5.0 this morning.
BP low (95/61 with 54 pulse) so I’ll email over this week’s readings to the GP in a bit and likely send them into a mild panic.
Was at the opera yesterday. Die Walküre. Royal Opera House. Started at 16:30 and finished at 22:15 - excessively long interval whereas they could have started at 18:00 and had two 45 minute intervals and still finished roughly the same time.
My first Walküre. It’s the second part of the Kosky ring cycle so uses the same aesthetic as Rhinegold did, largely empty stage, modern/timeless dress, elderly naked woman on stage almost the entire time, that kind of thing.
I didn’t know the story or the music (other than that bit everyone knows) beforehand so it was a revelation. It’s basically about a stropy god, his wife, his mistress and the kids he fathered (twins who form an incestuous relationship and the titular Walküre(s) who are pretty much all petrified of their god dad) being used as a plot to wrest back control of a magic ring (which happens in the next part I think).
As plots go it veers from utterly insane to really quite tender and domestic but it gets there via huge amounts of misogyny, domestic violence, racism, hints at a fondness for eugenics, and some rather good music.
I enjoyed it but felt that act 1 had some quite uneven acting (I forget the characters name but the brutish husband of the twin daughter was not the best actor) which defaulted to pointing and slapping the furniture to show us he was a brute rather than employing a quiet menace. Also he was armed with a gun which seemed incongruous when the whole thing is about a magic sword and a dragon.
One pet hate of mine also reared its head in act 2. If you’re going to drive a car on to the stage (in this case a rather beautiful 1930’s Rolls) then don’t reverse it off to exit, drive it off. Especially when the stage is certainly big enough to do that and it’s not got any other scenery on it at the time. It reinforces that it’s a prop and breaks the theatrical illusion in one fell swoop.
I did enjoy it overall. Singing was great. Music was great. I even liked the staging. But for a couple of very minor niggles it was a belter!
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