Category: Music

The Damnation of Faust

La Damnation de Faust is a problem opera. The problem is that it’s not an opera.

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Finding Harmony

I went back to Chalfont St Giles on Wednesday evening. My last visit was on a hot April day in 2018. This time my journey did not go to plan.

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Rigaud and Handel

In yesterday’s post we were in the Private Chapel of St James at Great Packington and found no sculpture worth mentioning. Actually there are two recumbent plaster images succinctly dismissed by Pevsner as “rather bad”.

Calixto’s Carmen

He is well-known in opera houses across mainland Europe; his style has been likened to Quentin Tarantino or Pedro Almodovar; he is a 55 year-old Spanish opera director from Barcelona; he is Calixto Bieito.

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Poofs’ Football

When I was two, in 1956, Anthony Eden was Prime Minister, Eisenhower was President and Clement Crisp wrote his first review for the Financial Times. In those days the FT, still known as the pink ‘un – at least by my grandfather – was cautiously expanding its coverage to include the Arts and even ballet.

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The Battle of Poltava

Yesterday evening about twenty of us took a train to Poltava. Not a place I’d heard of which exposes my ignorance. I hadn’t heard of Tchaikovsky’s opera Mazeppa either; there is a connection.

We’ll Go No More A-Roving

The Jolly Beggar was first published in a collection of old Scots songs in 1776. It’s not long so let’s read it.

Robinson Crusoë – The Opera

Even Wexford has shied away from Offenbach’s operetta, Robinson Crusoë. It has rarely been performed since it premiered in Paris in 1867. In fact it ran for only thirteen performances and then slumbered like Rip Van Winkle until it was awakened (woke?) at the Camden Festival in 1973. 

La fille du régiment

Some twelve years ago I was invited to a Sunday lunch party in Marylebone and sat beside Elena Roger. Sunday was her only day off so it was flattering that she was prepared to spend it with my friends and me.

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Culture in Chisinau

I bet you are bored with Election Observation protocol, so I will reward your patience with what really happens in the field.