A friend brought me this book to read whilst I was trapped in hospital for a couple of weeks. It’s definitely not the sort of thing I would choose for myself! For me, it wasn’t very well written, and I called it “A Piece of Trash” so often that the other people in the ward actually thought that that was the title! However, given that hospitals are waaay too noisy to concentrate on reading anything decent, this book was fine for it’s purpose – mindless distraction.

This book is a nice bit of fluff- good for an light & easy read. A normal book about normal people. It’s not going to change your life, but neither does it set out to.

OMG, I’ve just finished watching this. Waltraud Meier is AMAZING! She sings sumptuously, and truly brings the character to life – one really believes this woman IS Isolde in this performance. Kurt Moll as King Marke was another performer I thought did well by his character.

The production is visually weird, seeming to try to mix more modern paraphenalia (such as a slide show) with period bits (such as Tristan’s armoured breastplate). Dragging the yellow flowery sofa into the middle of the forest pretty much did in any “benefit-of-the-doubt” I may have felt. That was just too surreal fo me!

Watch this particularly for Waltraud Meier. The woman can sing AND act, making Isolde completely and utterly believable.

Janet Baker is fabulous in this performance. She has ‘trouser role’ down just about perfectly! I love seeing the different expressions on her face & hearing them in her voice as she works with the character.

Speiser & Gale are each good (as Euridice & Amor) without being spectacular. The chorus and dancers are great! The scene of Furies & Ghosts is really good – costumes are particularly exciting.

All in all, a great traditional reading of this opera. There are a lot of instrumental sections, filled with dance on stage, which can take a bit of getting used to. The lyre also often looks a bit like a prop which has to be carried around on stage just because it’s written into the opera.

But I thoroughly enjoyed it!

My partner brought this series to our (now) joint library. He read it as a 15 year old & loved it! I read it as a 25 year old and generally enjoyed the series as an easy read.

But I must tell you that periodically when one or the other of us “sees” this in the bookshelf again, it can set off literally days of us yelling “The PRAWN of PROPHECY!!!!” at each other in random moments. And neither of us is THAT into prawns…

Thankfully I didn’t buy the book – borrowed it from a friend. It was fine for a bit of mindless entertainment, but when there are already too many GOOD books out there to read in a lifetime – why would you bother?

I must say it DIDN’T help that I had read “The Holy Blood & the Holy Grail” 10 years earlier…