La Traviata - in a word - excellent

La Traviata today so, having met Pete, we wandered off to the Royal Opera House across the River.   There was a tube strike today which made the journeys.. a little different.

Always enjoy seeing the horse-drawn drays of Young & Co carrying the beer supply :)

Perhaps overworked as a result of tube strike!

A shop was being refurbished and this was the window screening... took me back to my childhood!

Keen-eyed Pete noticed this moth fly in.. I THINK it's an Angle Shades?

A (James) Bond exhibition was taking place... this was our view from the doorway..

And after, a lovely lunch at Delaunay's Counter (a much happier occasion than our last visit when I discovered my purse had been nicked!!) we had a short wander around Convent Garden before the opera

Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata - the typical love story with a sad ending was amazing. A brief synopsis of the story can be found here.

The scenery and stage setting were some of the best I've seen.  Beautifully costumed and orchestrated on stage; at the end of one scene, the curtains came and across and re-opened to show a beautiful tableau of the end scene.. no-one on stage moved a flicker... fantastic.

And the singers - well!! Diane Damrau - on stage for about 80% of the production was superb.. even in the closing scene where her character (Violetta) is dying, she managed to convey such emotion whilst acting wonderfully as her character was dying...  Her voice is beautiful and captivated me completely.  Francesco Demuro gave an excellent performance as Alfredo Germont, (especially the Brindisi -  or more well know as the "song)W" but, for me, he was a little overshadowed by the performance of Dmitri Hvorostovsky as his father, Giorgio Germont - the passion and emotion he portrayed was quite moving.  Damrau and Hvorostovky together made a pretty formidable team!!

And the music played by the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House could only add the enjoyment of the production overall.

So in summary, an amazing production and a thoroughly enjoyable 3 and a quarter hours... could watch this again quite easily!!

Slight downside, was the 'idiot' a few rows in front of us, whose mobile phone rang during the performance which necessitated a member of the ROH staff having to have a word!!  And later on, yet another mobile phone went off!!

And the weather was warm and sunny which made the walk to the station along The Mall even more enjoyeable - resisted the temptation to nip into one of the parks as passing  Buckingham Palace was hard, but it was getting late for trains