This is one of the many, many monkeys to be found in Edinburgh zoo.  The fact that he's got himself slightly out of focus by hiding in a tree doesn't hide the fact that he's not the monkey I had gone to the zoo to see.  The Japanese macaque whose adoptive father I have been for ten months courtesy of a Christmas gift is it turns out domiciled at the zoo's Highland premises. 

Notwithstanding that disappointment we had a lovely afternoon, seeing the famous pandas and the zoo's newest acquistion, half a dozen giraffes as well as those old favourites the penguins.

 

 

 

 

 We finished off the day with platters and wine at Nótt.

The RSNO held their first Usher Hall concert since the pandemic struck.  The audience were very enthusiastic even though spread out socially thinly and masked; to the extent that the opening announcement was drowned out by applause.  

The main work was Stravinsky's Firebird ballet music and before the interval we heard some lovely cello playing in Tchaikovsky's Rococco Variations preceded by the very cheerful Festive Overture by Shostakovich and a short and appropriately celebratory fanfare called The Isle is Full of Noises by Scottish composer Mathew Rooke.

You can't beat a full symphony orchestra giving it laldy and we loved it.  It's a bit comical seeing the conductor's mask going on and off as he takes his calls but heh that's pandemics for you.

I also enjoyed another SCO concert, at the Queen's Hall this time.  Again we were all socially distanced and masked, though as at the Usher Hall the bar was open and there was an interval in which to patronise it unlike earlier more tentative gigs I've been to.

They played Bach, Mozart and Haydn which was all very fine but the piece that caught my ear was Die Schöne Melusine by Mendelssohn. Wikipedia tells me that 

The piece was written in 1834 as a birthday gift for Mendelssohn's sister Fanny In a letter to her of 7 April 1834, he explains that he had picked on the subject after seeing Conradin Kreuzer's opera Melusina the previous year in Berlin. Kreutzer's overture, writes Mendelssohn "was encored, and I disliked it exceedingly, and the whole opera quite as much: but not [the singer] Mlle. Hähnel, who was very fascinating, especially in one scene when she appeared as a mermaid combing her hair; this inspired me with the wish to write an overture which the people might not encore, but which would cause them more solid pleasure."[

Well I haven't heard Kreutzer's overture but I'm happy to take Mendelssohn's word for it since I enjoyed his so much.

There was more good music at Scottish Ballet's Starstruck, albeit recorded. This was a reworking of Pas de Dieux, a ballet that Gene Kelly choreographed for the Paris Opera in 1960.  It was a lovely thing to watch and seemed to me rather like a Broadway musical without the songs.  I didn't follow the plot other than realising that two chaps were squabbling over a girl - Broadway musical again.  Later consultation of the programme online enlightened me.  It was all about Aphrodite, Eros and Zeus.  Who'd have known.

There was an interesting post show chat with Kelly's widow and members of Scottish Ballet including their artistic director Christopher Hampton who choreographed Starstruck. 

Another stage work I've seen recently was The Enemy by The National Theatre of Scotland.  This again was a retelling, this time of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People.  

I very much enjoyed the presentation of the show, the combination of video and on-stage acting, the clever take off of publicity material, the twitter storm moments and more.  But I was less enthralled by the quality of some of the acting, a lack of dramatic tension and more importantly I'm not sure what the point of putting on the play was.

How exactly did they recast the play for the modern age?  They added a whiff of sexual misdemeanours and cast women as the main characters but I can't think of much else.  So was it just to point out that plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose?  Maybe it was and maybe that's a good enough reason.

 

We fortified ourselves before the show by eating at Ong Gie.  Korean food was new to me.  Unsurpringly it bears a resemblance to Chinese.  The meal was delicious but when they say "spicy" be warned, they mean it.