Football fans know better or why to visit Turandot

Visiting world-class shows is quite costly but fortunately live broadcasting makes these performances accessible. 
 
In March 2023 the Royal London Opera presents Giacomo Puccini’s opera Turandot and the local entrepreneurial theatres offer it on their screen to opera lovers. 
The neighbourhood Regent Centre theatre also broadcasts the opera and I am lucky to attend it on a friend’s invitation. 
 
Of course, The Regent Centre is not the Royal Opera theatre, still it provides the needed feeling of entering the realm of drama and dreams. The theatre’s kind and helpful staff (or volunteers) make us feel very welcome. 
 
 
 
 
 
Everyone knows the opera Turandot. If you insist you have never heard of it ask the football fans around the world about the most famous opera aria “Nessun Dorma” ( the translation is “None shall sleep”). The aria is from Turandot. 
 
Football people will sing it for you or will show you the performance of the Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti at the 1994 World Cup on YouTube and you will remember it. 
 
Opera Turandot is a wise choice to introduce someone new to the art of opera and to show them that enjoying opera is not intellectual snobbery for at least three reasons:
1. First and foremost, Guacomo Puccini’s music vibrates with the rhythm of our hearts. 
 
The well known aria Nessun Dorma is in the final 3rd Act of the Opera. The stage is dark and mysterious, Chinese style lanterns move by a wind and the sense of danger and threat prevails. 

And the hero, Prince Calaf, son of Timur, enters the stage. The tenor Yonghoon Lee wears a bright red shirt in contrast to the darkness of the stage. His beautiful and powerful  voice is rising and falling, resonating with the hopes and wishes of the heart, leading to the moment of strength and determination. 
 
That is the apotheosis of the aria and the opera – the determination to overcome the challenges, to conquer, to win. Are you surprised that the football world loves the aria? Check the translation of the famed last world “Vincero”of the aria! (*The answer is at the end of the post)
 
 
2. Secondly, Turandot is a mysterious and exotic opera. It is set in ancient China and has all the ingredients of alluring entertainment – drama, tragedy, murder, love.
 
 Even the story of creating the opera is unusual  and you will be captivated reading the facts about its history and completion. 
 
The libretto is typical for the era of Romanticism.The plot does not follow logic, it looks strange for our 21st century brains but who says magic and love are rational?
 
 
3.  Finally, the Royal Opera House offers a first-class production. 
The cast, the orchestra and the conductor Antonio Pappano, the costumes, the stage design and the broadcasting are the best. 
You do not need to be an expert to recognise the quality of the performance and the highest possible standard of what opera art can offer. 
I have one more argument up my sleeve to convince you to visit Turandot. Why don’t you listen to the singer Aretha Franklin performing soulful interpretation of Nessun Dorma. Do you like it?
https://youtu.be/k33sINjn9o0
 

*I will win

Ballet Club strikes again

My friend Catherine and I are developing a taste for the art of ballet, particularly classical ballet – the one where delicate ballerinas in white tutus and pink pointe shoes do pirouettes and danseurs in tights hold them in the air. 
Recently a friend of mine informed me that visiting ballet had become very trendy, mainly among mature audiences. I am delighted to hear that Catherine and I are trendy and not so sure about the maturity.
 

The performing company is the Varna International Ballet – the troupe is visiting Bournemouth as part of their 75-year anniversary tour of the UK.

Varna is a city on the North East cost of the Bulgarian Black Sea. It hosts the Varna State Opera House and the well-established annual Varna International Ballet Competition.

The Varna ballet troupe is international. Bulgarian presence is limited to the role of Berthe, Giselle’s mother and one ballerina in the Corps de ballet.
The Bournemouth Pavilion theatre is not completely full, there are noticeable empty seats. A possible explanation is the performance of the more popular Swan Lake the following evening. 

Still, the atmosphere is electric and the audience is enthusiastic. There are many mature ladies around. Two of them are openly flirting with the bartender in the Circle bar, another loud group of six take seats on the first row of the stalls and energetically flirt with the flamboyant conductor. I wonder if that is what our friend meant about the mature interest in ballet. 
Our seats are perfect, second row from the stage. I find the design of the orchestra box ridiculous, The public cannot see the orchestra or the body of the conductor but his head sticks out like the head of a scarecrow.
 
Next to us is a beautiful young girl who I suspect is Bulgarian. Near miss, she is Turkish. She studied art in her home land and now works in the family restaurant in Charminster. She comes to the ballet in her day off. 

The show is called Giselle. It is a classic ballet in two acts. The music was created by the French composer Adolphe Adam. Giselle is a romantic fairytale about the life-saving power of love. 
The ballet group tells us the story in an elegant and expressive manner. 
The first act is alluring but the real knockout is the second act. It is exquisite and mystique, wonderful and engaging. 
The choreography is superb, the technique – flawless. The costumes and the decors convey the aesthetic of the narrative. The show even uses modern technology to present the spirits of the Wilis (young virgins who died before their wedding day) in the second Act.

The audience sincerely congratulate the artists and orchestra (special applause for the conductor from you know who). The ballet alters our mundane day with a spark of love and magic and lifts us up.

Catherine and I promise our Turkish neighbour that we will visit her restaurant on the days she works there. Yes, we need to book a table as the restaurant is very busy. That is not a surprise – with a waitress who studied art and visits ballet this restaurant should be great at staff recruitment. 
How will our ballet delight continue? Being very fond of the music of Tchaikovsky I am going to book tickets for The Nutcracker.

On the right meridian

Imagine that your plane takes off from Heathrow on Monday 13th March at 0.01am and heads WEST in the direction of Anchorage airport in Alaska.
  
The journey lasts over 15 hours. What time and date will you arrive in Alaska?
 
Similar question – why do you experience jet lag when you travel from Paris to New Zealand or from Tokyo to Berlin?


One way to find the answer to these questions or to refresh and deepen your knowledge about time and space is to visit the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London. 

Arriving in style appeals to Adrian and myself so we board a City cruise boat. 
The boat leaves the impressive area of Tower Bridge and the Tower of London and sails east. 
Further along the River Thames estuary the water is getting choppy.
On the both sides of the waterfront dark brownish and grey warehouses, converted into modern, interior-trendy apartments (I guess) connect the past with the present.
This is the area where in previous centuries ships from all over the world were coming to trade.
The skyscrapers of Canary Wharf appear on the left bank and minutes later the boat stops at Greenwich pier. 
 
 
 
It is a cold March morning.
Greenwich Park is beaming with children, parents, dogs, joggers, and of course, the flood of international tourists climbing the Greenwich Hill. It  includes a huge group of students from Scandinavia who are surprisingly awake and chatty following their teachers.
We speed up to overtake them and then we are at the top of the hill. 
 
The Royal Observatory in Greenwich is the home of the Prime Meridian and Greenwich Mean Time. 
 
 
The Prime Meridian is a humble line, unnoticeable as everything worth noticing could be. It is a line in the pavement in the courtyard of the Observatory. 
Two signs indicate that this is not an ordinary line. One is the big Airy Transit Circle telescope in the building behind the line, constructed by the seventh Royal Astrologer George Riddell Airy.
The second sign signalling the uniqueness of the 0” longitude line is the fuss around it – families with children and young people from all over the world are taking photos here.Yes, they aim to show their exciting life on Instagram and TikTok but there is more to that.
The left leg is in the west hemisphere and the right leg is on the east hemisphere of planet Earth. Who can do that? Only heroes!!! Heroes like Batman or Spiderman, or Indiana Jones. 
The impossible is possible, everything is possible. On the right meridian everything is possible. 
 
If I dig deeper, the Royal Observatory makes everyone feel a part of something greater than themselves, something that is called progress.
The prime meridian is arbitrary – it could be everywhere in the world.
The International Meridian conference in Washington in October 1884 decided by nations’ votes that Airy’s meridian should be the prime meridian. The main reason was the fact that in the second half of the 19th Century 72% of the world’s trade was dependant on the sea-charts which had already accepted Greenwich as the prime meridian (based on the Nautical Almanac of Nevil Maskelyne, the fifth Royal Astronomer).
The same conference approved the proposal of the Scottish-born engineer Stanford Fleming for 24 time zones, each representing 15” of longitude and an hour of solar time. The developing railway systems of America and Canada and their struggle with the local times were behind the proposal. 
 
Away from the fame of the Prime Meridian is the 180” meridian that runs mostly through the Pacific.The 180” meridian is the International Date Lane and strange things with time happen when you cross it from west to east or from east to west.
If you want to have a personal adventure with that – book a flight to Fiji. 
 
Remember, miracles happen on the right meridian!