Does anyone else want to codslap Jamie Hewlett for this?

Hewlett and Damon Albarn have been engaged on a project 'Monkey: Journey to the West':
The first salvo was the opera, Monkey: Journey to the West, a visually extravagant affair designed and animated by Hewlett ('what you see is me, what you hear is Damon'). It premiered in Manchester last ( Read more... )

During our phone conversation this evening, my father asked me if I knew anything about some music he heard recently on the radio.

He thinks it was from the Coronation of Poppea - about which all I know is that it is by Monteverdi and an important early opera.

The particular excerpt he heard involved a woman, a counter-tenor, and another male voice ( Read more... )

Review of Bacchus, a restaurant recently opened in Hackney, which contains the following, deserving, I think, of this week's Oscar Wilde memorial award:
The idea of transforming a nice old Victorian pub in a resolutely poor part of Hackney into a temple of molecular gastronomy is so eccentric, it warms the heart. But then so does the story of the ( Read more... )

On NYE, watched the Powell/Pressburger film (as I gave partner the box set for Christmas I anticipate watching a lot of these in the near future), The Tales of Hoffmann, rather loosely based on the Offenbach opera.

It struck me that there was a certain slashiness about it: not only is Hoffmann constantly accompanied by his sidekick Nicklaus (a ( Read more... )