Category: Music

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.

Every Object Tells a Story

I have been to two artists’ studios this week. Sir John Lavery lived at 5 Cromwell Place from 1899 – 1940. To remind, he was born in Belfast and died in Co Kilkenny in 1941, aged eighty-four. In between he was painting in London.

A Hit, a Very Palpable Hit

Last year the first day at Queen’s was a wash-out (Anyone for Tennis?). It’s a different story this year with weather so warm that I dispensed with a tie and even considered shedding my coat.

Casanova

I am usually at home but one year I was in Warsaw, another I was on an aeroplane, so Robert had to do it for me, once I was in France and one year I forgot.

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