At a huge risk to my hard-earned theatre-going credibility (having been to both the Almeida and the Hampstead in the past month), I went and saw - wait for it - The Phantom of the Opera last night as a Christmas present to my other half who'd never seen it.

Now, it's extremely easy to make fun of Andrew Lloyd Webber (and indeed some of the songs were the melodic equivalent of waterboarding), but I kept being reminded of something else:  that very brief scene in Amadeus when we get our single glance of an opera by Salieri.  In comparison to Mozart (whose music is angelic clarity itself), Salieri's opera is fusty, over-crowded, and furiously ornate to fruitlessly try and disguise its own mediocrity.  I draw no direct comparison twixt Webber and Salieri, but watch the scene in Amadeus and then watch the "Maskerade" sequence in Phantom.  See?

Finished reading the 947-page Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra.  Worth the journey.  Indian gangsters, nuclear bombs, and terrific character writing.  Next up, a reread of Michael Chabon's debut The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, first read by me twenty years ago as a goggle-eyed teen.  Interesting to see how it reads now.