Wondered what the banner which greeted us down the long beech-lined drive to Powerscourt Gardens was worth: it proclaimed the National Geographic's assignation of No. 3 among the great gardens of the world, yielding only to Kew and Versailles. Even the approach yields lovely vistas of the valley, though the Wicklow mountains beyond were only occasionally visible, and the top of the Sugarloaf, usually such a landmark, not at all. Now I certainly haven't been around like my friend Kerry Richardson, who directed a series on that very subject, but when we passed through the ticket office and em ..read more

Ten glorious Wednesday afternoons on the Wagner opera that always leaves me feeling whole have flown by, dovelike. I'll confess that musically I can do without the final transfiguration; it doesn't really take us any further, and unless you have a production where Parsifal moves on, feels a bit 'here we go again' in the non-action, too. But tears always come to my eyes in the Good Friday Magic music, whether in the opera or in the concert. It took the visit of John Tomlinson to drive home how beautiful and unusual the words are. The gist is that humans may look to God, but nature looks to hu ..read more

An enforced absence of over three months came to an end on Thursday, when I decided I could hobble sufficiently to take the train and boat back to my other half's other city, which I've come to love so much so quickly too. Decided to take train and boat as his experiences of sitting on a plane nn a runway for over an hour on several occasions wouldn't suit my discomfort and, long though the London Euston - Holyhead - Dublin Port journey is, I'd be able to move around at every point. Though every single train leaving Euston was late, that part of the journey passed pleasantly, the first half ..read more

The summer course on Parsifal in association with the Wagner Society of Scotland won't have quite ended when I descend to the bottom of the Rhine for my Autumn term Opera in Depth Zoom course on 9 October. But thanks to Paul Schofield's excellent book The Redeemer Reborn, proposing Parsifal as 'the fifth opera of Wagner's Ring', I feel halfway back in the world of the tetralogy already. Scholfield's tenet is fortunately merely a peg on which to hang his perceptions about the links between Wotan and Amfortas, Siegfried and Parsifal, Brünnhilde and Kundry, Alberich and Klingsor.  A practi ..read more

The TV screen at home has been bright, albeit with plenty of darkness in the tales told, over the past few months. I nearly ugly-cried at the last episode of Our Friends in the North, which wouldn't have mattered since J is currently in Dublin. There was a Guardian article stressing how topical it still is - about corruption, greed, Tory heartlessness and a Labour party that sometimes looks like the opposition - so I thought it was time I watched. The special genius is to have created an epic in only nine episodes, taking us from 1964 (the four main characters pictured above) to 1995 (below ..read more

On 12 October, I embark on the second batch of ten classes in my Mahler Zoom course, beginning with the grim marches of the Sixth Symphony, ending in the peaceful resolution of the at-one-with-the-world heartleap in Deryck Cooke's performing version of the Tenth Symphony (and completed it must be).  The first term led me to the surprising realisation that of the first five symphonies, I love the Fourth the best, simply because it's absolutely perfect. You could say that in the Second and Third Mahler dares more, but it's a harder challenge to make them work.  Edward Gardner pulled ..read more

Just a few days later, and we could have been walking in the same sunshine, but somewhat less than 32° C. No matter; those of the 24 churches which were open were cool, the distances short (though Jill's pedometer clocked up about seven miles of footfalls) and it was the only thing possible for me six weeks after the Big Op (there was an alternative proposal of clocking up some country churches not connectable by foot in two cars, but sitting is uncomfortable still, and getting up and in not easy).  To reiterate, this year I decided to collect not for the Norfolk Churches Trust, as we'v ..read more

I thought more doses of Molly Keane in her earlier incarnation as M J Farrell were what I needed for a bit of light reading after the epic Transylvanian Trilogy of Miklós Bánffy. I found I'd underestimated her more lethal powers and the depth of her observations about nature (and the decadence of a huntin', shootin' ruling class out of place, in this case the Anglo Irish, has many points of correspondence; like MB, MK experienced the milieu she writes about, and both can be ruthlessly objective about it). The situation comedy I remembered from Good Behaviour and Time after Time, the later wo ..read more

It's coming up for six weeks since I had my Big Op, a month since I came home from the hospital. Maybe I expected progress to be quicker than it is, but the plastics in my rear still make walking difficult, and so far I've limited myself to a radius which includes South Kensington to the east, Fulham Palace to the south-west (pictured above by J, self with bag containing my medical cushion, which goes everywhere with me, at the Tudor arch into/out of the fabulous walled garden). While I hope not to be self-pitying, I can say with some objectivity it had been a bit tough for some weeks si ..read more

The wonderful Jean Rigby (on the right top in the above Zoom class, with Ann Murray top left and Christopher Robson bottom right) played her part, back when I was running my five classes on Britten's Albert Herring, getting others who'd been in the immortal Glyndebourne production directed by Peter Hall. So we had, not all at the same time but all with so much to say, Nancy (Jean), Sid (Alan Opie), Albert (John Graham Hall, so funny), Mr Upfold (Alexander Oliver, ditto) and Florence Pike (Felicity Palmer, another hoot). I think that counts as some sort of historical reunion - and of course a ..read more