Eye saga

Felt a bit queasy about the big brother eyes in the ENO/Complicite Dog's Heart on Saturday (photo by Stephen Cummiskey). Not because of Graham Danby's unduly sinister party man, but because I was slightly nervous anticipating the visit to the Western Eye Hospital yesterday.

And with reason, as it turned out: after I'd been jammed up against a machine and had anaesthetic drops put in the eyes, and had lenses and sticks jammed in them, and had to swivel them every which way in front of bright lights, a big eye cheese decided I needed a torn retina lasered shut. In fact, I think this may have been a longer term problem dating from before the bike smash, from what an optician said a couple of years ago; but I'm glad to have had it sorted because a detached retina is no joke.

But from being told nothing about what they were doing to me, I then found out a bit too much: the specialist was going to burn around the tear. So the laser light show was accompanied by the odd shooting pain. Enough: it was over in fifteen minutes, the pink room returned to its normal colour and I stumbled out on to the Edgware Road with my eyes streaming.

By 4, I was fighting fit for the Adriana Lecouvreur class at the City Lit, and we had a happy time comparing versions of 'La dolcissima effigie' (Alagna, Kaufmann, Gigli, Corelli, Domingo and - tops - Aureliano Pertile). Then it was Judy time, and any initial scepticism about Tracie Bennett's impersonating the fundamentally inimitable were swept away by the second act of Peter Quilter's play End of the Rainbow, freshly transferred from Northampton to the Trafalgar Studios. Here's star Tracie as photographed by Peter Day.


Read all about it in my Arts Desk review.

And finally, a real tonic. You may have heard about the hideous demise facing the Netherlands Broadcasting Music Centre (Muziekcentrum van de Omroep) and all its ensembles in Holland. I signed the petition against the government cuts along with thousands of others - you still may here - and was rewarded with this flashmob film in which the beleaguered players all gathered together for Bernstein's West Side Story mambo in a busy Rotterdam train station. Stick with it while the percussionists allow the other musicians to put themselves together.



Brought tears to my eyes - there's communication for you.

Dog and diva

In this week of bizarrely contrasted operatic first nights, it should be the other way round, of course, but it doesn't sound so good. The diva is Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur, purportedly a star vehicle for Angela Gheorghiu. Yet what we saw last night was a good company show, with plenty of quiet perceptiveness about the 18th century gulf between actors and aristocracy in David McVicar's production, beautifully designed by Charles Edwards. It certainly didn't make me regret taking the decision to spend four weeks on the opera with my City Lit students.

There's Gheorghiu's actress above in the Royal Opera photo by Catherine Ashmore, being attended to by Alessandro Corbelli's sympathetic theatre manager among others while Michaela Schuster's bitch princess looks on. You can read what I made of it in my Arts Desk review.


And what about Kaufmann? Well, I had the same reservations last night as I do about his new so-called verismo disc - that the top is infallibly secure, with its authentic Italianate sob, but the middle is a bit dark, baritonal and slightly in the throat, not quite the sunshine and roses I was hoping for in this rep. But as I wrote, it will be terrific for Lohengrin, Florestan and Siegmund. And eventually, let's hope, for Tristan and Siegfried. The boy has the looks, the musicality and probably the strength.


A rather different attention is being paid up top to poor old stray Sharik in the De Nederlandse Opera/Complicite premiere of A Dog's Heart earlier this year (both photos by Monika Rittershaus). I got to know Raskatov's score preparing an article for the ENO programme, and what an elaborate piece of clockwork it is: a bit like Prokofiev's collage technique, with no idea resting for more than a few pages, but quite a few repeats. Whether it'll hang together as good music theatre remains to be seen - and I will see tomorrow, since it's the first night at the Coli. Before that, I'm joining a conversation in the Apple Store on Covent Garden Piazza, chaired by Christopher Cook with the brothers McBurney and sundry performers as the other guests. It's free, so do come along at 6pm on Saturday.