who created Blue Note records and featured lots of music from their sterling cast of jazzers. Le Jeune Ahmed was a compelling portrait (albeit fictional) of a young man convinced that his religious convictions justified a decision to kill a teacher he considers an enemy of Islam. He doesn't succeed and has a rather unconvincing change of heart when he suffers an accident in pursuit of his mission. Relative Worlds in the Scotland Loves Anime festival was not my thing. But I knew that. I only went because of my current interest in Japanese and thankfully I did learn something because filmwise for me it was a big yawn.
