Miró in Palma

Of our 12 pre-Xmas days in Mallorca, a revelation about which I've already written thrice, only two were overcast and/or blusterous. On the first, a haar-some day with choppy seas, it seemed sensible to spend the afternoon a short distance along the coast at the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró (founded by the artist and his wife two years before his death in 1983 and not to be confused with plain Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona,) though I hadn't taken into account how a clear blue sky would have complemented the spacious and extensive grounds. Pilar Juncosa, Miró's wife, was Mallorcan, as was his mother. He found refuge here in 1940-2, a refugee from Nazi-occupied France, but it was probably happy memories of childhood summers which led the couple to settle here in 1956.

The pleasures actually began at the Marivent Palace garden, open when the Spanish king isn't using the place as his summer or easter residence, and entered by a gate near the bus stop; the Fundació has loaned 12 sculptures, most of modest proportions, to commemorate the Catalan artist's friendship with Juan Carlos I. The strategic placings are attractive, especially of this one under a tree in seasonal fruit with tangerines

and another with perspective towards the lawn with only giant beyond.

Ribbon development has grown up unattractively along this coastal stip, a legacy of the build-anything Franco years which have blighted a fair bit of Mallorca (though not the Sierra de Tramuntana to the north-west). We could have walked from our peaceful residence, but having done it once in search of a decent restaurant - which we didn't really find - thought the bus would do. Then it's a short walk uphill as the housing estates begin to thin out. For the preservation of much-needed green space here as well as the site for an exciting new gallery building by Rafael Moneo we have the foresight of the artist and his wife to thank.

The area also includes the studio designed by Miró's friend Josep Lluis Sert, who figures much in the chronicles of the Ballets Russes and who much later, between 1954 and 1957, saw his remarkable designs realised

and Son Boter up the hill through a beautifully landscaped garden, a 18th century Mallorcan house acquired in 1959 with money from the Guggenheim International Award.

This I loved the best, for reasons I'll explain later. But let's first go through the gallery entrance to the big sculptures in the lower garden. Femme tends to cover a multitude of shapes in the Miró mythology, but I love this one from 1981.

The most impressive from every angle is Personnage gothique, oiseau éclair, 1976.

In the room at the eastern end on the  level at which you enter are mostly black and white canvases of the 1970s

while the main gallery space below opens up and around, with plenty of arresting perspectives. Spot the yellow I love in Miró's work below.

The Allegro vivace graphic series looks especially good from here

and there are two fun carpets.

In fact the sense of childsplay in so much of Miró's work is what I find especially life-enhancing. Some of it makes me laugh out loud, which reminds me of the pleasures of going round the Barbican's The Bride and the Batchelors exhibition, with Duchamp as the master of joie de vivre. In the biggest space, a piano was central; it turns out it was waiting to be played in a free evening recital on the Fundació's open day.

For that I returned on the evening that Storm Clara was breaking. The audience was, sadly, small, and the pianist, Joan-Ramon Company, came and went too quickly for me to snap him before and after the programme. But I did catch the last page of Nadia Boulanger's wonderful, relatively early (1917) odyssey Vers la vie nouvelle which was the last, transcendent work in the concert.

Before it we heard two Nocturnes, two Preludes and the ninth Barcarolle in a chronological procession through Fauré's ever more harmonically enriched works. Difficult to judge the quality of the performance because the acoustic turned much to mush, but it was an intelligent programme, interestingly at odds with the artist's work around it (with the possible exception of the Boulanger).

Back to the day of the main visit, and to the Sert studio, which is so full not only of canvases but of postcards and odd litle cultural artefacts which had a special significance for Miró.

Then up to the Son Boter, entered by a door with a lovely old nativity carving above to the right, picked up in a Palma antique shop.

As with the Sert studio, we had this one to ourselves and an attendant - in this case a very friendly and talkative older man, who was anxious to explain everything about Miró's special work and time here. I'll just leave the different rooms with their graffiti and carefully-placed objects relating to them to speak for themselves, but there was certainly a special magic to the place at dusk.

The Sert studio which we passed on the way out had a further attraction in the semi-darkness. I suppose you could say this was 'l'heure bleue'.

So much time has passed with other exhibitions unrecorded here, though I'd longed to hold forth. Let me just photo-feature some impressions from them without further comment on the individual works. First the revelatory (to me) Bridget Riley exhibition which suited the renovated Hayward Gallery spaces so well, and which I'm so pleased I saw in a planned double-bill with the Queen Elizabeth Hall concert devoted mostly to singular genius Georg Friedrich Haas's homage to her work. Most important about this, as I stressed in my review for The Arts Desk, was that images weren't allowed to conflict with the performance; we saw them before and after.

The White Cube Bermondsey continues to amaze with the gigantic exhibitions it holds - here was another more or less unified Kiefer spectacular to follow not so long after Walhalla. This time I've chosen canvases with people looking at Superstrings, Runes, The Norns, Gordian Knot. The most evocative for me was a perfect evocation of the Hall of the Gibichung as featured in Götterdämmerung . I still wonder about Kiefer designing a Ring. His images are perhaps too strong and would be in competition with music and drama.

By chance I happened to find myself down Bermondsey High Street a few weeks later. popped back into the White Cube and found the vast spaces somewhat more thinly, but still evocatively, filled by the work of another artist, Cerith Wyn Evans.

This is where I overlap with my Jabberwocky post, so I've just put up a final image and shall leave it at that for now.

Jabberwocky/Jaseroque/Jammerwoch/Barmaglot

As noted after I'd reeled out from the concert premiere of Gerald Barry's Alice's Adventures Under Ground in 2016, the composer sets the greatest absurdist poem I know in French, German and Russian. Having been struck again - twice - by Barry's genius in Antony McDonald's perfect Royal Opera production, I thought I'd do a trawl for readings of translations on YouTube. The only good one I found is the Russian version.

There's also, however, a consummate delivery of the original, savouring every word, from the great Christopher Lee.

Since I could spout the first two stanzas at will, I made an effort to learn it all by heart, and it's surprising how it trips off the tongue. Martin Gardner in The Annotated Alice compares the best nonsense poetry like this to abstract art, and in both, he suggests, the artist should not struggle too hard to try and find connections which should flow unconsciously; as he points out re the likes of Getrude Stein and the Italian futurists, 'when the technique is taken too seriously, the results become tiresome'.

I seem to have spent a lot of time hanging around the Royal Opera House even when I wasn't going to see the show in the main house (which I did first on the press night - and wrote about it for The Arts Desk - and then to see the second of the two casts on Sunday at noon. Production photos here by Clive Barda). Saturday was a case of no good deed going unpunished; on Friday, I'd arranged with my beloved but scatty friend Edsy to meet her, husband Kit and goddaughter Mirabel plus various friends between shows (they had tickets for both). In the morning I fixed up a time for a backstage tour of props by my pal the wonderful Nicky Spence, since he does such a superb job here.

He was happy to oblige; his sister and her children would love it too. Yet despite four emails and five phone messages, Edsy was not to be contacted in time - I didn't see them come out of the earlier showing and the opportunity passed. Found them later; she'd lost her mobile IN DECEMBER. But this is boring for the reader; the fact that Mirabel and Kit weren't going to the second showing meant I could take them to Blade Rubber Stamps next to the London Review of Books shop and treat her to a Tenniel of her choice. I gave J this one and it's quite fun to sign off with when it comes to sending cards from the two of us.

In the end she preferred a row of (non-Tenniel) lizards to be reproduced in rainbow print. I left father and daughter at the British Museum, where Friends of the Earth were protesting BP sponsorship of the Troy exhibition (I'd been, didn't learn much I didn't already know, but it's a good education for lots of folk) with a wooden horse.

What followed turned out to be a long walk on the beautiful sunny afternoon before Storm Ciara struck - J was getting it in Galway at the same time - from the BM to the length and breadth of Bermondsey High Street before I took a bus from outside the Tower of London and then a tube to King's Cross for the 7pm Aurora Orchestra concert. For a start, it was good to see the first crocuses in Bloomsbury Square.

Had planned to go home for a couple of hours, but Temple tube and the District Line were closed, so I admired the first blossom by the Thames

 

and the dropped into Two Temple Place for a so-so exhibition of women collectors of fabrics (any excuse to see the rooms, but not quite sure where Yinka Shonibare's ship fits into it all),

crossed Blackfriars Bridge

to join the hordes from the Southbank Walk to London Bridge, then via some of the back streets to trendy Bermondsey - can anyone identify this astonishing yellow-flowering tree? -

followed by a pop in to the Eames Gallery - excellent linocut prints by  Gail Brodholt, excellent urban scenes though I especially liked the motorway perspectives, and covet this one -

and the White Cube where the latest Anselm Kiefer exhibition had so stunned us the previous week (need to post on that anon). The spaces are filled, spectacularly enough from one perspective though not from many as the Kiefers achieved it, with mew works by Cerith Wyn Evans, including fig. 0 in white neon.

Coffee at the south end of the street, which I hadn't reached before (we always stop at Pizarro for lunch),

 and then I noticed full moon rising.

I reckoned it would look even better on the river, and though it had risen further by the time I got to Tower Bridge it was still complementary to the rest of the twinkling lights.

Flash, when on, is erratic in doing its stuff; when it does, the image is sharper and of course the background darker.

Sunday was very different. I gave myself bags of time to struggle through the storm and catch a tube back to Covent Garden, though it came immediately, and missed the downpours both ways (they came later). So glad I caught the 'other' (not second or B) cast, because the two with the most to sing were piu brilliante: Nicky, going for broke in his last performance(s) as the Mad Hatter and others, and Jennifer France, who beamed out what I'm told are 98 top Cs with fearless brilliance. Here our two national treasures are with Robert Murray as the March Hare and Carole Wilson as the Dormouse.

A few more favourite tableaux: Carole's Cook and 'wah wah wah' chorus,

the Looking-Glass Train scene,

and very near the end.

Claudia Boyle and Sam Furness in the previous cast were excellent, but these two were off-the-planet fabulous. So were the brass, perfecting their tuckets and galops under Finnegan Downie Dear - cool as a cucumber, Nicky later told me. I wasn't intending to intrude after, but he appeared from the stage door just as I was heading down Floral Street (I'd been chatting with the wonderful Elizabeth Wilson, so good to see here there. She's taken part in recordings of some of Barry's chamber works). Then Joshua Bloom, such an excellent Humpty, appeared on his way to his last performance, and La France with a friend. Here's a happy group pic in the storm.

May they all be reunited in the inevitable revival as soon as possible.