I've just spent a considerable time trying to establish exactly what opera with which singers really did open Oscar Hammerstein I's Manhattan Opera House: one source claims that it was "Norma" (hard to picture Christine Daaé rehearsing the role of Norma) but in fact it seems to have been another Bellini opera, "I Puritani", with the obscure Polish ( Read more... )

I finally got round to listening to some of the relevant bits of the Australian Version of "Love Never Dies" to check out the details of my Hammerstein-plot (still unnamed), and discovered to my annoyance that there are casually mentioned background details in the arrival dialogue that blow holes in my intended plot! It's supposed to be two whole ( Read more... )

Just as I thought I'd reached the bottom of my queue (and might even consider approaching the Double Agents de Chagny) I seem to have been afflicted with another "Love Never Dies" fanfiction idea! So much for my chances of asserting that I had finished with that show, having already rewritten most scenes in it at least once and some more often ( Read more... )

This has of course been done to death already... but here’s my own ‘repurposing’ of the finale to ‘Love Never Dies’, inspired by some discussion of the latest (Hamburg) production.

This is not a version of the characters I particularly endorse - but it’s one I can see Andrew Lloyd Webber accepting, at a pinch!

(And I still don't care for the ( Read more... )

After some intensive work today (I took it with me on a couple of walks), "Meg Shoots the Phantom" is finished! Not bad going for only a couple of writing sessions -- though the whole manuscript is only about 1500 words by my reckoning :-D ( Read more... )

(testing blog image hosting)

Happy, healthy young apple seedlings... and the ink-bottle for my fountain-pens!

( Read more... )

I don't believe this.
After discussing the finale of "Love Never Dies" (subsequent to the LND Hamburg review) I might actually end up having to write that Meg-shoots-Phantom scene... despite the fact that it's unoriginal fix-fic of the most blatant kind, that it can only plausibly be done ALW-style by milking the audience for a degree of sympathy ( Read more... )

Various relevant excerpts from the Hamburg review -- so that I don't have to slog through translating it again -- with a disclaimer that my Russian is extremely rusty, there are chunks omitted, and there may be misunderstandings ( Read more... )

I've just spent most of the evening applying my twenty years' rusty Russian to an online article about the Hamburg staging of "Love Never Dies", having been tempted into it from Tumblr on glimpsing the tantalising statement "мне показалось, что она не любит Призрака" (I get the impression that Christine doesn't love the PhantomIt's wonderful what a ( Read more... )

Apparently my sympathy for the devil instincts are still alive and kicking, since my immediate reaction to finally watching "Frozen" was "Prince Hans simply doesn't make sense" :-p ( spoilers )