The Wagner Operas
"Should be bigger...?" (Unveiling the Wagner Memorial in Berlin by Anton von Werner, 1908)
(Ernest Newman) This ‘earnest new man’ was a precise and authoritative Wagner enthusiast, but he stowed away gush and did not indulge in panegyric. Newman certainly had the measure of Wagner the man (as his 12 cassette audiobook Wagner As Man and Artist shows). Yet his love and appreciation of Wagner’s work shines in this single-volume complete Opera companion, the kind of work to thoroughly research beforehand if you want to accentuate the payoff of seeing a Wagner, or to skim afterwards to clarify any nuance or symbol left opaque by a particular production. As Newman says in his introduction, whilst “…a…
Continue Reading →Pride of the Bay
The Story of the Glenelg Football Club (Peter Cornwall and John Wood) (1999) Why be a Glenelg supporter? Why indeed? Objectively, it seems less a badge of pride than a sentence, a millstone, a curse from the abyss of Hell. We started life with a vote down at the Glenelg Council Chambers, when Glenelg was a half days buggy ride from Adelaide, on March 10, 1920. It made a debut in the SAFL, then the second tier, beating South Adelaide by a single point (for the uninitiated, the narrowest winning margin) in its first game. Then it entered the Big League, the…
Continue Reading →A Unique Gent Joins the Great Majority
R.I.P.
Sir Christopher Lee (27 May 1922 – 7 June 2015) This imposing and elegant actor was often the best thing about the films he made. Whether as Dracula in a series of Hammer Horror films, the equally formidable baddy Saruman in the Lord of the Rings saga, the dotty impressionist Seurat in Moulin Rouge, the nasty aristocrat Evremonde in A Tale of Two Cities, or an unbilled spear carrier in Hamlet, he had a real presence that enlivened the great and petty villains he generally brought to life on screen. Of his 200 odd appearances over his 93 years, The Varnished Culture‘s favourite Lee role…
Continue Reading →Seveneves
Sir Richard in Space (Image by Arnfinn Christensen)
Neal Stephenson Now, before we start…..is there anyone here who has not read Stephenson’s “Cryptonomicon”, “Snow Crash”, “The Baroque Cycle” and “The Diamond Age”? If so, please just take some time. Go out and beg, buy, borrow or download them…all of them…and read them while the rest of us wait….. Welcome back. As promised, the rest of us waited here because we wanted to be sure that everyone has read the best of Stephenson before we proceed. If the first Stephenson I met had been “Seveneves” (or “Anathem” for that matter), I just might never have read Stephenson again – and that would be…
Continue Reading →Eternal Rome
(April/May 2013) From the hell of Fiumicino Airport, an official looking chauffeur took us on a mid afternoon drive past the Forum, Trajan’s Column and the Colosseo and deposited us, bang on cocktail time, at the Hassler, atop the Spanish steps. The Varnished Culture knew from the H.H Kirst novel* that we were due a treat and so it proved. The hotel guests were just as exotic: Japanese in fluorescent sports gear, dancing a jig; a rich Italian with a blond 2/3rds his age; an odd couple feted by the staff; a short, plump American with dead, gold hair, accompanied by…
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