PotCXXVIpouri

But man, proud man,

Drest in a little brief authority, 

Most ignorant of what he's most assured, 

His glassy essence, like an angry ape,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven 

As make the angels weep.

 -William Shakespeare

Now, I don't wish to live in a world led by China any more than anyone else does. However, having said that, I am certainly revelling in the Schadenfreude of seeing Uncle Sam have his trousers taken down and his arse spanked.

Moving on. I am currently about half way through a month long wargaming hiatus. There is talk of another Peninsular War campaign when we resume, and this time we have been promised some actual victory conditions which in turn means that this time it might end during the lifetime of all those participating. 

In the meantime I have been to the opera. This time last year I promised a review of a performance of the 1881 version of Simon Boccanegra, and here it is. It was just as good as the performance I saw of the 1857 version. My companion for the afternoon - not the most ardent of aficionados despite my encouragements - declared it the best opera she had ever seen. Mind you she also claimed to understand the plot, which is hard to believe. The issue isn't so much what they do as why they do it.

Also highly enjoyable if a tad difficult to follow in detail, was 'It is I, Seagull', Lucy Mellors one-woman show about - possibly - self esteem, the objectification of women, chasing one's dream with added opera and space-travel. The last of those comes through the story of Valentina Tereshkova, and Ms Mellors does a pretty good job of representing cosmonaut selection and training and then the orbiting of the earth with nothing more than some physical theatre, some audience participation and a few arias. I'm not sure how accurate her version of Tereshkova's story was, and she doesn't touch on her current position as a Putin-apologist politician, but as I'm old enough to recall the events it brought back memories of the mid-Sixties. Even in those days the US didn't have things all its own way. Tereshkova, Vostok 6, was in space for longer than the cumulative total of all the Americans who had been to space before her, and of course Valery Bykovsky was also in orbit in Vostok 5 at the same time.