The Malvern hills are alive with the sound of music. “ … There is music in the air, music all around us, the world is full of it and you simply take as much as you require.” So said Edward Elgar.
Last week Daniel Barenboim and his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra were back at the Proms. How on earth did the orchestra get such a silly name? The Penguin Cafe Orchestra is a silly name too.
Where to Havana? The bandstand built in 1869 for Kensington Gardens was moved to Hyde Park in 1886 and still has concerts. On Sunday Here to Havana were doing their stuff.
What does London mean to you? A place to live, a place to work, a place to visit? Noisy, polluted, overcrowded? Spacious parks, world-class museums, music, theatre, shopping and restaurants? On Tuesday evening I sought the opinion of two people who, like me, came to live in London.
I saw Ariadne auf Naxos again on Wednesday at Holland Park; a very different kettle of fish to Longborough. This time the players were allocated caravans to change in, not dissimilar to the ones given to Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren when they were making Arabesque in Wales.
I have just finished the last of the three books by Frank Gardner that I was given for my birthday: Crisis. The first two are autobiographical and this is a thriller with an unimaginative title.
Rigoletto at the Semperoper in Dresden on Sunday evening was a revival of a production first seen in 2006. It has had quite a few outings since then of which the best was surely when Dian Damrau sang Gilda and Juan Diego Flórez the Duke.