Chalk and cheese

I’ve never really thought about the expression “like chalk and cheese” until just now. Looked it up: “fundamentally different”. Yeah, that will do.

Last October we had a big weekend in Victoria. Not one, but two shows and a night in a hotel and dim sum. Fantastic.

It certainly started that way on Saturday.

Quite possibly the funniest show I have ever seen in my life.

Sunday afternoon it was a matinee performance of

We left at the end of the first act and certainly weren’t the only ones. No question the soprano had a great voice, but the opera itself was so boring I kept falling asleep. I had never before even considered walking out on an opera – not even the “marriage made in hell”. If that had been the first opera my partner had ever seen (rather than La Clemenza di Tito, I doubt I’d ever got him back to see another.

Fast forward some months. We’re back in Victoria, this time to see

Totally chalk and cheese.

Open the programme when we get into our seats and discover on an insert that Tosca will be sung by Catherine Thornsley, rather than Meghan Lindsay, who is listed in the programme. No explanation given before the performance as to why. (Quick Google and this review suggest Thornsley took on the lead role after the programmes were printed but before the production opened.)

Anyway, if I’d had a passing concerns that we were getting an understudy, they quickly disappeared. Thornsley has an amazing voice. (Not from Tosca, but if you want to hear her sing something, click here.)

Everyone was good (which, as I’ve said before, often isn’t the case with Vancouver Opera, so bravo Victoria), but the two knock-you-socks-off performances were Thornsley in the title role and Brett Polegato as the evil Scarpia.

Which led to a funny moment at the end. Polegato was such a good villain that when he came on to take his bow, it was rather pantomimic with quite a few people in the audience actually booing him. Never seen that before. And, yes, it did make me laugh.

As we were about to leave I asked my partner what he thought. “Now that’s more like it,” he said. And he was right.

I’m not saying pageantry is the main purpose of opera, but it’s pretty sad without it, as The Turn of the Screw proved.  Chalk and cheese.