Category: Music

Making Music

I invited a great-niece and a god-daughter to a Prom this week. In hunting terminology this is called running a bitch pack and is a compliment. Tom Isaacs, a famous huntsman at the end of the 19th century, said that “his bitch pack were the ones for killing foxes” but forrard, forrard (another hunting term).

Manchester and London

This post is about money, not music. Friends tell me they pay to have their money managed. Some realise they need to choose funds but don’t trust themselves to pick them – there are so many.

Another Opera

La Bohème was first performed at the Teatro la Fenice in Venice in May 1897. It got good notices but was not performed here until May 1970. Now it is rarely performed. This is true but I am trying to trick you. Let’s start again.

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An Opera

Aptly it is piddling with rain in the Piddle valley, where I am staying. On Tuesday evening I was taken to Rossini’s Le comte Ory.

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Fidelio

Fidelio at the Proms last Friday was thoroughly satisfactory. I had last seen it at the Proms in 2009 with Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and a good cast.

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St Mary Harefield, Part I

Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park are crammed with dogs. Why are there no dogs in the Green Park, that has a dog fountain, or St James’s Park? This is one of life’s unsolved mysteries. Another is why a gem like St Mary, Harefield is “undiscovered”.

West Horsley Revisited

One Sunday in October last year I went to look around the house and grounds at West Horsley (So you want to put on an Opera?). It is a Tudor house that the Gascoignes inherited and where Wasfi Kani OBE, of Grange Park Opera, was building an opera house. I went back on Saturday afternoon… Continue reading West Horsley Revisited

ACE Opera but not in Fulham

Arts Council England (ACE) doled out the dosh on Tuesday. There’s plenty of it – about £400 million each year. Poor folk, who should know better, chip in £71 million by fecklessly buying lottery tickets.

Orlando

The sermon last Sunday at The Royal Hospital was about baptism. The Chaplain (I prefer padre) recounted that he had been to where John the Baptist baptised Christ in the Jordan.