It was a great pleasure to meet you too, Harpy128 and also Mr Harpy128. I shall now know who to look out for at future events and not just circle people in an alarming manner checking up on what outfits they are wearing.

It was the first time I'd seen Punch and Judy in the flesh although I know the recording. I thought they pulled it off pretty well. An excellent band, I thought, which helped greatly.

This is undoubtedly me, rather than Birtwistle or Pruslin, but for some reason I found it rather more of a 'period piece' than I was expecting. I suppose it is just association  -  because it made a big impression at the time  -  but I somehow felt as if it had been transplanted from the sixties rather than recreated (or even recreatable?) for 'now'. But that is purely a subjective reaction. It was great to see it played and performed at last.

Now this is really going to sound '1960s dad' but I was also surprised how difficult it was to hear the words in a live performance, and you really do need to hear them in this piece. I was only five or six rows back and there didn't seem anything much wrong (to me) with the performers' diction as such: but without the text in front of you it was actually quite difficult to make a lot of it out. Enthusiastic and heroically uninhibited acting though, with no one afraid to make themselves appear ludicrous. It worked well I thought. It seemed  peculiarly cruel to get Allison Bell to do several minutes seductive schoolgirl skipping immediately prior to a stratospheric aria but, like the others, she was a trouper!

I'm really looking forward to the other one in town to hear that score again. 

I'm doing my press ups and listening to this before going to see it later this month, with one of your number on hand to administer First Aid if all this atonality proves too much for me.

I was suddenly struck by a literary reference to a work I discussed over on another thread, namely Gay's The Beggar's Opera.

Like Punch, the hero of The Beggar's Opera cheats the hangman and ends up with Pretty Polly.

Pretty Polly say, when I was away
Did your fancy never stray to some newer lover?

Pruslin would certainly know that.  Indeed the words are so damn clever, the opera must be
A untranslatable and
B I am sure I will be missing most of the references.

Still far to be prefered to The Merry Widow or La Boheme in my mind.

Well, I can't remember the last time I enjoyed an opera production so much. Thumbs very definitively up from t-i-n, DonB, Ruth, and, erm, someone else who is quite nice (says an unexpectedly smiling t-i-n ).