It was midnight when I got to bed and gone half past nine when I got up. I was certainly tireder than usual when I got to bed. Rhiannon and Kath slept late too. Clare woke up at seven and couldn't get back to sleep so she cooked a double batch of pancakes to feed us all. After a long lazy breakfast, I got to work making the Morning Prayer video slideshow, and uploaded it to YouTube. We had a snack lunch, the drove to the Millennium Centre for an afternoon performance of Mozart's 'Cosi fan Tutti'. It was a delightful surprise even though the Guardian review a few days ago was somewhat a spoiler.
The essential storyline has an older man and woman attempting to teach two younger couples a life lesson about love and relationships, and how fickle all people are capable of being, hence the title - in effect it means - everyone's like that. Usually it's presented in eighteenth century costumes of the elite. In this new version, it's set in a secondary school's classroom and canteen, with everyone apart from the teachers and the cook/housekeeper in school uniform that included short trousers and short skirts.
The youngsters are meant to be mid-teenagers. It's a challenging re-think. Not everyone may like it, but it does make clear, as intended that the older generation are playing tricks on the younger generation, manipulating their emotions and ideals into deception and betrayal to teach them a lesson. It was played for its comedic content, and in my opinion raised more laughs that might have done if played as a trad costume drama. Wales' own Rebecca Evans playing Despina was outstanding, hilariously funny in her several guises.
The sextet of singers playing students and staff all sang superbly and moved playfully around the stage with chorus members during minor changes to the single stage set to signal scene changes by using big placards with images on that called for a certain amount of decoding. It worked, just about. I believe there may have been some changes to the English translation of Da Ponte's libretto as it highlighted the humour expressed on stage. It was a bold exercise in presenting a much loved opera classic, a challenge risen to imaginatively, refreshingly. We left for home just after the sun had set, much cheered.
After supper I went for an hour's walk in the dark to complete my daily quota, then spent the remainder of the evening writing until Kath and Rhiannon returned from dining out with old friend Emma. It was gone midnight by the time we went to bed.
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