Meeow

Last night a group of us went to the Royal Northern College of Music to watch a double bill of Ravel operas, L'heure espagnole and L'enfant et les sortileges - both were fantastic (the first one is a hilariously stupid farce with gorgeous music) but it was the second one that really dazzled us all. It's a much-neglected opera, mainly because it's so hard to stage: the story revolves around a little boy who misbehaves, and is punished by the household objects he has mistreated, so the director must somehow come up with ingenious ways of making chairs, crockery and a fire (!) come to life and start singing! This production was fantastic, both visually and musically - particular highlights were:

• The Princess suddenly rising up out of the boy's storybook - audible gasps from me, and everyone else
• The wallpaper coming to life, and the beautiful quasi-pastoral music that followed
• The terrifying sequence with Mr Arithmetic and the numbers
  
• The spine-tingling moment when the set opened out to change from the living room into the garden outside - many more audible gasps!

Fantastic stuff.