Tuesday 1 April 2014

Change in the air and another Strauss opera

More Strauss opera: this time Die Frau Ohne Schatten: The Woman without a Shadow. The kind of score that critics call sumptuous. An absolutely baffling plot - I would say Wagnerian with its strange characters from myth/folklore and symbolism but someone would contradict me (everything Wagnerian is highly circumscribed.)
The music is mesmerizing: an amazing soprano in the DVD I watch (from the Mariinsky). The voice somehow makes it clear that the theme is apparently - quite simply - about love blessed by the birth of children and the tragedy of love lost. 
So the golden falcons, souls turning to stone, Emperors in dark forests, sorcery and demon lovers are just a vehicle for something very straightforward. The end of Act 1, has a duet vocalising this - misunderstanding and longing.

Back on the beach, the sand (swept away by winter storms) has returned.

January 2014
March 2014

























































It's time to go back to London.
The camellias, I hope, will travel.


Reading and watching

  • Foot by Foot to Santiago de Compostela/Judy Foot
  • The Testament of Mary with Fiona Shaw at the Barbican
  • The Testament of Mary/Colm Toibin
  • Schwanengesang/Schubert - Tony Spence
  • Journals/Robert Falcon Scott
  • Fugitive Pieces/Ann Michaels
  • Unless/Carol Shields
  • Faust/Royal Opera House
  • The Art of Travel/Alain de Botton
  • Mad Men Series 6
  • A Week at The Airport/Alain de Botton
  • The Railway Man/Eric Lomax
  • Bright Lights, Big City/Jay McInerney
  • Stones of Venice/John Ruskin
  • The Sea, the Sea/Iris Murdoch
  • Childe Harold/Lord Byron
  • All The Pretty Horses/Cormac McCarthy
  • Extreme Rambling/Mark Thomas
  • Story of my Life/Jay McInerney
  • Venice Observed/Mary McCarthy