Despite Covent Garden’s craving for perfection, IT made a farce of it. Beamed into a local cinema, the screen froze at the end of the first Act. Missing the climax, the making of the sword!
During the interval, signal was restored and the designer discussed the making of the forge, discussing the scene we missed.
The second Act began, but without subtitles. And unless you spoke German, or had seen it before, you would not know what was going on.
Here is Alberich and Wotan, chief of Gods, sitting on a bench. Yes as two tramps🤣
In case you are confused. This is the stage set.
Pretty obviously, this is the cave where the Giant, Fafner, lived. No perhaps not, it took me fifteen minutes to work that one out, and I knew the Opera.
By the third Act, half the audience had left. What started as sixty, we were now down to thirty. And after five and a half hour, it all came to an end, when Siegfried, fell in love with his Aunt, an underwhelming performance by a singer well into her fifties.
Rather like Margaret Dumont, in the Marx brother farce, A Night at the Opera.
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I know we were told the cinema started at 515, the performance finishing at 10.30 then curtain calls.
I was able to go for a walk along the sea during the first interval.
With the top 1% of the country having 17% of the Nations income, there is no shortage of takers. added to this corporate seats, and our Chinese visitors.
As I noted in another post, two weeks ago on a Friday night I counted over 300 in various wine bars, with cocktails at £15 each, and house wine £8.5 a glass. And the people there, aged about forty. Plenty of money about for some people.A friend of mine did not bulk at the idea of £85 for a steak!
@peterlee What are such people paid enough for such openly ostentatious wining-and-dining?
Money-trading? Brand and other management "consulting"? Senior directors in IT companies? Divorce and conveyancing solicitors, and corporate-law barristers? Commercial-property landlords?
