Der Fliegende Hollander

We watched the Harry Kupfer Bayreuth production of Der Fliegende Hollander Friday night and yesterday. It's definitely worth a look. It's visually interesting and very well sung. All the principals are excellent especially Simon Estes as the Dutchman. It's a very unusual take on the drama. Senta is on stage the whole time looking like a rather haggard refugee from an Ibsen play. The tension is kept cranked up by quite fast tempi and there is a deliberate ambiguity about the seaman Daland has met and the mythical Dutchman. The effect is to call into question how much of what we are seeing is actually happening versus how much is in Senta's imagination. It works especially well in the first act and right at the end, arguably not quite so successfully in the middle passages but, all in all, it makes for a compelling piece of theatre.

Boggled

I was just checking stats at my favourite bit torrent site. One user has uploaded 42.9TB of data. That is just staggering!

Last night

Last night I went to a dance performance. Some of it I enjoyed, some of it I didn't. I won't write it up because (a)I know naff all about dance and (b) lemur_catta has done it far better than I could.