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.

No Darkness but Ignorance

The Statues of London is a large, heavy and expensive coffee table book. It was recommended by a reader and in spite of its drawbacks I’m pleased to own the tome.

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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Categorised as Music

An Abbey

Still in Dorset we went on a church crawl today kicking off with Milton Abbey. It is beside what is now Milton Abbey School. 

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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Categorised as Music

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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Cydalima perspectalis

Everything in the garden has been looking good. The new planter has been delivered and some English lavender planted. (Tasteful repro-Adams or cement kitsch?) In the back garden the agapanthus has put on a good show and I was metaphorically hunkered down on my horticultural haunches. Then disaster struck; cydalima perspectalis.

Films on Release

Jean-Pierre Léaud – does the name ring a bell? If you are a cineaste you will be shouting “yes, 400 chimes”. He was the boy in François Truffaut’s autobiographical 1959 film, Les Quatre Cents Coups. He went on to make four more films in the series depicting the same character, Antoine Doinel, growing up.

Carphone Warehouse

Carphone Warehouse was founded in 1989 and now has some 2,400 shops in the UK and Europe. It’s a pretty well-known brand name but it doesn’t sell car ‘phones and has shops not warehouses. There is a lesson here for, perhaps – only perhaps – well-intentioned, folk who want to screw-up a recognisable brand name… Continue reading Carphone Warehouse

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Categorised as Business

The Truth about Trump

A reader in the West Country has trumped me in the Bitters department. He sent this picture of two specimens that have eluded my collection. This reminds me that he alerted me to a lovely conspiracy theory that was doing the rounds among the in-crowd in the United States late last year.