Tag Archives: Puccini

The Assumption in Milan

I have been fortunate to be in Milan for some major festivals of the Church year, and this year we were there on the feast of the Assumption. I went to Vespers, which included a procession around the building for … Continue reading

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Why I’m like Lohengrin

There was a mildly embarrassing moment at the beginning of our opera gala concert last weekend: as usual, we were all lined up in rows to process on and the names of those on the end of each row (including … Continue reading

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two free tickets to Tosca

I won a couple of tickets to Welsh National Opera’s Tosca via a competition on Twitter! This allowed us to go to a performance in Cardiff, with front-row seats in the circle and champagne and nibbles also available courtesy of … Continue reading

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a Bohème that will run and run

We went to see Welsh National Opera’s La bohème in Bristol, the first time I’d had this standard operatic experience. The production was new this year, and I predict that it will be returning more than once, as it suits … Continue reading

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a return to Puccini

The first opera I ever saw was Tosca (in a Glyndebourne touring production in Oxford). Since then I haven’t been to a performance of any opera by Puccini, until WNO’s Butterfly. This is clearly the year of the monochrome opera, … Continue reading

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Composers’ political compass

I’ve had my attention drawn to this page on the Political Compass website. It is, as they say, ‘largely for amusement’. I’m not sure they really have Elgar right – I think his position is derived from judgements based on … Continue reading

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a Wagnerian pizza

Earlier this month in Sicily I consumed a ‘Parsifal’ pizza at a restaurant which for some reason had an Arthurian theme. Among the ingredients were rocket, prosciutto and mushroom, but it wasn’t a great success, being on the soggy side. … Continue reading

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through the night

We’re now rediscovering Radio 3’s Through the Night programming, now that we get woken in the small hours by Magnus (born Thursday March 24th). We listened to the programme regularly during the infancies of our older children so it will … Continue reading

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Composers in the British National Corpus

I have recently come across this intriguing graphical representation of the frequency of words in the British National Corpus, a corpus of spoken and written British English dating from the early 1990’s. As it includes proper names, I tried various … Continue reading

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