Henrietta Bredin has put together a series of events to celebrate the Royal Opera House’s Ring cycle It is with considerable trepidation that I venture to write about Richard Wagner in these pages, considering that in doing so I am following a trail well blazed by Bernard Levin — a passionate and lushly articulate devotee
David Belasco was a pioneer in the field of stage lighting, passionate about creating realistic effects, the most famous of which occurred in his one-act play Madame Butterfly, during which the action slowed to an almost total halt for a 14-minute, lovingly rendered dawn sequence. Puccini saw the play in London in 1900 and rushed
A belated response to Mary Wakefield’s rather alarming diatribe of May 3 (unfairly aided and abetted by the genius lyrics of Randy Newman) against short people. There are not only great numbers of wonderful, charming and hugely talented short people around – Kylie Minogue, Simon Rattle, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Dawn French – and sadly not around
What is it like for an actor, after the stimulating exploratory process of rehearsal, followed by the high-voltage excitement of opening night, to go on performing the same piece over and over again, night after night? A long run of a show makes it a banker for its producers and is therefore in many ways
Joanna Lumley bears a distinct resemblance to the delectable Mrs Algernon Stitch in Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop, who, while still in bed of a morning, supervises the painting of a mural, fills in the crossword, offers useful advice on matters of state, attends to pressing correspondence, corrects a child’s construing of Horace and deals with a
The great lyric poets of the English language wrote — and, I hope, are still writing — words which have their own melodic quality, cadences which lure composers to add music to them. Shakespeare, Herrick, Blake, Tennyson, Burns, Yeats have been set to music by numerous composers, creating a lasting heritage of English song. A
The phrase ‘English song’ is often met with suspicion, bringing with it a whiff of the morris dance, the come, follow follow and the hey nonny no — and the work of Roger Quilter, composing in the first half of the 20th century, is no exception to this reaction. However, for those with ears to
Puccini’s Bohemians really knew how to have a good time at Christmas. Huddled in a freezing cold Parisian garret, Rodolfo is reduced to burning his own play for warmth and has just consigned the final act to the flames when Schaunard bursts in and flings on to the table a shower of coins he has
The titles of Jonathan Dove’s musical works — Flight, Tobias and the Angel, Palace in the Sky, The Little Green Swallow, Man on the Moon — might lead one to consider his winged surname a highly appropriate one. However, while the composer undoubtedly possesses a soaring imagination, it is allied to a refreshingly pragmatic, earthbound
There are many who might consider it an absolute crime that someone who would look so entirely delectable in a dirndl is instead about to hit the stage of the London Palladium draped from head to toe in a habit and wimple. Lesley Garrett, however, is so thrilled that she can barely contain herself. Other
This year is Opera Holland Park’s tenth anniversary season, and to my great shame I have never attended a performance, despite having had the best intentions of doing so for roughly the past ten years. If I don’t turn up this summer, I get the feeling I’ll be in serious trouble with the two men
I must admit that the first arts event in which I participated on arriving in Australia was entirely by chance. Sitting in the sun on the restaurant terrace of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, looking at the ferries bustling in and out of Circular Quay, I picked up a small printed notice that
Why would anyone want to write an opera libretto? The words are generally held to be at the service of the music, relegated therefore to second place, so what would make any self-respecting writer choose to offer up their skills to the peremptory demands of a composer? The reason is probably quite simply because it’s