We left at the interval...

Palais de la Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday September 25 2016 . Conductor: Paolo Carignani. Production: Olivier Fredj. Graphics: Jean Lecointre. Sets: Olivier Fredj, Gaspard Pinta, Massimo Troncanetti. Costumes: Frédéric Llinares. Lighting: Christophe Forey. Choreography: Dominique Boivin. Macbeth: Scott Hendricks. Banco: Carlo Colombara. Lady Macbeth: Béatrice Uria-Monzon. Dama di Lady Macbeth: Lies Vandewege. Macduff: Andrew Richards. Malcolm: Julian Hubbard. Medico, Servo, Araldo: Justin Hopkins. Sicario: Gerard Lavalle. La Monnaie Orchestra and Chorus. Verdi I've often wondered why opera-houses change their productions so often. Anyone in Paris for as long as I've been will have lost count of successive versions of The Magic Flute at the Opéra National, where there have already been three different productions even of Saint-François d'Assise ... Just six years ago, La Monnaie offered us Macbeth directed by Warlikowski, surely quite a big name. Yet this season, thou...

La Philharmonie, Paris, Thursday September 8 2016 Conductor and piano soloist: Daniel Barenboim. Staatskapelle Berlin. Mozart, piano concerto n°26 Bruckner, symphony n°6 I know nothing about acoustics and will only try to describe what I thought I heard from my single seat the other night. But scouting round the web for better-informed opinions about Paris's Philharmonie, I came across a blog called From The Sound Up , by an acoustical and architectural designer working in New York, and an article there entitled Why I can’t review the Philharmonie de Paris but why it’s worth trying anyway: a meditation on variability , which gives the impression that the sound in the new hall is especially varied. “Variation in the sound field is the topic of this post,” he writes, “because it is all I could think about after my experience in the brand-new (or, more accurately, yet-to-be-finished) Philharmonie de Paris. During a single concert, I experienced what might have been the w...