An afternoon with the WNO

Cool and mostly cloudy today. I slept fairly well but woke up early with irritated bowels, denying me a lie-in. I'm coming to the conclusion that it's the combined effect of the slow release medication capsules and too much high-fibre bread that's triggering irritation and diharrea. When I took my daily blood pressure pill after a lower fibre breakfast the unpleasant sensation of intoxication was minimal my head was clearer my thinking was less sluggish and stayed like that for the rest of the day.

We went to the Parish Eucharist at St Catherine's. Ordinand Jeremy preached well on the Road to Emmaus story. As he spoke about the disciples realising that the risen Christ was making himself known in the breaking of bread. This reminded me of the day thirty years ago when I was in Syria, travelling by shared taxi from Aleppo to Damascus. We stopped at a village bakery to collect several kilos of fresh baked pitta bread. Its aroma filled the minibus, and the man who brought it on board began tearing off strips of it to share with fellow passengers. After saying shukran, all ate in an appreciative silence as we drove on. A similar moment of realisation for me in a predominantly Muslim country, a moment I treasure.

We did some shopping  at the Coop before returning home for lunch. We both snoozed for a while before a taxi arrived to take us to the Millennium Centre for a matinee performance of Wagner's 'Flying Dutchman. I wondered how I would cope with my first outing to this familiar much loved venue. It was busy with people on the move. I was reminded that visual impairment has affected my spatial awareness by the nervousness which accompanied navigating my way through the crowd. My impression of the auditorium was that it's smaller than my recollection of it. My hearing seems more sensitive since the stroke. The sound of a thousand people chatting before curtain-up I found disturbing and difficult to adjust to. The loudness of the orchestra however, didn't bother me. The singers' German diction was excellent and added extra emotional power.

The minimalist staging of the performance was clever but hardly nautical. The heroine's back story was presented on stage in a striking visual way during the overture, but the significance of this was squandered by the absence of any reference in the synopsis to this key element in the entire drama. While there is a mysterious element to this maritime story, I don't think it helped that is was inadvertently mystifying. This was the final opera to be conducted by Tomáš Hanus, who is now moving on. I wonder who will replace him?

A crowded number six bus was waiting outside when we left the Millennium Centre, which took us to the town centre bus station where a number sixty one was waiting to take us to Pontcanna. We were home for supper just after the Archers started. I went for a sunset walk in need of exercise. After spending much extra time sitting down on a hard theatre seat my buttock muscles were stiff!