2019

I don't often get predictions right (you will recall that a couple of months before the election I forecast that Jezza was about to resign), but I was bang on the money this time last year when I said that 2019 would be even worse than 2018; by and large indeed it was. Perhaps that's why this year I have been unusually reticent in inflicting on you my opinions of all the plays etc wot I have seen, but let's have a quick retrospective summary now; be warned, for some reason this is all a lot more quantitative than it is qualitative.

Opera: I saw twenty six operas this year, plus two ballets and a sprinkling of classical concerts. The operas ranged in obscurity from Pfitzner's 'The Christmas Elf', of which I saw the first ever UK performance, to La boheme, which is - I think - the most frequently performed opera that there is globally. My favourite was Vaughan William's 'Pilgrim's Progress' with a nod to Janáček's 'Cunning Little Vixen' and Martinů's 'The Greek Passion'.

Theatre: I saw fifty two plays and musicals of which my favourite was 'Wise Children' from the wonderful company of the same name. A very honourable mention must go to 'Tuesdays with Morrie'. My favourite Shakespeare (out of the thirteen that I saw) was a toss up between 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' at the Globe and Northern Broadsides' 'Much Ado About Nothing'. This section seems an appropriate place for the following photo, which I have been looking for a chance to use for some months and which if nothing else illustrates that Chekhov can actually be made interesting:

Music: I only went to twenty three gigs, which is pretty pathetic really. My favourite were The Stumble whom I saw twice. Their live performances do not translate into their recordings, which is often the case and another reason why I should go to more live shows.

By the way, the lady on your bloggist's left in that photo is a regular, and somewhat wild, audience member at blues gigs around here, indeed she is the instrument fingerer mentioned in this previous post; I could tell you some stories about her, but frankly she terrifies me so I won't.

Film: I've seen sixteen films and am going to choose 'Stan and Ollie' as my favourite; what can I say, I'm a big softie. I made a special trip to the Imax in Bradford to see 'Apollo 11' on a big, big screen and am glad that I did. Still today, after fifty years, it's just an astonishing achievement and spectacularly documented in the film.

Talks: The quantity of gigs may have declined, but for some reason the number of talks attended has increased markedly. The best two were both on painting, one on Klimt, the other on Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven. A prize for making a little go a long way goes to Ian Bottomley, Curator Emeritus of Oriental Collections at the Royal Armouries who managed to speak very entertainingly for an hour on the subject of the current whereabouts of those small number of suits of armour which were given as diplomatic gifts to various European royal courts by Japanese trade missions in the sixteenth century. The most irrelevant and off subject question from an audience member - a category that is very keenly contested every year - was the chap who, at a talk about Nietzsche, asked why god had created gay animals in species other than humans. My own unassuming interventions - the incident with the light cavalry sabre notwithstanding - were, of course, always entirely intended to add to the collective enlightenment rather than allow me to show off my own erudition and knowledge.

Books: For those concerned about my apparent compulsion to count things, I don't really; I work it out retrospectively from my diary. The exception is books, where I kept a specific record this year because I thought it would be interesting. Obviously it wasn't in the slightest bit interesting, neither to me nor anyone else, but despite that I now know that I read one hundred and thirteen books, the pick of which was 'Winged Victory' by V.M. Yeates, which of course has a wargamer friendly theme. Another book I very much enjoyed which falls into that category is 'The March' by E.L. Doctorow; the march in question being that of Sherman.

Boardgames: I played fifty eight different games seventy eight times (figures courtesy of boardgamegeek). Top marks for a game I hadn't played previously go to Quartermaster General: Cold War, which I have no qualms in recommending to wargamers, and the same is true of my top solo game recommendation, Maquis. I hope to step up my boardgaming a bit next year, although the Monday night Yew Tree group has become very dull and cliquey so I may have to look elsewhere.

Wargames: I played or umpired in, I think, twenty three games, many of which were played over two or three weeks. They focussed mainly on James new Peninsular war collection plus, it shouldn't be forgotten, his new bridges. In the annexe it was mainly Great War, but there was a smattering of other stuff as well. My favourite game, apart from my one-sided triumph at Fiasco, was the relatively recent Battle of San Winnoc.

Event of the Year: Newspapers and magazines inevitably have to choose their picks of the year early in order to meet deadlines. Your bloggist has the luxury of posting this on the afternoon of December 31st and can therefore make sure that nothing will overtake what he writes. Or so you would think. Last year I was awakened at 23:45 or so - being teetotal I avoid going out on New Year's Eve and therefore retire early - by the younger Miss Epictetus who wished to inform me that she had got engaged, an event which clearly would have merited inclusion right at the top of my round up of 2018 had she told me a tad earlier. So, this year's choice is caveated by pointing out that it is subject to nothing better happening in the next few hours. However, I think it unlikely that anything will beat this:

Finally, let's hope next year is better than we're all expecting, especially for you and yours.

Peace and love to all.

Sacre du Printemps

"I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it." - Igor Stravinsky

And so to the opera. I have been to see 'The Magic Flute', where thankfully the Queen of the Night's famous aria was sung beautifully. This was a new production by Opera North, which I enjoyed somewhat more than I had their previous one. All the performances were exceptional - I don't know whether it was deliberate or serendipity to cast an Irishman as Papageno, but I shall never now be able to think of him as anything else - and yet I still don't really like the opera. I have previous form in telling Mozart that he has got it all wrong and I'm going to do so again. None of it makes any sense. The masonic chaps are obviously meant to be the good guys, but they go round kidnapping and sexually molesting women and inflicting corporal punishment on each other. The Queen of the Night is meant to be the baddie, but doesn't do anything except sing and worry about her daughter, while her acolytes rescue the hero from the clutches of a monster that is about to kill him. It's most peculiar.

The plot of 'Katya Kabanova' at least makes sense, but is completely implausible whilst paradoxically at the same time being a bit too close to home for comfort. It also has an out of the ordinary operatic villain in the mother-in-law from hell, who was roundly booed at the curtain call. 

Unpleasant family members feature prominently as well in 'Gianni Scicchi'. I had seen two other productions of this in the last twelve months or so and perhaps that was why this particular one fell a bit flat. In addition there were some strange directorial decisions including the deceased - whose will is the cause of all the trouble - wandering about the stage, and climbing both walls and ropes from time to time despite being dead. 

Almost as confusing was an otherwise excellent concert staging of Marc-Antoine Charpentier's rarely performed Baroque work 'David et Jonathas'. That it wasn't acted out, together with the lack of surtitles and the fact that I have no French made it a bit of a struggle to follow what was happening. According to the programme the piece would originally have been intertwined act by act with a prose play in Latin that developed the characters and moved the plot along; maybe that would have helped, or maybe it wouldn't. What certainly wasn't of any assistance was my preconception that the Philistines were in the wrong. It seems that for this particular biblical story it's the Israelites who were being unreasonable; plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. The role of Jonathan, presumably originally written for a castrato, was played by a soprano and so opera's fine tradition of the leading lady not making it to the end alive was maintained. 

Then there was the one that got away. Whilst there is nothing to compare with a fully staged opera supported by a large orchestra I also rather like watching works being performed in a more intimate environment. I therefore travelled across Leeds in the rush hour to see Opera UpClose perform 'La bohème' at the Theatre Royal Wakefield. I got there in plenty of time, bought myself coffee and cake in the pleasant little cafe and was just thinking to myself how civilised it all was when the lights went out. The power never came back on, the show was cancelled and I had to turn round and come home again. The cake was nice though.

Last, but not least, I have been to see 'The Rite of Spring'. Despite my carefully moulded image as a man of culture I have to confess that I had never previously seen a ballet; I therefore have absolutely nothing to compare this with. I can, however, report that I enjoyed it immensely. The music was loud and powerful (if one is to contrast it with his contemporaries it was less melodic than Puccini, less dissonant than Schoenberg; I was reminded of prog rock, but I'll bet that I was the only one) and there was lots of vigorous and entertaining leaping about on the stage. I had always wondered how the narrative was explained in ballet if there weren't any words. In this case that was rendered moot because there is no story: it is simply a series of pagan mating and fertility rites. It made me wistful for this blog's erstwhile female reader, who always rather liked that sort of thing.

Soapy opera

And so to the opera. Opera North's revived production of Jenůfa by Janáček is very good, but the story is just horrible. It's well worth seeing, but the content isn't something to sit around and dwell on afterwards. I think I am pretty unshockable (in a moral sense - I'm a complete wuss when it comes to blood and gore), but the crime at the heart of this drama is one for which I simply cannot conceive there ever being a motivation.

The Guardian's review sums the whole thing up nicely: 'So she gets married to the one who slashes her face, not the alcoholic who left her pregnant? Indeed she does – though not before her stepmother has murdered the baby.' I've always scoffed at those who tritely claim that were Dickens alive today then he would be writing for Eastenders; perhaps they actually have a point.

In other news, I have been to Hebden Bridge (I told you that I was morally unshockable), but there was no bread and the wool shop doesn't open on Mondays. A good time was had by all.