Flying Dutchman was good, if you don't take the production into account. Senta's redemption-by-love of the Dutchman through her death, as written by Wagner, was completely negated by having the spurned Erik break her neck in the last few bars. Then to top it off we were presented with a person representing Senta sitting on the side of the stage reading her book (which replaced the portrait) suggesting that the whole thing was Senta's imagining. That idea was done so much better in the production I saw at Bayreuth in 1979 -- Senta was on stage throughout the whole production and there was some reason to suppose she was disturbed and imagining everything.

However, the singing was great, particularly John Wegner as the Dutchman and Elizabeth Whitehouse as Senta -- the orchestra also played really well. Our seats were in row B, a little close, but what's to complain about half price?

BN came for dinner on Saturday and we huddled around Tat's heater while watching acts two and three of the very variable Stuttgart Götterdämmerung; act two works really well, but then they go and spoil it all in the final scene of act three having Brünnhilde carefully show everyone else off the stage -- including the dead Siegfried -- while she sings here Immolation to a fully-lit auditorium. Very strange.

Things were a little better on Sunday evening (or perhaps just a little less cold) when P&B came. We watched A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum which I picked up on DVD the other week. It turns out not to be as funny as I had remembered; fun, in a very 1960s way, but not so funny.

I'm working Tuesday evening this week for a change and had lunch in town after picking up my next month's supply of Lipitor from the clinic pharmacy. Just as well because the Library was this afternoon presented with some left-over bread-and-butter pudding of which I scoffed quite a big piece -- yum!