Opera

  An endlessly intoxicating night of ecstasy eh? The night is still young … I’ve chosen Nuit d’ivresse d'extase infinie for today’s track on the opera playlist because it is simply exquisite. This version sung by Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto…

Boxing Day and that British tradition - the meet of the hunt. I have no idea where we are in terms of the legislation on this, as there are so many loopholes, exceptions and workarounds, as well as artificial trails…

No, not me … but Maddalena. I’m dedicating today’s post to my Dad - we still miss him so much.  His love of opera was instrumental in the acquisition of my own passion for the genre. When he lived in Vienna,…

I realise that if I’m going to get the playlist finished by the end of the year, and if it’s going to be representative of opera through the ages, then I might need to start adding more than one track…

Following on from yesterday’s post … The miserable Friedrich is going to punish anyone who participates in the carnival, all part of his plan to ban fun. And a bit of word association soon gets us from carnivals to masks…

Today’s track is from a little known opera by Wagner. The purists dismiss it as trivial, but being a trivial sort of person, I don’t mind admitting I like it; in fact, I like it a lot. The justification for…

As it is the shortest day, I had intended to add something from the shortest opera to the playlist. Research shows that the honour of writing the shortest opera belongs to Peter Reynolds and his four minute opera The Sands…

I always feel terribly excited when I see the first fall of snow. I don’t know whether the excitement is rooted in childhood memories of sledging and snowmen or whether it’s just how different the world looks - there’s often…

‘Richard Strauss’ and ‘comic’ are not normally heard in the same sentence, but when it comes to Der Rosenkavalier, they are.  There isn’t really a back story to today’s post, apart from the fact I love this trio. And I did…