We Went Out!

 We went to the cinema to see the Royal Opera House filmcast of Rusalka. 

It has to be said that we have a spotty success rate with these regular showings of opera and ballet from Covent Garden. Who can forget the horror that was Carmen in a gorilla suit which I wrote about here ? And then there was my recorded irritation with the 'helpful' inserts to Traviata here . And quite a lot of them we tend to be away for (no real surprise there!) Possibly our best experience was Matthew Bourne's Romeo and Juliet

But Rusalka is rarely performed and is a real favourite of mine so we went. I was prepared to clench my teeth and sit out the irritating fillers, but I should have reserved judgement because in fact the contributions from singers, conductor and the two women who did the directing and designing as a team were interesting, informative and insightful. Possibly this was due to a lack of poseur testosterone. Several singers commented on  how they had enjoyed a collaborative approach to the production. Lest I be accused of sexism I will say here and now that I know of a recent production closer to home that was directed by a woman who made everyone's lives an absolute misery and I'm not sure that the subsequent spectacular success of it necessarily reconciled everyone involved to the methods used to get there. Men aren't the only ones  who think they are god's gift to theatre and will everyone else just shut up and do what they say because if they want to use that frightful old cliché of gypsies dancing on tables then they will. 

I loved this. I enjoyed it from start to finish - and it's l-o-n-g; the playing,  the singing and the the acting were all first class ( although that should really be a given at Covent Garden ) My only very bijou problemette was with the wood nymph costumes, that looked a little bit like gone to seed brussel sprouts. Since the only photo I found was copyrighted I can't post it here but a search of Google images should bring it up for anyone interested. In fact the costumes in general were the 'weakest link' (ha!) of the whole production.

A good night out, even though it was a late return, and the OH needs to hope Stockholm will do Rusalka soon as that will guarantee him a return visit to the city. Although we are gong back in March anyway.