It’s rare for my wife and me to feel that we are among the younger members of the audience, but this happened at the Oxford Lieder Festival 2015, “Singing Words: Poets and their Songs.” The occasion was a concert of songs by Schumann, Mahler and Mendelssohn at the Holywell Music Room in Oxford. As this tiny, elegant hall is the oldest dedicated music venue in Europe, I suppose it was … [Read more...]
And Tipu’s Tent Too — the stuff of India
What would your house look like if Indian textiles had never been exported? Mine would be bereft of cushions, chair covers, hand towels, tablecloths and napkins, wall hangings, garden parasols, carpets and the riot of colour they create. There would be no pashminas hanging in the hallway, chintz curtains or gorgeous throws made from old saris, and no pile of large, vividly coloured handkerchiefs … [Read more...]
Shostakovich and S & M in the Provinces: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
Stalin walked out of a performance of Shostakovich\s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, saying the music was a muddle. This shows only that he was a tyrant with a tin ear. Shostakovich’s masterpiece is ravishing and compelling. In the week when the English National Opera announced that it is going to try to better its fortunes by giving more than 40 performances of Lord Lloyd Webber’s … [Read more...]
23,226 days 11 hours, 23 minutes and counting: Long Live the Queen!
Although American-born, I’ve been a loyal subject of Her Majesty the Queen for about thirty years; but I’ve resided most of my adult life in her kingdom and definitely want to celebrate her breaking Queen Victoria’s record by reigning over us longer than her great-great-granny’s 23,226 days. As a 12-year-old I watched her coronation on the first colour TV set in Lexington, KY, and have … [Read more...]
Raphael’s no Angel, but it’s not because he’s Jewish
Frederic Raphael intrigues me. Though I don’t think I’ve read any of his nearly 20 works of fiction, I relished his TV series The Glittering Prizes, as well as his Oscar-winning screenplay for Darling and his Far from the Madding Crowd. His occasional journalism, replete with Latin tags and sometimes entire, un-translated passages in French, Italian or Spanish, is always rewarding. Of … [Read more...]
Mendelssohn: it’s the sound of Shakespeare
There’s a bit of critical dissension about Garsington Opera’s collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company on A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Getty estate at Wormsley (and going on to Stratford-upon-Avon and the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London). I found it completely enchanting (though my wife did not). The first of several joint ventures for the Garsington company – next year they’re doing … [Read more...]
It’s not ethical to review works by friends, so I’ll simply praise some
It is obviously just as wrong to review books (or performances or exhibitions) by your friends, as it is to publish criticism of works by your enemies. Sometimes there are exceptions. I did not know, when I was commissioned by the Spectator to review The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, that more than a third of the contributors were recruited from a group that I chaired (until I … [Read more...]
Picnics, Plato and Pleats: Death in Venice at Wormsley
Garsington Opera at Wormsley has achieved some sort of artistic milestone with a near-perfect new production of Benjamin Britten’s Death in Venice. Based on the richly autobiographical novella by Thomas Mann, converted into a spare libretto by Myfanwy Piper (whose painter husband, John Piper did the original 1973 sets), the opera is a curiosity, with only one major singing role – but … [Read more...]
Too Much Greek Love?
In three hours and forty minutes precisely, Robert Icke’s new version of Aeschylus’ three tragedies that constitute the Oresteia, unfolds on the stage of the Almeida Theatre in North London. The “precisely” is important, because Icke has also directed the highly compressed production, and he plays on our own sense of time and urgency. Digital clocks tell the time – to the minute – of the deaths of … [Read more...]
Bayreuth in Your Own Backyard
Longborough Festival Opera is Bayreuth in the Cotswolds, our almost-local 500 seat auditorium, converted from a giant chicken shed, with the seats bought second-hand from Covent Garden. Its founders, Martin and Lizzie Graham, built this mini-Bayreuth in their own backyard with the inspired-lunatic idea of staging Wagner’s operas in the correct grand style, but on an intimate scale. They built a … [Read more...]