Oh my god, the dullness continued with Acis and Galatea. I was hoping the light and pastoral Handel score will brighten things up. I was so wrong. While the stage had more visual interests, the same dull playing and inanimate singers failed to bring this performance to life. The dancers continued to provide pointless distractions. It could have been so much fun, so playful, so tragic. Oh no, let's make it boring. I looked at my watch more than 3 times thinking whether I will miss Newsnight on BBC2. Though others couldn't wait till the end and walked off half way through the performance.
I did not think much of the last Eugene Onegin in the 90s - a bit too baren - too literal. The latest production which I saw tonight at the Royal Opera has improved quite a lot. For a start, we had Dmitri Hvorostovksy and Amanda Roocroft singing Onegin and Tatyana respectively - two strong well matched voices that sparked off a reasonable amount of passion between the two! The production was exciting too - with a believably real "river" running on stage. It's not often you get Tatyana jumping into the river and splashing about on stage. Then there was the frozen river with Moscow in the background - there was almost real ice skating on stage just before the Imperial Ball scene. Much fun. Very enjoyable.
Comments
Post a Comment