King's Theatre

My daughter's singing teacher was one of the leads in a performance of Britten's opera "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, so we bought tickets to go along. Sadly, it turned out that someone had failed to put a school function into the diary, Jenni couldn't go to the opera and so I ended up there by myself.

I enjoyed the show. It seemed to be the words of the play set to music, so there were no big set-piece arias; rather it was all telling the story through freely-flowing music. Perhaps it's not one I would listen to as background music, but it was very enjoyable to watch in the theatre.

The acting was great, and the physicality and flexibility of Puck was hugely entertaining. But the singing - the singing was simply outstanding. Wonderfully clear, detailed, nuanced and precise voices. Yet they could be clearly heard at the back of a 2,000 set theatre without any microphones or amplification - that's singing!

Anyway, this is the outside of the theatre, taken at 7:20pm, just before I went inside - just before I found out that the show started at 7:15pm!