FOUND IT!

FOUND IT!

What was it Archimedes said in the bath?  If I could remember that’s what I would say now because I’ve just identified a maddeningly elusive piece of music.  That lush thing they play on the tv Darts trailers is the Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana.  Massenet not Verdi.  Of course it is.  You could have told me.  Anyway I’m savouring and sharing the happy moment with you.  It always brought tears to my mum’s eyes when it was on the wireless.  These You Have Loved – Doris Arnold’s favourite tear-jerking pieces of music on the Home Service in the 1940s/50s.   And now it’s doing the same for me.  Never fails.  Gorgeous feeling of transporting overwhelmedness.

And I’m nostalgically touched by the darts association.  Some of you might know that in our fondest years Edgar and I played a lot of memorable darts in a lot of pubs from Land’s End to Kirk Yetholm, especially somewhere in Grimsby with Derek, and at the Minerva in Hull and the Oddfellows in Pocklington. 

Now I’ve remembered.  Archimedes said ‘Eureka’ in the bath.

Maybe this is what I’ll do: blog all my teary sobby moments.

It's over

It’s all over and I’m back home.  In a glorious afterglow.  What a treat!   Heaven … Valhalla … Elysium …   Moving Wotans, a lovely Siegfried, breathtaking lighting.  And the music …  

I'm not saying I liked everything – some of the singing (excessive wobbly vibrato) was very hard to listen to; one or two highpoints came and went without the slightest tingle.  And I couldn’t read the sub/surtitles.  But in the end none of that mattered to me at all: I was just knocked out by the sheer brass neck – the scale, the scope, the heights and the depths of the whole undertaking.   And the music ….  Totally totally overcome by the music.  And at last I am into the words as well.  Unending source of pleasures to come. 

Seriously on the lookout for the next objective ... a Budapest Ring in June 2015 … Tristan & Isolde at Longborough.  Now there’s a thing.

In the meantime, the Turner film on Friday might take my mind off Siegfried for a few hours.

THANKS!  Very thrilled to have such a lot of encouragement.  Is blogging meant to be this scary?  Meant to say special thanks to T for getting me to do it.  Thanks Topsy.  Now I'm off to London for weekend.

The Ring

Countdown to The Ring - Wagner here I come!  
In five days' time I'll be at Rheingold at the Birmingham Hippodrome and I am VERY excited.  A bit weak at the knees at the thought of my first ever Ring (i.e. the whole thing, on a stage) so I'm trying to listen to it all, study the scores (piano arrangements), play it all on the piano and read dozens of books on the subject including the translation of all the words - before Wednesday.  Wish me luck.  Anyway if I don't like the look of it (you never know - I didn't really like Parsifal) I'll just shut my eyes and listen to the music.