Rusalka

Dvořák's music always casts a spell over me, and whenever I've heard bits of Rusalka on the wireless, I've wanted to see it staged. But last night's live relay from the Met. - we went to the Roses Theatre in Tewkesbury to catch it - turned out to be disappointing.

For one thing, the transmission was badly affected by the awful weather. The link remained more or less unbroken, despite the wind and rain, but was subject to pretty continuous bursts of hiccoughs, a bit like a silent film. For another, the Roses seemed less comfortable as a venue than I'd remembered: I squirmed a lot in my seat and shivered in the cold atmosphere. (At least they manage the house lighting better than at Cineworld, and parking is easy.)

The real problem was the opera, which seemed to drag interminably. People dislike Wagner for being long-winded: Rusalka seemed far worse. Despite some excellent singing and a beautiful stage picture throughout, we could have done with it being cut by half - and especially without the scene featuring assorted animals, some looking as if they were marshalling planes from runway to terminal. All in all I shall not be rushing back.

Wagner kept returning to mind: there are obvious similarities between the opening scenes of Rusalka and of Das Rheingold, each moral tales in their own way. Dvořák's strong Christian faith contrasts however with Wagner's idiosyncratic religious views: you can't imagine Brünnhilde signing off on Siegfried as Rusalka does with her prince: "May God have mercy on his soul."

Earlier, we had driven to Great Rissington to meet friends from Oxfordshire. I thought we would be safe walking high on the side of the valley of the River Dickler, but the rain has ceased to sink in even up there.

A theatre trip

Having inveighed earlier this month about Grand Prix mania, I found myself this afternoon with the grandchildren at the Roses Theatre in Tewkesbury, watching a play all about racing cars. The character on the right of my photograph was Farmer Green, whose secret apple and raspberry-based biofuel ensured the victory of the little guy against the big bad favourite for the race. But there wasn't a lot of reflection on the need to stop all this motor racing malarkey in its tracks. At least one can say - and it's rare these days - that the plot involved neither casual killing nor alien monsters. The grandchildren of course lapped it all up, and I felt worthy - he says, sanctimoniously - having resisted pleas to buy "merchandise", as well as for having taken them there and back via two buses each way.

High definition performance

Not only do we have a Spanish señorita staying at the moment, but a Swiss mister too. Paulo, employed by Nespresso and notwithstanding his name from the French-speaking part of his country, is here for a fortnight’s intensive work with Caroline on his English. The Japanese in particular are fabled present-givers, but nobody has ever arrived laden with so many gifts as Paolo, generous man. And game too: we were booked in to the Met. live relay of Die Walküre yesterday: “May I join you?” he asked – not having any previous opera-going experience, still less any experience of grappling with Wagner’s Ring.

Happily, Robert Lepage’s new production (costing upwards of $16m) could not be clearer for the viewer: it is in fact outstanding in all respects, with a stunning set: a simple concept, but fiendishly complicated technically – the start was delayed half an hour as computers were sorted out, so we learnt. It’s always a worry that such a delay might mean one of the stars is struggling to be fit.

That was no problem yesterday: all six principals were in geat voice. Though Deborah Voigt’s Brünnhilde is never going to be to my taste, all the others are perfectly suited to their parts, with Bryn Terfel the most human of Wotans, and his stage wife (the superb Stephanie Blythe) the most statuesque. During Die Walküre, there is always a heart-rending moment, depending on the performance: last night, it was Eva-Maria Westbroek’s O hehrstes Wunder! which made the hair at the back of my neck stand up. The conductor was Jemes Levine, clearly in considerable discomfort: I had no desire for 3D, but do wish we had had surround sound: the Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury doesn’t run to that.

"Why does it need to be so long?" asks Caroline. Something of an answer to this is given by Alex Ross in his recent New Yorker article: "Ultimately, the bond Wagner forms with his listeners is one of pure, wordless emotion, and his gift for capturing the nuances of human feeling constantly complicates our response." This takes time.

Earlier in the day, we had enjoyed a different sort of theatrical experience, champagne breakfast with kind friends who were staying at the new Ellenborough Park Hotel in nearby Southam. No expense has been spared there either.

I spotted that today is the third anniversary of this blog. Can I really have been retired so long?

Is it a film? Is it a play?

We have just come in from supper in the garden, having been to the theatre this evening. Or was it the cinema? Confusing, as the venue was The Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury; but what we saw was shown on a cinema screen - albeit a transmission of a live performance from The Royal National Theatre.

Racine's Phèdre is not perhaps the best play with which to have started the NT Live Performance experiment. Tragedies don't come very much more hysterical than this; and the alienation - to me - was palpable. It started with a cringe-making interview by a ham Jeremy Irons of poor, corpsing Nick Hytner on top of the NT building beforehand. The funniest moment of the evening - at least for the audience at The Roses.

At the end of the two-hour melodrama, perhaps a quarter of us clapped: I was embarrassed. Not that the acting in Phèdre itself was half bad: it was indeed more than half good. The set was certainly magisterial. But it's a creaky old play, and to have to sit through those long speeches in what was essentially a cinema made me at least feel pretty restless. The worst part was the lack of complete sound/lips synchronisation: this wouldn't be tolerable in a film, so why should we have had to put up with it last night, I ask.

It was though nostalgic to see Helen Mirren tackle this big speaking part, having seen her 45 years ago as that other Greek nemesis, Helen of Troy when literally a slip of a girl - naked, walking silently across the stage in Marlowe's Dr. Faustus: a defining moment in my theatregoing.