Category: Music

The Lanchester Tradition

I wrote briefly about the Stradivari Trust on 23rd August last year at the end of a post called Stephen’s Day and it’s time for an update.

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Down Your Way

I am going to play you something by Yorkshire-born composer, Haydn Wood. If you are my age it may sound familiar.

Remembrance Sunday

This is the interior of Les Invalides chapel in Paris. Funny to call it a chapel when it is such a monumental edifice. Louis XIV started building Les Invalides in 1670 as a retirement home and hospital for his old soldiers.

A Soldiers’ Song

The first time I came to Wexford was in 2005, the last season in the Theatre Royal before the new opera house was built. The Theatre Royal had been a cinema. It had a narrow auditorium with a balcony reached by a narrow staircase.

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Wexford Opera

Wexford weather can be a bit chancy but this weekend the sky is blue and the Irish Sea sparkling.  John Barry stands, sword in hand, looking out to sea, not the composer of music for James Bond films, but Wexford born John Barry who was a founder of the United States navy. Behind him the… Continue reading Wexford Opera

Don’t Sleep in the Subway

Oil is not above $75, the Labour party has not split and Don Cossack did not win The King George VI Chase at Kempton Park – all predictions made here – but I was right about something.

Wild Cat

Maybe it’s because opera tickets are often expensive but there is a tendency to play safe and book old favourites. The mantra “there’s always a good reason for it being rarely performed” is often recited. However, Wexford only perform rarities and Valencia are putting on something by Manuel Penella – que?.

Fortress Fulham

I have noticed in the last few years a proliferation of wooden louvre shutters in Fulham, replacing the good-old net curtain.

Cricket and Opera

  Camille Pissarro painted this picture of a cricket match in Bedford Park in 1897. He came to live in England in 1870 and the reason surprised me.

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Categorised as Art, Music