Favourite Lenses: Why I keep coming back to the Sigma 45mm

Barbican light and shadow

For my first post in over seven years, I'm taking a bit of a new direction. One of the reasons I've spent less time writing here, is that I've been spending more time working on my photography. This is a post about that, hopefully the first of many.

Probably ninety percent of the time when I go out with my camera, the lens I have fixed to it is a 50mm, or something close to it. It's one of the main reasons I use a camera most of the time and not a phone. Most phones use a wide angle lens. A 50mm, and other normal lenses, offer a much tighter field of view. You can't fit everything in, and so you have to frame more carefully. It's also said that it's close to the field of view of the human eye. That's probably why it's been such a popular choice with photographers over the years. For that reason I have quite the collection of them.

I love the Sigma 45mm lens, even among my collection of 50mm lenses it's one of my absolute favourites. The eagle eyed will notice that 45 is not 50, but it's fairly close and only a little bit wider. It's small and I always like small lenses. Always with cameras and lenses I've tended to prioritise compact size so that it doesn't get too in the way or become too heavy when carried around all day. When coupled with my Sony A7C camera, it makes for a nicely inconspicuous package.

The Sigma 45mm is part of their contemporary i series of lenses which are available for both Sony e-mount cameras and L mount cameras. It features an all metal construction, and the feel in hand of the manual controls really is something. I know it isn't, but the focus ring is well enough damped that it almost feels like it's mechanically coupled and physically moving the glass elements even though I know it isn't. This compares extremely favourably to the somewhat loose rings on many modern lenses and from a tactile perspective it almost feels like I'm using one of my vintage manual lenses. Of course, none of that directly affects image quality, but I do think there's something in whether equipment sparks joy: the more pleasure the more you use it and the better the results. It's another one of the reasons I take so few photos on my phone.

Ariodante at the Royal, or, Mijnssen At War With the Work

Note: This is a review of the matinee performance on Sunday 14th December 2025. 

After seeing this director's unpersuasive production of Parsifal at Glyndebourne last summer I wasn't optimistic about her Royal Opera debut. As this long afternoon wore on I got increasingly fed up till by Act Three of a work I treasure I just wanted it to get on and finish.

The problems with Jetske Mijnssen's production are substantial. To begin with she has decided to mess around with the plot and the text in three ways. Dalinda (usually a servant) is here turned into Princess Ginevra's sister. When I first caught on a subtitle early in Act One, and not having read the programme, a reference to the King of Scotland as Dalinda's father I thought it must be a typo but I was wrong. This is a bizarre, problematic and poorly executed decision. Bizarre because elsewhere in Act One Mijnssen seems keen to try and find a class angle to the work - but she's removed the most obvious such angle from the original - the relationship between the servant Dalinda and Count Polinesso. It's problematic because a key strand of the plot is the King's anxiety about the succession - but the security of that succession becomes much less of an issue if there are two daughters. It's poorly executed partly in consequence of the generally weak movement and through characterisation of the production as a whole, but also in small ways. The most obvious of these is despite the alteration of the subtitle text already mentioned this isn't consistently followed through and elsewhere Dalinda will keep addressing her sister as "Principessa" when clearly it ought to be "Ginevra". Mijnssen's next intervention is to make the King seriously ill (those familiar with the work will know that he is usually still alive when the curtain falls, not so here). Putting him in a wheelchair and then a hospital bed just puts additional barriers in the way of effective personnel management for no dramatic gain. The other problem is the number of times he's allowed to fall on the floor - so that one gets distracted as the show goes on wondering if it's about to happen again (this is one of a number of instances that suggest that the domestic staff, sizeable in number, ought to be fired). Mijnssen's third change to the plot is not to allow Ariodante and Ginevra to be united at the end in defiance of text and music. This is because Mijnssen like too many contemporary directors is desperate to make A Point. In this case about the emancipation of women which seems for directors these days to mean that you cannot both be an independent woman and have a happy relationship. The text doesn't require there to be an immediate marriage at the end, and there are plenty of more subtle ways in which a more talented director could convey the fragility of this relationship. Mijnssen sadly hits us ineffectively over the head with her Point. This also reflects the director's general lack of confidence in the audience - there are a whole series of obvious bits of direction that suggest that she thinks the audience can't read the subtitles or are too unintelligent to follow the drama - the one that immediately comes to mind is the King cradling a sheet like his daughter for fear we will not otherwise understand that's who he's singing about.

Hamlet at the National, or, But He Hasn't Fired!

 Act 3 Scene 4 is a fairly crucial moment in this play. For any readers who may need their memory refreshing this is the scene where Hamlet kills Polonius in the presence of his mother Gertrude. Or, rather, this is the scene in which, as a general rule, Hamlet kills Polonius. Not so in Robert Hastie's confused new production for the National. In this version Hamlet makes a gun-like imitation with one hand, from behind him three shots are fired, and Polonius stumbles out and fairly rapidly dies. I was so baffled by this that I began to doubt whether I'd seen what I thought I'd seen and had to double check with an usher on my way out. The only explanation that I could come up with is that we are supposed to believe that the ghost of the king is behind the curtain from which the shots come, and that his supernatural powers are somehow sufficient to allow him to manifest as a result of his son's presence and fire real bullets. But it took me some thinking afterwards to achieve this rationalisation - in the moment in this production it is simply incomprehensible. And it causes huge problems for the rest of the show. Because it seems clear to me that a key driver of Ophelia's madness is not simply the death of her father but the fact that the man she's in love with has killed him. Similarly Laertes's animus against Hamlet is driven by the fact that Hamlet has killed his father. But we in the audience can see perfectly well that this isn't what has happened. More to the point it should be equally apparent to Gertrude who is watching at the time. It makes it really very difficult to take seriously either Ophelia or Laertes's motivations in the remainder of the second half, which significantly undermines the drama.

Nor, sadly, is this Hastie's only misstep. He sets the play in a single grand hall space (designed by Ben Stones) - walls and the floor are occasionally moved - but this does little to create effectively distinctive environments. We seem vaguely in modern day Denmark, judging by the painted flag, the guns and Claudius's water bottle but this undermines chunks of the text - particularly the apparent ability of Polonius to order his daughter around the way he does (there are other issues with the direction of Ophelia that we'll come on to). Hastie seems to have very little idea what he wants to do with the play - he keeps in a lot of stuff that other versions I've seen have cut - and this is not to the benefit of Shakespeare exposing the fact that the drama often drags. Hastie's readings such as they are lack consistency - he seems to change his mind about whether there has really been a ghost, and whether Hamlet is mad or feigning which get increasingly badly in the way of dramatically convincing characterisations. There's very few moments when the director manages to bring an element out afresh - it's telling that the two which stuck in my mind a few hours afterwards - an exchange between Hamlet and Rosencrantz (I think), and Horatio's care for Hamlet - are both minor relationships.

Staggered Booking at the Edinburgh International Festival Redux, or, You Cannot Be Serious

 On the 3rd November I received an e-mail sent to all the various levels of Edinburgh International Festival Members. At this time of year I don't tend to pay too much attention to these - they're usually just announcing events in Edinburgh that I won't be able to attend, or reminding me about things that happened at the previous Festival. Not so this one. To my surprise and almost immediately my very considerable annoyance this one informed me that: "We're excited to announce that a selection of performances for the 2026 Festival will go on sale next month to members of the public." This reverses the Festival's normal practice of opening booking for the complete programme at the same time by membership tier, a practice that applies across every other comparable Festival I regularly attend (and indeed to handling of booking for regular orchestral and opera seasons across the UK). 

The Festival has been here before, such that I still almost cannot believe I've had to write this post. Back in 2014 then Festival Director Fergus Linehan proposed to announce the concerts/recitals programme and open booking for it in advance of the rest of the programme. We, and we suspect many other regulars, made strong representations against this proposal and the Festival reversed course. At the time we had thought that was the end of the matter. In the following year, 2015, it became clear this was not so. The Festival tried a variant on the idea, this time opening booking for 2016's flagship opera (Bellini's Norma) in advance of all the rest of the programme. We wrote at length about why this was in many ways an even more problematic decision than either the concerts/recital idea or the staggered booking, also for the 2015 Festival, for Antigone (staged play). Again we suspect we were not alone in our views because after the Norma episode staggered booking was abandoned.

EIF 2025 - Orpheus and Eurydice, or, Spectacle over Emotional Depth?

 As on other occasions, I'll start with some caveats. This is one of those works I've never really got on with. I've seen it staged at least twice, an unsuccessful version heavy on dance during the McMaster era, and a production at the Royal Opera with John Eliot Gardiner's forces bought in. I have an idea that the EIF has done it in concert since then, though I can't recall if I attended. So I wasn't terribly enthused when this year's programme was announced and this was the main staged opera. However, it is certainly worth seeing. The individual elements - music, dance, circus aerials are all superbly done. I was less convinced that they cohered into a completely successful whole (though the performance earned a partial standing ovation from others).

The conceit of Yaron Lifschitz's production is that Orpheus (Iestyn Davies) has been confined to an asylum following Eurydice's (Samantha Clarke) death. It is never entirely clear whether any of the drama that follows is taking place anywhere outside Orpheus's mind. The final scene strongly suggests that Orpheus has never left the asylum but I felt to really hit home this needed to be more clearly established through the rest of the drama. I do think the interpretation is a valid, and potentially enormously powerful one. I also think it's a powerful idea to subvert the apparently happy ending and it seems to me the text is ambiguous enough to sustain such subversion. But because of broader production issues it didn't hit me emotionally to the extent that it had the potential to do.

Parsifal at Glyndebourne, or, Blazing Music Fights Increasingly Incoherent Production

Note: This is a review of the performance on Sunday 25th May 2025.

Let us start with the positives of this new Glyndebourne Wagner. Musically it is performed to a very high standard. At the centre is a warm, dramatic, deeply felt Gurnemanz from John Relyea. The measure of his achievement can be found in Act Three when he continues to radiate conviction, and really moved me in his moment of recognition of the returned Parsifal, despite the directorial incoherence going on around him (not least it being visually completely clear to all from the moment he comes in who Parsifal is). Next in vocal honours I would place Ryan Speedo Green's Klingsor who again by sheer energy and vocal force managed to temporarily distract me from the mistaken staging choices of Act 2 - more exposed during the longer scenes that followed. He too fully commits himself to director Jetske Mijnssen's Act Three "vision". In the title role I was hugely impressed by Daniel Johansson, particularly in Act Two where his cry of "Amfortas, die Wunde!" and the scene that follows was delivered with that heroic, anguished ring that Wagner asks for from his heroic tenors and too rarely receives. I was reminded of Andreas Schager's unforgettable Siegfried in the Barenboim Proms Gotterdammerung. Kristina Stanek (Kundry) has a voice to pin you back in your seat, as with others copes brilliantly with directorial demands, but her major Act 2 scene suffers particularly in terms of creating emotional and dramatic impact from those demands. Auden Iverson's Amfortas is strongly and movingly sung. Lastly we have John Tomlinson's Titurel, for which he predictably received some of the loudest applause at the curtain. Mijnssen's additions are most thought through and effective with respect to Titurel and Tomlinson executes these mostly effectively and at times movingly, though there is a tendency to overdo things. The voice divided opinion in my party. For me, force of presence largely persuaded me to overlook vocal shortcomings. The supporting roles of knights, flower maidens and a senior knight who doesn't seem to get a clear credit in the programme all made fine contributions.

In the pit Robin Ticciati shaped a convincing account, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra played superbly. There were many places where the musical forces combined to deliver real emotional punch (& even in Act One some places where that was also in harmony with the staging). I would note two shortcomings. The first is not Ticciati's fault but there were places where he was inclined to my ear to take a slower tempo, for example in processional sequences and initial sections of the Act Two Kundry-Parsifal scene, and this combined with Mijnssen's failure to build drama in the staging led to a sense that musically we needed to get moving more. Second, the placing of the offstage voices was unsatisfactory from my seat in the front left Stalls. Indeed at one point it almost sounded as if those voices were being piped in, though I'm sure that was not the case. I found myself recalling longingly the superb effect achieved in this venue's Madame Butterfly a few years ago when the chorus were positioned around the back of the Stalls for the Humming Chorus. There is nothing comparable here and I did wonder if Ticciati had taken the necessary care to send people out around the auditorium to check the sound and the balance - we missed the expertise that a conductor such as Donald Runnicles brings to such matters.

Die Walkure at the Royal, or, Simple is Best

Note: This is a review of the performance on Sunday 4th May 2025, drafted soon afterwards but delayed in posting.

 After the opening instalment of the new Barrie Kosky Covent Garden Ring last season my views were mixed. This is a much stronger addition which, if only the director could be persuaded to some judicious re-staging and trimming for the full cycle could be really outstanding.

The environment retains the rather spare look of the Rheingold but we do, thank goodness, get an impressive amount of real fire for the closing moments. That third act, once we're down to just the principals and Valkyries is the strongest piece of directing I've seen from Kosky - one which focuses in on the characters and their emotions. He thus ensures that the sister/father-daughter relationships really hit home. In particular, as the Wotan-Brunnhilde scene unfolds Kosky gets that electricity from touch or the lack of it which I've argued for years is one of the most powerful tools directors have.

Richard II at the Bridge, or Making the Text Live

 The last time I saw this play it was an RSC production at the Barbican featuring a mesmerising performance from David Tennant in the title role. The time before that was as part of the equally unforgettable RSC History Cycle at the Roundhouse. This new production from Nicholas Hytner at the Bridge was therefore up against stiff competition.

The first test of any Shakespeare production, and quite a few recent ones I've seen have not passed it, is whether the text is well delivered such that it ceases to be a barrier. While not completely flawless I'm pleased to say that the standard from this ensemble is very high. The money speeches are all there (Gaunt's "this sceptered isle", Richard's various monologues etc.), but there's also much fine work from those in the smaller roles. Hytner also effectively finds humour, though I sometimes found the tendency of the audience to laugh in moments of tension a bit baffling.

London Tide at the National, or, Missing the Original's Points

Note: This is a review of the matinee on Saturday 27th April 2024.

 The omens for this show were mixed. On the one hand adaptor and would be lyricist Ben Power was behind the superb Lehman Trilogy, on the other hand I'd only encountered PJ Harvey's music once at an Edinburgh International Festival performance and the experience made me pretty doubtful as to whether she was suited to theatre. I also need to note that the show was up against tough competition - I consider the 1998 BBC TV version of this, my favourite Dickens novel, as a masterpiece of adaptation. Following an indifferent first half I found myself post interval increasingly infuriated.

The show clocks in at around three hours. That BBC adaptation was 4x90 minutes so some cutting of Dickens's substantial text is clearly unavoidable. But Power makes bizarre, and in the second half maddening, decisions (spoilers follow). The most serious of these is to decide that this is really a story about a certain kind of female empowerment. Yes two of the principal characters are women (Lizzie Hexham and Bella Wilfer) and yes there is social commentary in their stories but it is also the case that their love stories are central and, if you want to emphasise the social point, that of class rather than female emancipation from men is much more central to the Dickens original and would enable a much truer adaptation. In order to achieve his lecture about women's potential in the person of an independent Lizzie at the conclusion Power has to significantly mess around with the original. This is not simply by the refusal to allow Lizzie to marry a reformed Wrayburn but to make a joke of Headstone's violent attack on Wrayburn, and to substantially diminish Wrayburn's moral journey. Power similarly diminishes Bella's story. Dickens's novel is full of issues of class and wealth but this version makes almost nothing of this. 

Macbeth at the Donmar, or, "Have you really paid £65 to see a radio play?"

Note: This is a review of the matinee on Saturday 13th January 2024.

When it was announced that audience members would have to wear headphones for the duration of this show I strongly considered not booking. The only thing that changed my mind, apart from my completionist tendencies, was the presence in the cast of David Tennant. He gives a fine performance. Indeed, the acting and verse speaking is strong across the company. Unfortunately this is not enough to transcend the fundamentally flawed concept, and dull staging.

That central concept is the aforementioned requirement that we all wear headphones so that a soundscape can be overlaid on the actors speech. Some evidently find this makes for a more intimate theatrical experience. I found the opposite. Although the audio does have dynamic range it isn't the same as the spoken dynamic range that a small space like the Donmar conjures without artificial aid. The effect is especially jarring when the accompanying soundscape is minimal and you just have performers talking, and even more so if you're a Donmar regular as I am, looking down at an ensemble you would usually be listening to without effort and feeling, because of the headphones that while they are physically right in front of you, their voices feel both overly close and oddly removed. I would also say that overall I found the audio sound too loud, though I gradually got used to it as the afternoon wore on (there did not appear to be any mechanism to adjust it). It fundamentally feels to me a waste to inflict this barrier on Shakespearean verse speaking of the calibre an actor like Tennant posssesses.

Das Rheingold at the Royal, or, An Analytical Experience

 It was interesting to see this production so close to Barrie Kosky's Dialogues at Glyndebourne earlier in the summer. There as here the production can be defended on a textual basis (and there are some striking close readings) but the overall argument for me came at a cost of emotional engagement and dramatic tension. 

Kosky's central thesis appears to be that the Earth (Erda) is being exploited and ruined by everybody else on stage. He thus makes the character of Erda much more present than would usually be the case. Almost the first image we see (before a note has been played) is a practically naked Erda walking very slowly across the stage. The most effective deployment occurs in Scene 3 when she, or more precisely her breasts, are hooked up to Alberich's mining machinery. Elsewhere I wasn't convinced having her hovering around in scenes, so far as I could judge from the Amphi largely ignored by everybody else, added a great deal. And I think it comes at a cost - sometimes this is just distracting (some of the wandering about as with other aspects of the movement), but it also for me reduced the impact of Erda's intervention in the final scene. I'm sure the intention is to heighten not diminish our concern for her, but I'm afraid for me it had rather the opposite effect.

Dialogues des Carmelites at Glyndebourne, or, A Minority Opinion

 Note: This is a review of the performance on Saturday 29th July 2023.

I feel obliged to preface what follows with a few caveats. First, I am very much in a minority in not being overwhelmed by this production (though my partner was in agreement) both as regards the critics and the rest of the audience at the performance I attended if the applause for Barrie Kosky's appearance was any guide. Second, I've seen a few Kosky productions over the years (usually in Edinburgh) and I can't think of a single one that really blew me away compared to his unstaged concerts of Yiddish opera and Weill. Third, I was very tired. Nevertheless I have to come back to this - the previous occasion I saw this opera live, the Royal Opera House/Robert Carsen production (reviewed here) - I found it overwhelmingly powerful. This performance, for me, did not achieve a similar punch.

My first issue was designer Katrin Lea Tag's set. It's a roughly triangular room, the white walls oddly stippled, and with a single narrow entrance/exit at the rear. This has to serve as the Marquis's house, all of the various rooms in the convent, and the execution space at the conclusion. I never really felt I had a concrete sense of where we were supposed to be, despite the period costumes of the opening scene. Having, for about two thirds of the show, only the single point of access at the back coupled with the closed in nature of the rest of the set should create the claustrophobic atmosphere the work needs, but I can only say I found it much less effective in this regard than the Carsen production where so much of that effect was achieved by the bodies of the mob - with a consequent much greater sense of their threat. That one point of access also makes set changes, despite the minimal amount of set, cumbersome to achieve (though I think a factor here may also be Kosky's determination to slow down the action which we'll come back to). After the interval (spoilers) one of the walls is breached. Others in my party found this an enormously effective coup de theatre but again I found the mob here, despite the spitting and physical violence, less threatening than I recall it in the Carsen production. There are also smaller annoyances, the (presumably) blood trickling down the wall in the first half I thought excessive, the production of the flowers from under one of the walls cumbersome.