Yesterday was Fulham Opera’s spot. Tomorrow, Saturday, Franco Zeffirelli’s production of La Bohème is on at the Met. I will not be there but I will be in the Curzon Chelsea to watch it being streamed live from New York.
I’m still grumbling about the last Bohème I saw in Paris at Christmas. It was set in a spaceship and on the moon. Franco Zeffirelli’s realisation will flush away those memories. But one man’s decomposing meat is another man’s Martini. Having seen and written about Carmen at Covent Garden I subsequently read a most disobliging review of the production in The Spectator. Here is what Michael Tanner wrote.
The new production of Bizet’s Carmen at the Royal Opera has received mixed reviews. It shouldn’t have done. They should have been unmitigatedly hostile, indignant, outraged … This Carmen lasts for three-and-a-half hours and feels as long as that after the first 20 minutes … for the time being Carmen has been destroyed.
Well, I enjoyed it and thought it brought fresh light to bear on an opera with great music but a problematic libretto.
After a bit of a hiatus I have resumed posting in the morning. I got into an Edwin situation. You will remember fourteen-year-old Edwin, Lady Florence Craye’s brother from Jeeves Takes Charge and Joy in the Morning. He keeps getting behind with his acts of kindness as a Boy Scout. I hope I have caught up for the time being.
I am pleased the author has reverted to posting ante meridiem, I worried he may have turned into a ‘Burlington Bertie, rise at ten thirty’ London gent. Morning posts provide the reader with a scintillating foil to the somewhat jejune daily news. No morning post from the author is like a dwindled dawn.
I have just read Tanners review ‘a colossal bore’, a phrase I would never apply to you CJB. Toodle-oo.