Failure

I had intended to be writing about Peau d'Ane, the 1970 film directed by Jacques Demy which is being shown in the National Film Theatre's Catherine Deneuve Season. Unfortunately we had one of those tedious evenings that you occasionally have when you live in a city, travel by bicycle and are as forgetful as I am. Having left my bag at a stop en-route from work, we ended up spending a happy hour or more cycling round central London to little effect (though I was re-united with my bag). The end result, we retired home shattered and had cauliflower cheese instead!

The cultural Season starts next week. We are off to the opening night of Gerald Barry's The Bitter Tear's of Petra von Kant at the London Coliseum on Friday 16th. I'm looking forward to it, though my only reservation is that Barry has evidently set Rainer Werner Fassbinder's play uncut, which means that the opera is likely to be rather wordy.

I found this with The Silver Tassie, even though Amanda Holden had done a superb job filleting the Sean O'Casey's play. Turnage set the words in a naturalistic manner and the result came over, to me, as more of a radio play with musical accompaniment than real opera. I'll be reviewing Barry's opera and will report back.