Xerxes (1738): George Frideric Handel

9 Comments

Handel: Xerxes

★★★★

(English Touring Opera at the Hackney Empire, 8 October 2016)

Xerxes and Spitfires both rank pretty highly on the list of things I get excited about, but I never imagined I’d have cause to refer to them both in the same sentence. Now that has all changed, thanks to English Touring Opera’s revival production, which transplants our favourite brat-prince to the airfields of the Battle of Britain. It opens with the glorious sight of our misguided king serenading a Spitfire (plane tree – plane – Spitfire – brilliant), as he contemplates his new campaign to rule the skies of Europe, and it’s sheer fun from there on in.

Continue reading →

Life after Life (2013): Kate Atkinson

3 Comments

★★★★

Ursula Todd dies at the moment of her birth, strangled by a cord around her neck. She dies in the cellar of a London house, taking shelter from an air raid during the Blitz. She dies falling from a window as a child. She dies in the Spanish flu epidemic. And each time she finds herself back on that cold, snowy February day in 1910, waiting to be born again and to see whether the tiniest shift of chance or design can change her future. Kate Atkinson’s much-admired novel poses the question: what if we could live over and over again, until we were able to design our lives in such a way as to create the best possible future, not just for ourselves, but for the world?

Continue reading →

Museums in Suzhou

5 Comments

Suzhou Museum

In my last post, I wrote about some of the famous gardens and parks of Suzhou, but here we get down to the really good stuff: the museums which preserve and record the city’s history and handicrafts. We didn’t have time to see all the museums in Suzhou, but those we did visit helped me to put things in context a little better and left me itching to find out more. I’m going to start with the place where I spent most of my time: Suzhou Museum.

Continue reading →

The Venice of the East (Suzhou, China)

11 Comments

Suzhou

Two hours west of the sprawling metropolis of Shanghai lies the city of Suzhou, which is small only in relative terms – it’s home to more than six million people – but feels very different, as it has managed to preserve the old town at its heart. Enclosed by walls and moats, the grid layout of this area has barely changed for a thousand years. Suzhou itself has existed for 2,500 years and is now one of the most popular tourist destinations for Chinese visitors. It’s famous for its canals, its silk, its tea, its opera and its gardens. I’ve just spent two weeks working in this fascinating place (hardly ever leaving the bounds of the Old City), installing an exhibition in Suzhou Museum, which is celebrating the 10th anniversary of its new building in 2016. It’s been a wonderful experience and I wanted to share some of the places we were shown by Allen and Alice, who were looking after us.

Continue reading →

The People in the Trees (2013): Hanya Yanagihara

3 Comments

★★★★½

As you probably remember, I was deeply moved by Yanagihara’s recent novel A Little Life, and was keen to read her first book, The People in the Trees. This received equally rave reviews when it came out in 2013 and at first glance suggests a tale of old-fashioned adventure, lost worlds and hacking through jungles. It focuses on an immunologist who, while on a field trip to a remote Micronesian island, makes a thrilling discovery. Evidence suggests that the members of a primitive, forgotten tribe may have found the Holy Grail of medical science: the key to eternal life.

Continue reading →

La Cantarina (1766): Joseph Haydn

Leave a comment

Rachel Kelly

Haydn: Symphony No. 34 in D Minor · Mysliveček: Arias from Semiramide · Haydn: La Canterina

(Classical Opera, directed by Ian Page, Wigmore Hall, 19 September 2016)

I deliberated long and hard about whether to rate this or not. After all, I don’t rate recitals but I do rate operas. Which was this? In the end, I decided that I would treat it as a recital, because the opera element was only one of three different sections. Plus, that saved me the trouble of having to think of a rating, so everyone’s a winner. But, had I rated it, it would have been very much a thumbs-up. This evening at the Wigmore was another stage in Classical Opera’s Mozart 250 project and introduced us to a variety of interesting works written in 1766, all performed with great elan by the orchestra and a quartet of admirable singers under the baton of Ian Page.

Continue reading →

Eliogabalo (1667): Francesco Cavalli

10 Comments

Cavalli: Eliogabalo

★★★★

(Opéra de Paris at Palais Garnier, 25 September 2016)

Please forgive the recent silence. This last week was extremely busy which, on one hand, means there was no time to write new posts, but on the other means that you have a glut of them coming up. First off is the most glamorous and exciting event: my trip to the Paris Opéra to see their new production of Cavalli’s Eliogabalo. This was the result of a last-minute (and very expensive) fit of spontaneity, and luckily it turned out that Eliogabalo was just my cup of tea. Focused on a lascivious, unpredictable ruler with a penchant for stealing other people’s girlfriends, it sounds at first very much like Xerxes.

Continue reading →

The Wonder (2016): Emma Donoghue

3 Comments

★★★★

A new novel by Emma Donoghue is always cause for celebration, and The Wonder takes us into yet another vividly realised snapshot of history. It is 1859 and Elizabeth (‘Lib’) Wright, a veteran nurse from Florence Nightingale’s army in the Crimea, has been called to Ireland on a curious mission. She knows little about her job except the name of her patient – O’Donnell – and the fact that she is required for only two weeks. Only on her arrival in an impoverished Irish village is she given her commission: a strange task that will force Lib to weigh up faith and reason, to face the griefs of her own past, and to confront the possibility that miracles may genuinely exist.

Continue reading →

Boudica: Dreaming the Hound (2005): Manda Scott

7 Comments

★★★★

Boudica: Book III

And so to the third instalment of Manda Scott’s Boudica quartet, which I’m eking out so as not to finish it too soon. Dreaming the Hound takes us deeper into the story of Breaca, the flame-haired warrior whose leadership against the invading legions has earned her the title of the Boudica, ‘bringer of victory’. It also follows the life that runs parallel to her own: that of her conflicted, troubled half-brother, once named Bán, and then Valerius, who served as decurion of the Thracian cavalry under the aegis of Rome and is now, unwillingly, back among his own people.

Continue reading →

The Miniaturist (2014): Jessie Burton

3 Comments
Jessie Burton

★★★★

I’m one of those awkward people who likes to be different and usually steers away from books on the bestseller tables. In several cases I’ve got round to reading such novels months or years later when, generally speaking, they definitely live up to their hype. Jessie Burton’s entrancing tale of secrets and commerce in 17th-century Amsterdam is a case in point. Crafted with as much care as the doll’s house that takes centre stage in the plot, the novel is a tantalising thriller which conjures up all the textures and colours of the Dutch Golden Age.

Continue reading →