Opera Stagings

Opera Stagings: Carmen and Midsummer Night’s Dream

Two operas with stagings set far from their originals, as once envisaged. At the Royal Opera House, Carmen, seen by the excellent cinema streaming offering, had a high, wide and steeply raked, one-side-of-a-ziggurat, set of steps. Benjamin Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, put on by the English National Opera, was fixated on beds, of the sleep-in sort (but a pun was intended..).

One succeeded; the other not really.

Safety of the People..

Safety of the People or War of All Against All

“Salus populi suprema lex esto”  (“the safety of the people should be the supreme law”) wrote Cicero in the last days of the Roman Republic, before civil wars and dictators fatally threatened the salus.

This principle has been a cornerstone of Western political theory since at least the C17.

Consciously or not...

Consciously or not..

Philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists have for many years suffered a lot of intellectual perplexity trying to fit, into one or more of their many pigeonholes, the nature of human consciousness – the experience of self awareness in our sensations, thoughts, feelings, memories, dreams.

Airport folly

Airport Folly

A fine line separates complacency and idiocy.

False Impressionism? The Tate's "Impressionists in London"

False Impressionism? The Tate’s Impressionism in London

The consensus of art critics’ reviews of this exhibition has been pretty damning. Essentially, they say, the Tate is guilty of using the catnip label of “Impressionists” to lure the public to an exhibition of mainly mediocre works by mainly mediocre French artists, among which motley crowd lurk a few works of quality by genuine Impressionists (mainly Monet and Pissarro).

Opera at the V&A and the Wallace Collection

Operas – Victoria & Albert Museum and the Wallace Collection

One week, two unique opera experiences. In the new exhibition suite at the V&A, there’s an ambitious, multi-media exhibition devoted to the history of Opera. A little way across London, near the crowds on Oxford Street, the Wallace Collection put on an evening performance Goyescas by the Spanish composer Granados. This was to accompany a small exhibition of Spanish paintings, including a couple of Goyas, on loan from the Bowes Museum in Durham.

Farewell, Tooth

Farewell, Tooth

My dentist is calm, softly spoken and sympathetic – good set of characteristics for a dentist to have. What took place on a recent visit therefore gave me quite a jolt.

I presented myself as having some persistent gum bleeding, at the site of a rear molar, that I had been unable to brush away – was there something else to be done? The dentist said, “let’s take a look”. Then, peering in, he muttered “oh dear..”.