'Boccanegra' Buggered...

Had to miss the talk on Croatian Comics at Orbital after all, after realising that today's ENO rehearsal started at 6. I'd forgotten, and thought it was 2-ish, as usual. Bum.
And Bum again, because it was rubbish. I'm quite fond of SOMON BOCCANEGRA's beautiful melancholy score, although admittedly, it's a pretty incomprehensible tale. This production did it grave injustice, and I hope kelper  and others coming to it for the first time weren't put off it for life.  The suit-and-tie approach has by now become a cliche in itself, and Dimitri Tcherniakov seems to think he can impress with a blatant rip-off of the classic Jonathan Miller RIGOLETTO, right down to the Edward Hopper-pastiche sets. This time it doesn't work. The grand Council Chamber as a grim town hall meeting room was particularly sad. It also seemed to be very underrehearsed, with hilarious scuffles, like grief-crazed Boccanegra's  trying to haul off his wife's body while being battered by screaming grannies.
The acting was generally very strange. I think they may have been going for a German Expressionist  style here, but it just looked mental.
Paolo had a tendency to jumping-up- and-down tantrums, Boccanegra did an airplane impression upon learning he'd been poisoned, and wandered offstage to expire wearing a paper  tricorne hat ( a reference to his happier past as a corsair?).  Amelia was presented as an unstable Emo kid.
To top it off, most of the cast seemed to be vocally out of sorts, although Brindley Sherratt's Fiesco had some impressively resonant moments.
Wotta waste.
Fiona gifted me with a cool brochure of Holy Week in Toledo, with pics of the weeping, bleeding giant statues that she unfortunately missed seeing carried around the streets, due to inclement weather. She also kindly gave me a bag of unusually good chocs from Borough market, which I've stuck in the fridge, and am trying to consume slowly, Fantabulosa!
Got home in time for the final ep of PSYCHOVILLE 2, which was 'orribly amusing, but not as good as the first series. I'd had hopes of the Silent Singer 's  being as gloriously frightening as LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN'S  Papa Lazarou , but that didn't quite come off.