22 Tuesday Dec 2015
Posted in Things
In a couple of days it will be Christmas – again.
A messier Christmas than usual, what with both my mother and myself being down with bronchitis, and other and sadder things… Continue reading
17 Thursday Dec 2015
Posted in History, Scribbling, Stories
15 Tuesday Dec 2015
I must have been truly good, this year – because Saint Lucia, the gift-bringer, has outdone herself.
Together with the prettiest Christmas mug ever, an adorable velveteen elephant, a box of twelve old glass ornaments for the tree, and a sinful plate of candy, she brought me books & movies.
First of all, D. K. Broster‘s Jacobite Trilogy, already stashed away in view of my Three Day Christmas Reading Spree. And because I have a soft spot for Jacobites – thanks to Stevenson’s Alan Breck Stewart – I can’t wait. Saint Lucia seems determined to make me discover a vintage historical novelist each year. It was Rosemary Sutcliffe last year, and now Broster… Continue reading
12 Saturday Dec 2015
Posted in Lostintranslation, Theatre
Tags
Boris Pasternak, Claudio Abbado, Dmitri Shostakovich, Grigorij Kozintsev, King Lear, Mahler Chamber Orchestra
Now this is rather different.
Back in 2003, in Ferrara, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Swedish Radio Choir held a curious concert. Grigorij Kozintsev‘s 1970 Russian King Lear was shown on a screen, while the orchestra, conducted by Claudio Abbado, performed a combination of Shostakovich‘s soundtrack and incidental music for a 1940 production of the play. Continue reading
10 Thursday Dec 2015
Tags
Almost exactly two-hundred and four years ago, Ugo Foscolo‘s tragedy Ajace premiered at the Scala Theatre in Milan.
In 1811 the flamboyant and patriotic Foscolo was quite the name when it came to poetry – but it may be that the stage was not his cup of tea…
The tragedy was very high-minded, very Greek in conception, very long-winded, and the audience was thoroughly bored – until a herald stepped in to announce the arrival of “Ajace, Re dei Salamini,” which translates to “Ajax, King of the inhabitants of Salamis”* but unfortunately in Italian sounds exactly like “Ajax, King of Little Sausages”… Continue reading
05 Saturday Dec 2015
Posted in Things
I suspect this is on its way to become a Scribblings tradition: it being December, WordPress turns up the snow, which hardly shows at all on my mostly white blog.
So I post a snowy and darkish and largish image – just to enjoy the e-snowfall…
So now it shows. This year it is the Snowflakes from the Los Angeles Ballet’s Nutcracker.
And, while we are there, the music to go with it: ♫
03 Thursday Dec 2015
Posted in Books
Tags
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, François Villon, Francie Nolan, If I Were King, Justin Huntly McCarthy, Project Gutenberg, Reading
For a long time, thanks to a middle-grade anthology, all I knew of Francie Nolan was that she borrowed a book every day – two on Saturdays. And that every Saturday the second book was If I Were King.
The story of François Villon was more wonderful each time she read it. Sometimes she worried for fear the book would be lost in the library and she’d never be able to read it again…
Francie even begins to copy it on a notebook – and then gives up, because it’s not like the book. Being blessed with a house full of books, I seldom used borrowed from the library as a child – but I could understand both the urge to read a beloved book again and again, and the pang at the idea of not being able to read it anymore. Continue reading
01 Tuesday Dec 2015
Posted in Theatre
So, the Ghost of Agnese Visconti haunted the stage of the Teatrino D’Arco last night, and it was a lovely thing.
They were all very good – the bewildered poet and the characters in his head, and the Lord of Mantova was played with great flair and just the right touch of humour, the bewildered poet. And the actress who plays the Ghost was truly excellent: she captured poor Agnes to perfection, all the waspish impatience towards the poet who sugar-coats her story, all the urgency of her bid for truth… Because in the end this is what the play is about: the age-old dance between stage (or narrative) conventions, and historical truth – in the form of a ghost story… Continue reading
28 Saturday Nov 2015
“Why don’t you write us something about a local ghost story?” I was asked back in June.
And why not indeed… Only, when I set about researching, I found that my unimaginative hometown only has one official ghost.
Agnese Visconti was one of the many daughters of the Prince of Milan. Plain, sickly and waspish, she was married off very young to handsome Francesco Gonzaga, only son and heir to the de facto Lord of Mantova. It wasn’t what you’d call a happy marriage – but then nobody expected it to be – and it produced only one daughter.
Then Agnese’s father was murdered by an ambitious nephew, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, and things went truly downhill. Agnese decided she wanted revenge, and began working with her exiled brother to get back Milan… Continue reading
26 Thursday Nov 2015
For some reason, The Hessian Renegades put me in mind of William Shakespeare Burton’s The Wounded Cavalier.
Burton, who bore the names he bore because of the Bard, was an English painter in the XIXth Century, and the Wounded Cavalier is perhaps his most famous work. My friend Marina shakes her head and sniggers whenever either author or painting are mentioned – by me, usually – because, she says, how can I like such an ugly painting?
Actually, it had its fans, back in the day – Ruskin being an especially vocal one. “Masterly”, he called it… Yes, well. I won’t be the one to deny that, whatever Ruskin had to say, TWC is a stagey affair, both stiff and sentimental… Continue reading
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