Lully's Big Gay Opera

aka Renaud and the Underpants Angel

So last night the lemur and I went to see the new Opera Atelier production of Lully's Armide. We were both a bit apprehensive as the 17th century French rep isn't really top of our pops and a couple of recent OA productions have been disappointing. This wasn't. It was a bit unvaried in tone as these court works all seem to be but it was well sung, very well acted and the sets and costumes (with one minor exception - see below) were excellent.

Armide is set during the First Crusade and the plot centres on the eponymous princess who, being a Moslem is naturally also a sorceress who can summon infernal powers, trying to captivate the French super hero knight , Renaud. Actually, first up she wants to kill him but then she falls in love with him. This is opera. Renaud is spirited away to a magic grove where he does a great deal of cavorting with Love rather than Armide. As Love looks rather like St. Michael in a bad pair of underpants, I think we can see Armide's problem. Renaud is gay. We should have guessed this earlier. He's French, a virgin and sung by a tenor. Eventually two authentically French knickets (think Tim McInnerny in the Waterloo bit of Blackadder Back and Forth) recall Renaud to his duty, killing people, and Armide dies, naturally, of a broken heart.

This being Opera Atelier and Lully there were many balletic interludes. I have to say I enjoyed these more than in some recent productions. The male dancers were on good form and the girls did about as well as one can within the limits of baroque dance in long full dresses. There was only one Smack Jeanette Zingg upside the head moment™ when we got the castanets and finger cymbals number that appeared to be a straight lift from a previous Don Giovanni and very incongruous it was. I really would like to see OA experiment with a different choreographer but I guess Marshall wants to stay married.

All in all, it's not a work I'd want to see very often but Opera Atelier was back on form and made the most of it.

Back on form

I played a whole game at blindside flanker today without the physical and mental problems that screwed me up last week. Basically it was back to doing what I do best which is mostly throwing the body around on the close in stuff. I'm fairly beaten up though the worst of it is probably where someone stood on my hand. I think I've got quite a few scrapes around the head and neck too. I know I took a couple of elbows in the face.

The weirdest thing was the wind. There was a howling gale blowing end to end which made all kind of things difficult including, annoyingly, line out throw ins. That was a real drag because I was jumping at 2 and winning really good clean ball every time the throw was anywhere close. The trouble was that too often it wasn't.