Though she won praise from the literary greats of her day, including Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound and Siegfried Sassoon, the Victorian poet Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) was little-known among the contemporary reading public. When she visited the Poetry Bookshop of Harold Monro, the publisher of her first and only collection, The Farmer’s Bride (1916), she was asked, “Are you Charlotte Mew?” Her reply was characteristically diffident and self-deprecatory: “I’m sorry to say I am.”
Category: Commentary
“It Lives!”: Mark Grey ‘re-animates’ Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
“It lives!” So cries Victor Frankenstein in Richard Brinsley Peake’s Presumption: or the Fate of Frankenstein on beholding the animation of his creature for the ?rst time. Peake might equally have been describing the novel upon which he had based his 1823 play which, staged at the English Opera House, had such a successful first run that it gave rise to fourteen further adaptations of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novella in the following three years.
Bampton Classical Opera Young Singers’ Competition 2019
Applications will open on March 1, 2019 for Bampton Classical Opera’s fourth biennial Young Singers’ Competition. The competition was launched in 2013 to celebrate the company’s 20th birthday. It is now well established and identifies, rewards and nurtures some of the country’s most talented young professional singers aged 21-32 and their accompanists.
Independent Opera & Britten Sinfonia celebrate bicentenary of Queen Victoria & Prince Albert’s births
To celebrate the bicentenary of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s births in 2019, Independent Opera (IO) and Britten Sinfonia present the first public performance of Joby Talbot’s new cantata A Sheen of Dew on Flowers on Thursday 11 April at the Barbican.
English National Opera to reprise its 5* production of Paul Bunyan at the historic Alexandra Palace Theatre
Following its sell-out success at Wilton’s Music Hall in September 2018, English National Opera’s acclaimed production of Benjamin Britten’s Paul Bunyan will be revived in May at the equally historically remarkable venue of Alexandra Palace Theatre.
Glyndebourne celebrates 25 years of its award-winning opera house in 2019
Unveiled in 1994, the new auditorium increased capacity by 50% to 1,200 seats and significantly improved backstage facilities. This allowed more people to enjoy world-class opera at Glyndebourne and enabled the company to stage bigger and more ambitious productions in the years that followed.
Garsington Opera’s 30th anniversary season: four new productions including an Offenbach premiere
Garsington Opera’s 30th anniversary season will feature four new productions – the UK stage premiere of Offenbach’s Fantasio, Smetana’s The Bartered Bride, Mozart’s Don Giovanni and finally Britten’s The Turn of the Screw.
Pl·cido Domingo awarded Honorary Fellowship of the International Opera Awards
A patron of the International Opera Awards since their inception, legendary tenor Pl·cido Domingo will receive the first ever Honorary Fellowship of the Opera Awards Foundation at a fundraising evening on Monday 28 January at the Royal Society of Arts, London.
Wexford Festival Opera Announces New Artistic Director
The Board of Wexford Festival Opera has announced Rosetta Cucchi as the new Artistic Director of the Festival. She will take up the six-year position when the current Artistic Director David Agler finishes his tenure after the 2019 Festival.
Longborough Festival Opera founders to receive Wagner Society award
The Wagner Society has announced that Longborough Festival Opera co-founders Martin and Lizzie Graham will receive its prestigious Reginald Goodall Award, which recognises individuals who have been of outstanding service to Wagner and his music.