We left at the interval...

La Monnaie - Salle Malibran, Brussels, Sunday January 19 2014 Conductor: Roger Vignoles. Production: Ted Huffman. Sets and costumes: Samal Blak. Lighting: Marcus Doshi. Thérèse: Aoife Miskelly. Le mari: Timothy McDevitt. La marchande de journaux: Sarah Laulan. La grosse dame: Marie Cubaynes. Lacouf: Romain Pascal. Presto: Ronan Debois. La dame élégante: Julie Mossay. Le gendarme: Guillaume Paire. Le fils: Benjamin Alunni. Le journaliste: Samy Camps. Soprano du choeur: Caroline Jestaedt. Le directeur du théâtre: Mathieu Gardon. Piano: Roger Vignoles, Philippe Riga.  The tickets issued by La Monnaie were for January 18, not January 19 as stated, for "Matinee 2" subscriptions in the subscriptions brochure and, even today, on the website. I had duly bought train tickets for January 19, so I missed Les Mamelles and went to the Magritte Museum instead. That was a revelation. He's even worse than I thought, which is saying something.

Opéra Comique, Paris, Tuesday January 14 2014 Conductor: François-Xavier Roth. Production: Lilo Baur. Sets: Caroline Ginet. Costumes: Hanna Sjödin. Lighting: Gilles Gentner. Choreography: Olia Lydaki. Lakmé: Sabine Devieilhe. Gérald: Frédéric Antoun. Mallika: Élodie Méchain. Nilakantha: Paul Gay. Frédéric: Jean-Sébastien Bou. Ellen: Marion Tassou. Rose, Roxane Chalard. Mistress Bentson: Hanna Schaer. Hadji: Antoine Normand. Un Domben: Laurent Deleuil. Un marchand chinois: David Lefort. Le Kouravar: Jean-Christophe Jacques. Dancers: Mai Ishiwata, Olia Lydaki, Anna Dimitratou. Accentus chorus. Les Siècles orchestra. Delibes As for Einstein on the Beach last week, the black market ticket touts were busy outside the Salle Favart before Lakmé , this time presumably because people were eager to hear Sabine Devieilhe in the "British Airways" flower duet and the bell song. I said not so long ago on Facebook, writing about her Rameau disc, that we'd better all soon le...

Béraud - La Sortie de Théâtre The ever-excellent Parterre Box has found and published the perfect picture for this blog. I reproduce it here.

Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, Friday January 10 2014 Conductor: Michael Riesman. Production, set and lighting design: Robert Wilson. Costumes: Carlos Soto. Lighting: Urs Schönebaum. Sound: Kurt Munkasci. Choreography: Lucinda Childs. With: Helga Davis, Kate Moran, Antoine Silverman, The Lucinda Childs Dance Company, The Philip Glass Ensemble, Einstein on the Beach Chorus. "The amazing thing," said a friend as we left the Théâtre du Châtelet, "is that we've sat through this for four-and-a-half hours, without an interval..." - I wondered where he was heading - "and still weren't bored shitless* like at L'Amour de Loin . Yet that was much shorter". He was right. Einstein on the Beach is a long work and, as when you get to the end of A la recherche du temps perdu , you almost expect a reward: an "I finished Proust" or "I survived Einstein " tee-shirt. But you soon slip into the (very slow) rhythm of it, and the truth is tha...