Category: Music

Bright Young Things

I’m not an expert on anything; sometimes I know a bit or can express myself lucidly. I deployed this as an oil futures broker. Yesterday a friend asked me how she should address formally (on the envelope) the divorced wife of a younger son of a marquess who has subsequently remarried.

Kirill Karabits

Kirill Karabits; now that’s a name to roll round your tongue; born in Kiev on St Stephen’s Day, 1976.

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Categorised as Music

An Old Hand

How long should one work? How long is a piece of string? Some people (including me) slip gratefully into early retirement, others like their jobs so much they never want to retire.

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Categorised as Music

Manon Lescaut

Opera Holland Park opened their season with Puccini’s Manon. OHP has come a long way in the last 25 years.

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Categorised as Music

A Racehorse for Christmas

I like Peter Starstedt’s 1969 hit Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)? Here is one verse. Your name is heard in high places You know the Aga Khan He sent you a racehorse for Christmas And you keep it just for fun, for a laugh, ha-ha-ha.

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Categorised as Music, Sport

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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Categorised as Music

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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Categorised as Music

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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Categorised as Music

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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Categorised as Music