Journalist, photographer and social commentator.
Seen in Bayreuth August 2016 While listening to the melodramatic and wave tossed overture of The Flying Dutchman, I realise that this could be the perfect introduction to Wagner for a young person. The main character and his crew are […]
PRELUDE I have a confession to make: I don’t quite get Parsifal. It is not the music that is the problem. Some of it is exceptionally easy on the ear. But the message remains mysterious and the metaphors can be […]
All Wagner pilgrimages eventually must lead to Bayreuth. And If you only see one opera there, let it be Parsifal. After all , Parsifal is the only work that Wagner actually composed specifically with his Festspielhaus in mind. This was […]
Moritzburg Chamber Festival, Germany 6-21 August The other night the Moritzburg Festival kicked off at the Gläserne Manufaktur, Volkswagen’s transparent factory on the outskirts of Dresden. Unfortunately I can’t attend this year, but I don’t mind doing a puff piece […]
Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner, 1 August 2016, Bayreuth The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was fascinated by Tristan und Isolde and he wrote that for stress release he preferred Wagner’s opera to hashish. This drama in three acts certainly has […]
PROM 18, 29 July 2016, MAHLER 3 with LSO conducted by Bernard Haitink Bernard Haitink’s appearances at the Proms are one step ahead of his age. At 87 the Dutchman has just conducted his 88th performance at the BBC Proms. […]
Review of the Verbier Festival will appear here soon
Boris Godunov M. Mussorgsky Saturday 16 July 2016 Prom 2 Have concert performances of operas become better and more popular over the last decade or have I just learned to appreciate them? The original 1869 version of Mussorgsky’s Boris […]
Georgia O’Keeffe retrospective at Tate Modern (until 30 October 2016) Georgia O’Keeffe’s painting Jimson Weed/White Flower No.1 is still the most expensive work of art by a woman artist sold at auction. It fetched $44.4 million at Sotheby’s in 2014 […]
Year on year you struggle to purchase the tickets to the Chelsea Flower Show. Right? When you’ve finally made it to that most prestigious floral show in the English social calendar, you wish you could crane your neck like a […]
Debussys’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande is based on Maurice Maeterlinck’s symbolist play. Let me first establish that symbolist in this context equals mysterious. Most prominent symbols: water and (female) hair. The character of Mélisande remains a mystery throughout and the music […]
Sir Simon Rattle is the London Symphony Orchestra’s Music Director Designate after Valery Gergiev last autumn took his leave of London’s oldest symphony orchestra. I can’t pass a fair judgement on the Russian’s performance, as I was not based in […]