"I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it." - Igor Stravinsky

And so to the opera. I have been to see 'The Magic Flute', where thankfully the Queen of the Night's famous aria was sung beautifully. This was a new production by Opera North, which I enjoyed somewhat more than I had their previous one. All the performances were exceptional - I don't know whether it was deliberate or serendipity to cast an Irishman as Papageno, but I shall never now be able to think of him as anything else - and yet I still don't really like the opera. I have previous form in telling Mozart that he has got it all wrong and I'm going to do so again. None of it makes any sense. The masonic chaps are obviously meant to be the good guys, but they go round kidnapping and sexually molesting women and inflicting corporal punishment on each other. The Queen of the Night is meant to be the baddie, but doesn't do anything except sing and worry about her daughter, while her acolytes rescue the hero from the clutches of a monster that is about to kill him. It's most peculiar.

The plot of 'Katya Kabanova' at least makes sense, but is completely implausible whilst paradoxically at the same time being a bit too close to home for comfort. It also has an out of the ordinary operatic villain in the mother-in-law from hell, who was roundly booed at the curtain call. 

Unpleasant family members feature prominently as well in 'Gianni Scicchi'. I had seen two other productions of this in the last twelve months or so and perhaps that was why this particular one fell a bit flat. In addition there were some strange directorial decisions including the deceased - whose will is the cause of all the trouble - wandering about the stage, and climbing both walls and ropes from time to time despite being dead. 

Almost as confusing was an otherwise excellent concert staging of Marc-Antoine Charpentier's rarely performed Baroque work 'David et Jonathas'. That it wasn't acted out, together with the lack of surtitles and the fact that I have no French made it a bit of a struggle to follow what was happening. According to the programme the piece would originally have been intertwined act by act with a prose play in Latin that developed the characters and moved the plot along; maybe that would have helped, or maybe it wouldn't. What certainly wasn't of any assistance was my preconception that the Philistines were in the wrong. It seems that for this particular biblical story it's the Israelites who were being unreasonable; plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. The role of Jonathan, presumably originally written for a castrato, was played by a soprano and so opera's fine tradition of the leading lady not making it to the end alive was maintained. 

Then there was the one that got away. Whilst there is nothing to compare with a fully staged opera supported by a large orchestra I also rather like watching works being performed in a more intimate environment. I therefore travelled across Leeds in the rush hour to see Opera UpClose perform 'La bohème' at the Theatre Royal Wakefield. I got there in plenty of time, bought myself coffee and cake in the pleasant little cafe and was just thinking to myself how civilised it all was when the lights went out. The power never came back on, the show was cancelled and I had to turn round and come home again. The cake was nice though.

Last, but not least, I have been to see 'The Rite of Spring'. Despite my carefully moulded image as a man of culture I have to confess that I had never previously seen a ballet; I therefore have absolutely nothing to compare this with. I can, however, report that I enjoyed it immensely. The music was loud and powerful (if one is to contrast it with his contemporaries it was less melodic than Puccini, less dissonant than Schoenberg; I was reminded of prog rock, but I'll bet that I was the only one) and there was lots of vigorous and entertaining leaping about on the stage. I had always wondered how the narrative was explained in ballet if there weren't any words. In this case that was rendered moot because there is no story: it is simply a series of pagan mating and fertility rites. It made me wistful for this blog's erstwhile female reader, who always rather liked that sort of thing.

Click Clack Lumberjack: I love this game; it's a real guilty pleasure. One can't question the theme of a game where one chops down plastic trees with a little plastic axe; well I can't anyway.

Game of Thrones: I really can't speak to the accuracy of this as I have never read the books nor seen any of the television series. We played the A Feast for Crows expansion, which those teaching the game said was the only way to make it playable. The mechanics were clear and made sense, but - driven by the theme presumably - it's asymmetrical. I find it hard to believe that Lannister won't always win.

Hau La: I have a soft spot for three dimensional games (see Click Clack Lumberjack above) and this one is refreshingly based on building up, rather than knocking down. I liked it, but wasn't clear of its replayability. It would be interesting to try with two players to see how it differed from the four player game.

Indigo: My reaction when this came out of the box was that it was like a hexagonal version of Tsuro, and so it is. But it's a lot better, with deeper strategy and more player interaction. I'd happily play this again.

Istanbul: I have mentioned before that I like this game - which has nothing much to do with Istanbul specifically; the setting could be any vaguely Eastern Mediterranean town - but I am beginning to wonder if the best strategy to follow isn't also the dullest and most obvious. I hope not.

La Granja: A new game with an interesting card play mechanism. Every card has four different ways that it could be used, all of which are very powerful, but as it can only be played once many difficult choices arise. I was left rather confused as to which was the best strategy to follow from all those available; those who have played it more often tell me that there doesn't appear to be one. For the record I went for a maximum pig strategy, but didn't win. Good game.

Last Will: A heavily themed game, but not a theme that would have occurred to many people before playing it, unless perhaps they were big Richard Pryor fans. An interesting game, with the turn order/ action scope bidding mechanism working rather well. I was robbed.

Legendary:Villains: A co-operative deck building game doesn't seem the most likely game to tickle my fancy and when the theme is comic book superheroes and villains it's probably even less plausible. However, I was enjoying myself, until we were embarrassingly quickly trounced by Captain America, the Incredible Hulk and, worst of all, Ant-Man. Ant-Man! What kind of villain gets beaten by someone whose superpower is shrinking to the size of an ant?

Letters From Whitechapel: This was the first time I'd played the game where Jack wasn't caught early on; indeed he won. Unfortunately the main effect of this was to make the game outstay its welcome, admittedly not helped by an extended break spent looking for a missing piece which it turned out never existed in the first place. I'm not sure what could be done to improve things, which is a shame because when it works, it works well.

Marrakech: A really fun game, although remarkably simple. You need to play the optional rules because the family friendly ones are just bland and boring. This is a reasonably strongly themed game about selling rugs (NB rugs not carpets) including a large number of the playing pieces actually being rugs, but I don't think that I'd actually try selling them this way

Murano: A rule of thumb would be that among every group of people being taught this game, one will have been to Murano. On this occasion it was me. It is with a modest amount of authority that I can therefore say that the theme is completely pasted on and those wishing to learn the finer points of glass manufacture should look elsewhere. It is however a very good game, with the rondel type mechanism causing many intriguing decision points.

New Salem: Here, as I've possibly mentioned before, we come to one of that class of games whose game play isn't so much unrelated to the ostensible theme, but actually pretty much directly the opposite (see Kanban and Evolution for example). Surely the whole point about the Salem witch trials is that there weren't ever any witches? For the record it's another hidden identity game coupled with a bit of drafting and set building. The chap who won neither understood the rules nor grasped the fact of his victory until it was pointed out to him. I think that tells you everything that you need to know.

One Night Ultimate Werewolf: Which I still don't like. Does the theme make sense? Consider the phrase "Insomniacs, wake up." and then tell me.

Paperback: As someone else has already written, this is Scrabble but fun. It's a well designed deck building word game with lots of card selection choices as well as the challenge of spelling. There is a very thin journalistic theme pasted on top, but that still doesn't explain the name. It's a good game.

Splendor: I've owned this for some time, but for one reason or another hadn't got round to getting it on to the table. It's a very good game, almost entirely abstract, well worth playing and also noteworthy for the very high quality of the components

Sushi Go!: I'm warming to this. My pudding strategy was better than when I'd played it previously.

Spyfall: Yet another hidden identity game, but this one involves a free form question and answer mechanism that is as big a recipe for dullness (and stress) as it sounds. Everyone is dealt a card that tells them which location they are all in except for one player who simply gets a card identifying them as the spy. Through questions about their location the spy attempts to identify where they all are while the others attempt to identify the interloper. Why would anyone hire a spy who can't easily spot whether he's on a space ship or the First Crusade?

Viceroy: A tableau building game, where the cards are illustrated with what seem to be completely irrelevant Conan the Barbarian style pictures, but which is otherwise simply a colour matching and set building game. It was OK, but didn't grab me.