I haven't posted for nearly a year here!

For those that don't know, I had a major health scare in January, what's called an aortic dissection, meaning the lining coming away in the aorta. I had a fairly major operation, which caused a stroke. I was in hospital for nearly three weeks. Still have an impressive scar on my chest. Since then I've ( Read more... )

 I'm supposed to be going to the opera tonight but I've checked the rail enquires website and all the trains to London seem to be running at least half an hour late if not cancelled.  And now it's snowing again ( Read more... )

So I book a ticket to see an opera at the Hackney Empire next week, and next thing I know, there's been an electrical explosion outside the town hall, which is next door to the theatre.  But I see that it was a good 90 minutes before I made my booking, so it can't have been something I've done.

Overheard in the interval at English National Opera and as reported on Cix.  The opera was Julian Anderson's The Thebans based on the plays by Sophocles and the first act is Oedipus Rex.  "No, that was his wife that died, not his mother."

A strange man who travels in time and space.

Yes, I'm listening to Janacek's opera The Excursions of Mr Broucek.  In the first act, the drunken Broucek travels to the moon.  In the second, he goes back to the time of the Hussites.

My family had a large collection of old 78 rpm records, mostly of old popular songs from the thirties and forties - I knew the song Ali Baba's Camel long before the Bonzos recorded it - but one of them, which I knew only as The Jewels of the Madonna, was classical music, although I probably wouldn't have made that distinction at the time.  If it ( Read more... )

I was the first one in my row back in my seat during the interval at the Royal Opera House tonight and a few minutes after I sat down, I had to stand up to let a young woman get to her seat.  As I stood up, she said, "Thank you, young man ( Read more... )

Just received a confusing e-mail from Amazon puffing a new release called Verdi: The Complete Works.  Curiously, it says I received it because I bought Stravinsky's complete recordings, not two composers often listed together ( Read more... )

Alberich has renounced love and stolen the gold from the Rhinemaidens and forged the Ring.  Wotan has tricked him out of it and given the gold to the giants to pay for Valhalla and Erda has persuaded Wotan to give the giants the Ring too, now cursed by Alberich.  Then Donner waves his hammer to clear the mists circling Valhalla, the thunder cracks ( Read more... )

Which I think means, "Wednesday on a Thursday (with Helicopters and Camels).

( Read more... )