★★★★
(Sadler’s Wells, 19 July 2015)
When I went to see Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty two years ago, I wrote about the frustration that I often feel when trying to understand classical ballet, and my corresponding fondness for Bourne’s irreverently gutsy style of storytelling. My favourite production by him will always be Swan Lake (the Adam Cooper version), but my first encounter with him was via a TV broadcast of The Car Man when I was a teenager.
(British Museum, until 15 November 2015)
When you think of Louis XIV, chances are that you think of Versailles. The Hall of Mirrors; the fountains and festivals; the gold, glass and glitter of the Ancien Régime. But medals? Maybe not. And yet Louis was responsible for one of the most ambitious and innovative of all medal series, the Histoire medallique. Published in 1702, towards the end of his reign, it aimed to celebrate and promote his victories, both as a military commander and an administrator, and to gloss over his defeats and failures.
★★★
(Royal Opera House, directed by Kasper Holten, 1 July 2015)
Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to book tickets for the opera on the hottest day since 2006, but nevertheless here I was, wilting gently in my standing place at the back of the stalls in the Royal Opera House, and preparing myself for my first encounter with Don Giovanni. As I’ve come at opera by a rather niche route, I’ve managed to avoid virtually all the great blockbusters and so knew nothing about Don G beyond the plot. I hadn’t even heard any of the music before. And I have to be brutally honest and say that I didn’t immediately warm to it as an opera.
Because, frankly, life is better with dinosaurs. Or are they dragons?
Rather incredibly, I’ve now been writing this blog for four years. It certainly doesn’t seem that long. Time flies: in fact, I actually entirely forgot the anniversary last year. Oops. My first cautious contribution to the blogosphere was in July 2011 and, in the three years since then, the blog has morphed and changed to keep up with my enthusiasms. However I hope my long-term readers still find things of interest.
★★★½
(The UCL Classical Play; directed by Emily Louizou, at the British Museum, 20 July 2015)
Bacchae was the first classical play that I saw, way back in 2000, and it’s still my favourite. When I heard that UCL Classics students were performing the play on Thursday night at a British Museum Members’ Evening (sold out), and there was a free dress rehearsal on the Monday, I jumped at the chance to attend. Performed in an English translation by James Morwood, this was a promenade performance, unfolding amid the columns, steps and statues of the Museum’s Great Court.
★★★½
(Freiburger Barockorchester with Andrea Marcon, Aix-en-Provenance, 9 July 2015)
Spare a thought for the modern opera singer. You spend years training and auditioning; you finally make it and become a leading soloist, a master of your craft; and then you find yourself at Aix, hands bound and blindfolded, singing while some guy you met at the first rehearsal last Tuesday beats you with a riding crop in front of a thousand-strong audience. At which point do you begin wondering, ‘Where did this all go wrong?’
★★★
John Stetathus doesn’t want to go to Sicily. As a fretful middle-aged accountant in the Byzantine civil service in 1036, the last thing he wants to do is to leave his comfy life in Constantinople, and traipse off overland to supervise the delivery of the pay packet to the Emperor’s troops. But he has ‘a knack for languages and a fatal tendency to listen to people‘, so his fate is sealed. And what makes it even worse is that there isn’t any decent company on the way. All he has are three Varangian guards: great brutish Northerners who don’t offer the slightest hope of civilised conversation. But travel wears a man down and so, one night (having a knack for languages), he begins in desperation to talk to them.
(Dulwich Picture Gallery, until 15 November 2015)
This year there are many exhibitions designed to capitalise on the sudden flourish of enthusiasm for all things Waterloo and Napoleon. This small show at Dulwich shrewdly uses the Bonaparte connection as an excuse for bringing a little-known artist back into the limelight, and bravo to that. I say ‘little-known’ with some caution. Having spent far too long in the art world, I sometimes find it hard to judge how familiar an artist would be to the average passer-by on Oxford Street; but I think I’m safe in assuming that Prud’hon isn’t exactly a household name.
★★★★
It’s been a long time (for me) since I read a novel: the last few months have been more conducive to dipping in and out, and not really getting anywhere with anything. And so on Saturday I went on a day trip out of London, left my tablet and my phone behind, and took a book for the journey. Being alone with the book for that length of time was exhilarating: for the first time in weeks I became dragged into another world and I spent the rest of Saturday and Sunday reading. For, if it’s been a long time since I read a novel at all, it’s been even longer since I read the kind of novel that, on finishing, elicited a strangled half-yowl of frustration – not at the book itself, but at the knowledge that I just don’t have the depth of understanding in order to appreciate all the clever stuff that I’m sure is going on in there.
(with Ars Eloquentiae at Handel House, 2 July 2015)
The beginning of July was almost unbearably hot by London standards; and so, on walking into Handel House’s recital room, I was delighted to find a novel solution to the problem. Every chair was graced with its own neat red folded fan. The team should be congratulated: few London venues would be so thoughtful nor so imaginative (I should note that we did have to give them back at the end: a shame, as they were more efficacious than my own).
The Idle Woman 