Well, I have had my first Covid jab and so far so good. Let’s see what happens in another ten weeks or so, when we will be in early May.
Now that I have had the first jab, my mind cannot help turning towards the day when we can all travel again, especially in light of the government’s latest bulletin. My friend and I have promised ourselves that in 2022 (government’s allowing) we will go to Bologna for a few days (my choice), as the whole City is a World Heritage site and not necessarily the first place you think of visiting when you think of Italy. We will then catch a train to Verona to see an Opera in the famous outdoor Amphitheatre. My friend has already visited before and stayed in a lovely, family run hotel nearby, and we are hoping to stay there. Whilst she was there she called me and I urged her to go and have a quick look at it, so one evening she took a stroll and managed to see the backstage area where the sets were being put into place. She telephoned me the next day to say how wonderful and dramatic it looked, and now that she has seen the scale and detail of the scenery, we would most definitely be coming back here.
I went to the Opera two days before Christmas 2019 with my friend Joe to see Verdi’s “Othello”. It was an opera I had not seen before and I had high hopes and great seats, but it wasn’t long before we realised that just because it is meant to be a “great Opera”, it doesn’t necessarily make it so. As Joe later pointed out in his usual dramatic fashion, “Well, that is three hours and ten minutes of our lives we will never get back again”, and the best part of the evening, apart from his company of course, was the champagne he bought me before it began – we should have had a bottle each as it may have deadened our senses for what was about to come.
Being somewhat wary of what to expect, I had booked some months earlier, to go and see “La Traviata” (The Fallen Woman) which I had never seen before, with British singer Simon Keenlyside CBE, in the main baritone role. For some reason he has only been a recent discovery of mine (probably because he likes to sing German Opera, of which I am not a big fan), and I am over the moon to find that he has a good voice as well as being an excellent actor, who puts his all into his performance. It also helped that it has some wonderful music and arias in it, and I will definitely be going to see “La Traviata” again one day.
The last show I went to was “The Classic Rock Show” at the end of January 2020, who comprise of a group of international musicians who play homage to some of the all-time rock greats from the 60’s to the present day. Their singing and musicianship was fantastic, and it was a great night. Unfortunately, all live music was then taken away from us and we now just sit and wait for the music to return to our lives.