Family and friends Sunday

After breakfast we walked to St Catherine's for the Parish Eucharist. Altogether there were about forty adults and fifteen children present, with a dozen of them in the choir. 

After an early snack lunch we drove to the Millennium Centre for the performance of a new work commissioned by WNO called 'Migrations' in 2020, to commemorate the voyage of the Pilgrim Fathers to America. An opera meditating on a theme, that touched upon several different stories, rather than a single story line throughout. We were joined by our friend Chris, as we had a spare ticket, since Owain forgot we had invited him to come with us.

Through a series of operatic 'vignettes', for want of a better word, it presented the stories of other migrants. A black slave from the Caribbean brought to Bristol in the 18th century, a group of Cree Native Americans whose lands had been invaded by oil companies. a group of Indian doctors recruited to work in Britain in the 1960s, a diverse group of language learners in an English class, and most engagingly a flock of birds, represented a a dozen or more children singing and dancing superbly. 

The WNO chorus was on stage all through the two hour performance with a major singing role alongside individual soloists. Altogether a hundred people on stage. The libretto was sparse but powerful and the music emotionally rich and filmic, much like the Janacek we saw recently. 

After we said farewell to Chris, we stayed down the Bay for a while, enjoying a stroll in the evening sun, and then went to the station to meet Rhiannon from the train, coming to stay with us for a couple of nights. Last time she came she was unwell throughout, so it was lovely to have her with us for a catch-up. Since then she's been to Sta Pola with a couple of mates without her parents, and with her parents for a package holiday in Sorrento. She's now started working as a movie extra, introduced by Kath, who's been doing it for years. It's possible she may spend her gap year earning a living like this. It's well paid, if you're lucky enough to get hired, and she enjoys the social experience behind the actual performance she's required to be part of. She told us that she's going to training sessions for extras that involves fight simulation among other things, including basic stunt work. She said she's missed the Physical Theatre element of the drama course she's done in Stratford over the past two years, since finishing the course.

As we were about to eat supper, Rachel and Jasmine rang up, and the five of us joined in a video call. It's the first time in a couple of years since the two cousins were able to meet, albeit on-line. A fortunate stroke of luck for us. We watched telly for an hour and then turned in for the night.

The cleaner sound

A cold clear night followed by a bright sunny day with clear skies and quite mild for this time of year. The only significant development in Ukraine is a two hour video conference between Presidents Biden and Putin. Meanwhile the bombed theatre in Mariupol whose basement is said to have been sheltering 800-1000 people is slowly being evacuated while the area is under continuous fire from Russian forces. 130 have been rescued alive so far. Over a hundred empty prams and baby buggies have been assembled in the city of Lviv, representing the number of children killed so far in this onslaught. Meanwhile Putin, his regime and most of his citizens are in denial about the responsibility of their forces for such crimes. Every day we ask ourselves, how much longer can this go on?

I went by bus over to St German's for today's Lent lunch. The first bus I took was ten minutes late and it took me a while to find a bus for the second leg of the journey, so I arrived half a hour late, in time to eat but was annoyed to miss Malcolm's talk. There were about fifteen of us, several came from other churches in the Roath Ministry Area,including Mike and Geraldine Payne, whom I knew as members of Saint Michael's Church in my days as Rector of Central Cardiff. Mike is now the Ministry Area lay co-chair. Mike's now retired from being a full time Trades Union Official and brings to his new role a wealth of experience on social justice concerns which the churches will really value.

I caught a forty nine bus from Newport Road to return to the city centre and walked home from there. The brightly painted new bus was an all electric vehicle, one of a number bought since last autumn by Cardiff Bus. Part of their fleet is low emission fuelled vehicles, in a different livery, plus the remainder which is now slowly being phased out, in the old Cardiff dark green livery. 

The sound of an electric bus took me back to Geneva days where electric trolley buses have run since they were invented after trams, as the city had a convenient source of hydro power. It also took me back to the sounds of my youth when Cardiff also had electric double decker trolley buses. How much quieter and less malodorous the air of the city centre will be in a few years from now. The air is improving with more electric cars on the road, as it also improved thirty years ago as catalytic exhausts were introduced. The smell of diesel car exhaust is still noticeable, as is that from central heating systems whose boilers haven't been serviced.

When I got back home, I prepared Monday's funeral service and eulogy, and then got ready to leave early for the Millennium Centre for tonight's WNO performance of Janaczek's opera Jenufa. We were invited to a 'Friends' drinks reception before it started with a helpful brief introductory talk from WNO's musical director Aidan Lang. It's a beautiful work, dating from the turn of the 20th century, and the cast of singers was superb and evenly matched for their different roles. It's a sad story which highlights the power of forgiveness to redeem a tragic situation, while portraying powerful men as morally weak and powerless women as morally strong. Very thought provoking, with exquisite music.

WNO's triumphant return to normality

A walk in Thompson's Park after breakfast to wake me up and clear my head so that I could concentrate better on recording next week's Morning Prayer and the Reflection I quickly wrote yesterday. The job was done by lunchtime, with fewer editing corrections needed. Perhaps I should discipline myself to prepare for creative tasks by doing this more often.

In the afternoon, a short siesta and another walk around Thompson's Park before an early supper ready to drive to the Millennium Centre for this evening's landmark performance of Rossine's opera 'The Barber of Seville'. A landmark because it's the first full length opera in front of a live audience in eighteen months. To celebrate the occasion, Clare donned a lovely blue and white frock and I my white suit plus blue shirt, and we wore of WNO 'Partners' badges. I was surprised to find that our names are printed in tiny print in the supporters list at the back of the programme for the night. Amazing!!

This is the same English language production as we've seen twice before, brilliantly theatrical and funny, and well worth repeating, as a kind of signature work in the hands of a great opera company. The singing was superb and the pace at which it was taken was breathtaking, if anything to my mind a bit too fast for one to read the surtitles. Reading them was necessary when the speed of singing began to lose the sense of the libretto. Now and then it was impossible to speed read them. There were also occasions when the connection between singers and orchestra became a little ragged, and that's very unusual for WNO chorus and orchestra. Tomas Hanusch drove them all a little too hard to my mind, un-necessarily so. Perhaps the sheer excitement of the occasion, getting back to live performance accounts for this. After all, it was a very different kind of first night to remember.

The arrangement of the entrance area of the Millennium Centre has been significantly modified, hopefully for the time being and not forever. All the ticket desks are boarded off, no longer in use. Ticketing is being done on-line only at the moment, so you can't just walk in and book things. You can have tickets posted to you or emailed, including discounted car park tickets. Each one contains a QR code which is scanned by one of the stewards on entry to the auditorium. This automatically reports your identity and contact details for track and trace reporting.

The car park barrier has a scanner which operates the barrier in and out. I had misgivings about the size of the coded tickets embedded in the confirmatory email, and the quality of the printout possible, so I took a computer screen grab of each instead and saved them to my Blackberry, producing a full screen image of the coded ticket, just as it's been possible to do with airline tickets for the past five years. It works a treat, as long as you remember to take your phone with you! It really would have been better if the tickets were attached as .pdf files to the email. More people know how to handle these than know how to take a screen grab. To be fair, the email does contain a live link to Apple Wallet, but what good is that if you don't have an iPhone?

Nevertheless, all steps in the right direction I suppose. It's so good that the Millennium Centre is working again, with its wonderfully welcoming staff and outstanding musical offering. Rossini is resounding in my ears as I go to bed a happier man tonight.

A prophetic opera

Well, I got through the night without being too much bothered by pain or nausea, and was able to eat carefully at breakfast and lunch. I lay low most of the way until it was time to go to the Millennium Centre for the opera. Gail slept long and sweetly in our new bed and said it was the most relaxed night's sleep she'd had for ages.

Clare and Gail went down to Cardiff Bay early for a walk around and something to eat before the performance. It started and six thirty, and I timed my arrival for si, which meant I was able to buy a sandwich and a drink from Sainsbury's and eat them outside before entering the Millennium Centre.

'War and Peace' adapted from Tolstoy's novel, was written by Prokofiev around 1940, when Stalin and Hitler we still allies and Russia hadn't invaded. It's a prophetic work of art, as well as a patriotic celebration of heroic Russian resistance to foreign aggression. What was true for Napoleon's time turned out to be true for Hitler's time also. Both underestimated the courage and endurance of ordinary people as well as, or in spite of their leaders. I wonder if Prokofiev was musically giving voice to misgivings among the Russian people about the alliance between Stalin and Hitler?

In the opening scene, Tolstoy himself is portrayed, writing on stage, while the characters in his mind appear and move or dance about the stage. Such an effective narrative device. There are some fine choral episodes and apart from this a great deal of recitative, thankfully well rendered in good English translation. Curiously, there are fewer notable set piece solos, duets or or ensemble pieces.

The choral work and many individual singers as well as the principal parts were superbly sung. The movement of the 80+ singers and dancers on stage was a wonder to behold. Behind the stage was a large screen on to which still and moving images were projected, and the chorus turned to the screen on times and interacted with what was being shown. The first act was set in peace time, the second was set during and after Napoleon's invasion and defeat. Clever use was made of old movie footage of battle scenes from a period piece movie. Very effective indeed. It was powerfully and confidently executed in every sense from start to finish. What an opening night!

Being seated for the best part of three and a half hours took its toll on my gluteus maximus, and the last half hour was quite uncomfortable as I was unable to move around. I was none the worse for wear by the time we got home, however. As the performance finished late, the last number six Bay Car bus had gone, but thankfully there was a Stagecoach X8 bus going through the city centre a few minutes after we reached to stop. It's reprehensible that there seems to be no co-ordination between Cardiff Bus and the Millennium Centre, when it comes to extra late finishing times. I had a moan about this on Twitter since then.

Operatic annoyance

This morning I went to St Luke and celebrated Mass for half a dozen people in Fr Mark's absence. Then in the afternoon, we went to the Millennium Centre for our second opera outing of the season. Verd's 'La Forza del Destino, which neither of us recall seeing before. The music was unfamiliar but so beautiful, the story a bit far fetched, about the far reaching consequences of a tragic accidental shooting, but the chorus and all the performers sang superbly. 

The set was minimal and abstract, albeit cleverly designed to represent the various scenes. I took exception, however, to the portrayal of the chorus, in one scene, supposed to be a choir of monks at a religious ceremony, which had all two dozen singers wearing white mitres. They were supposed to represent a community of friars for whom wearing a mitre plays no part in their life. Not even a global assembly of Benedictine mitred abbots would see that number of white mitres used in one place at worship. It was a vain pointless expression of 'artistic liberty', that would un-necessarily bewilder and distract a liturgically ignorant opera goer.

Come to think of it, I was equally annoyed at last week's 'Tosca' performance at the end of the first act where a congregation is assembling for a festive Te Deum, to see that the liturgical procession resembles an old style Papal procession where the Pontiff is carried aloft by bearers, wearing conical white hoods after the manner of Spanish 'penitentes'. Sure these costumes are used in Sicily, which was rule for a couple of centuries by Spain, but this is Rome. 

The mise en scène is the Roman city centre church of San Andrea in Valle. It's not a place where the Pope would turn up and take part in a parish event, in those days, when his life would have been confined to the Vatican and St Peter's. Once again, annoyingly inappropriate and un-historical use of church ritual and symbols, when the actual liturgical conventions, properly used are just as dramatic and powerful. It's now the third time I've seen this production, and nothing has changed. I should have complained before!

  

Opera weekend

Saturday morning, Clare cousin Nick and his wife Sue arrived to stay with us. They'd flown down from Edinburgh to Bristol and driven a hire car across. Sue's a musician, and some of her students are working or studying in Cardiff, but the real purpose of the outing was a trip to the opera, with an opportunity to hear one of her students playing in the WNO orchestra. They had tickets for Verdi's Forza del Destino, which we'll see in a couple of weeks from now. We booked tickets for the Sunday performance of 'Tosca', long before they made their plans. After a long lunch, they went into town to meet the students and then go to the opera.

They came long after we'd gone to bed. Clare and I were up early, and went to eight o'clock at St Catherine's together. I was booked to celebrate, and Clare, as she was there and handy to ask, read a lesson. Then we returned for a big late breakfast and heard that they'd so much enjoyed their night at the opera, Nick and Sue decided to make the most of the weekend and attempt a late booking for the performance of Tosca. They were successful in getting last minute seats, so we set out together in good time. Their seats were in the Upper Circle and ours were in the middle of the front row within touching distance of the conductor.

After breakfast, despite the cold wind, we walked into town and then up to the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, which Sue was keen to see. Her former student was busy in rehearsal, so couldn't meet us there, but Sue was suitably impressed with the marvellous building. It's only twenty minutes or so across the fields from there back home. Crossing Blackweir Bridge I was relieved to see that the fallen tree was no longer stuck at the top of the weir, but had been washed by a fresh spate of upstream water about a hundred meters further down, where it would cause less trouble. We didn't stop long to look, as the wind was merciless, and we were in need of warming up with a good lunch, before heading out to the Millennium Centre for a four o'clock start.

I think this is the third time I've seen this particular production since we've been back in Cardiff. As ever the singers and orchestra were marvellous. I don't think Nick and Sue were disappointed. After the performance they took us to an Italian restaurant nearby for supper. After that brisk 7k walk and an intense musical experience followed by pasta, were all ready for bed. A delightful weekend.

     

Michaelmas Outing

There was something rather satisfying about having Owain with us all day, working remotely on his office laptop, for the usual prescribed hours. He's part of the internal communications team for a big government agency, with a website with tens of thousands of reference documents and hundreds of web pages. I was allowed a brief overview of his work-space, set up to manage collaboratively dozens of concurrent writing and editing tasks, and still using a securely locked down version Windows 7 Professional! Although he complains that the work can be quite dull, it certainly makes good use of his experience as a digital artisan.

While Clare and Ann went to town for a swim in the health club pool, I drove to the School of Optometry for a my biennial eye checkup, a couple of months early, as my sight in the left eye has deteriorated noticeably over the past year, while the right eye hasn't changed. As a result I ordered a new pair of driving specs. These may not arrive until after I leave for Spain next Wednesday, so I'll take my old pair with me, as they can be used for now. I'll get left lens replaced when I return.

When Owain had finished his work day, he headed back to Bristol, as he has a gig to prepare for, and the three of us drove to the Millennium Centre for the WNO's production of Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky. I don't think I've seen it before. Russian opera doesn't appeal to me that much, but the music was truly beautiful, even if I couldn't understand a word of the libretto. There wasn't a weak performance on the part of any of the cast of singers. The singing and dancing of the WNO chorus was, as ever outstanding. The set construction meant the choreography of the two ballroom scenes was unusually tricky. It combined the required accuracy of movement in a difficult with a balance of formality and informality of movement, so that the ensemble didn't appear rigidly drilled. All this while singing in Russian too! 

This night out was a birthday treat for both Ann and Clare, me too. I was apprehensive beforehand about my creaky back giving me trouble, as it'll be Monday before I visit Kay, our osteomyologist for a treatment, but I found a comfortable sitting posture on my seat, so all was well right through.

   

  

Bank Holiday treat

We all rose late this morning, and after lunch, embarked on an outing to Southerndown for a brisk walk on the beach. On the way out of the city, there were long traffic queues of people going into town, for some afternoon's shopping maybe? The beach wasn't crowded, and the only rain shower came as we were making our way back to the car. 

After an early supper, we went to the Millennium Centre for the premiere performance of a musical called 'Only the Brave', telling the story of people, soldiers, spouses, and resistance members caught up in a key exploit of the D Day campaign in 1944, aiming to capture a strategic inland river crossing at Caen in Normandy. An unusual theme, which took nine years from conception to the Edinburgh Fringe festival first performance, and another eight years from that to a full stage musical destined for a West End theatre. Clare was not well enough to come with us, so our little row sadly had an empty seat. She would have loved this night out.

The stageing was superbly imaginative, the singing and movement brilliantly executed and the pacing of the two and a half hour show, with one interval never dragged, though the sound levels weren't as good as they needed to be in some early scenes. The music was reminiscent of 'Les Miserables', and to my mind the production was half an hour too long, and some of the song set pieces seemed superfluous or in need of editing down for better impact. But just to make something on this scale to work as well as it did on its first night was a credit to all involved. It was a moving tribute to the humanity of the people who gave their lives to liberate Europe from the tyranny of Nazism although not quite what I'd expected to be doing on an Easter Monday evening.