I Am Woman
Songs in Our Heart # 36 I Am Woman (Helen Reddy) (Written by Helen Reddy and Ray Burton; released May 1972) [Go Girl! Helen Reddy belting out an Equality Anthem, in a knitted vest and a meadow!]
Continue Reading →Do You Know the Way to San Jose
Songs in Our Heart # 35 Do You Know the Way to San Jose (Dionne Warwick) (Written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, released April 1968) [Last time I was there, you could put a hundred down and buy a car. An extremely intricate pop song, sung as only Ms Warwick can.]
Continue Reading →Werther
(by Jules Massenet, 1892) Royal Opera House, London, June 2016 Werther loves Charlotte but she is affianced to Albert and a sense of duty. Werther understands the score; she must do her duty. He will (so he threatens) vanish, violently. But will he, a poet not a marksman, manage to blow himself away? Well, we liked this production. It is a slight piece of work, modern, situational rather than plot-driven, and it can glow only if the doomed non-couple have the requisite conviction. In this production, they did. Massenet’s adaptation of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), his animalistic Sturm und Drang…
Continue Reading →Red Right Hand
(photo of Nick by Bleddyn Butcher)
Songs in Our Heart # 34 Red Right Hand (Nick Cave) (Written by Mick Harvey, Nick Cave and Thomas Wydler; released April 1994) [A gothic western classic.] Before we enjoy the song, let us view the interesting portrait of Nick by Harold Arkley (1999), c/- the National Portrait Gallery:
Continue Reading →Remembering Peter
Peter O’Toole (2 August 1932 to 14 December 2013) Peter was one of the great British drunks of stage and screen (he was born to play Jeffrey Bernard), with enough star power to bedazzle even the full moon in Connemara. We remember him on his birthday with affection (but not complete admiration – see below). He is terrific in Becket (1964) as Henry II, with fellow legendary drunk Richard Burton; and his off-the-wall, ecstatic approach ignites The Ruling Class (1972), (where he plays a man playing, in turn, Jesus and Jack the Ripper). He is superb as megalomaniac film director Eli Cross in The Stunt…
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