Andrew Higgins > Recent Status Updates

Brilliant chapter comparing the use of history in Verdi's Don Carlos and Wagner's Gotterdamerung brilliant work of scholarship - had a good chat with John at the Meistersinger dress about Wagner and Philology which he is doing some great work on.

The Wagner reading marathon continues

In honour of opening of Meistersinger at Glyndebourne I am doing a week marathon of Wagner related reading starting with this....

The bucca and the pukka are quiet interesting!!

Brilliant readings of Tolkien's early poetry including The Shores of Faerie John Garth's reading is excellent.

Brilliant first part of book are actual eyewitness accounts of fairy sightings in Ireland, Wales and Scotland. Very intrigued by "the gentry" fairies of not diminutive size who are like you and I.....

Hearing this excellent work of Tolkien scholarship read by the author makes Tolkien early world come to life - brilliant

on final chapter Audiences and Box Office in 1760 Venice opera - senza mi posti!!!

Going to finish tonight - next stop Mt Hekla

Best passage so far..... "Although theatre owners, impresarios and wealthy Venetian constantly searched for ways to manage opera theatres, one thing remained constant amid all the variety:opera in a business sense seems to have been doomed to failure...Fortunately, a seemingly limitless supply of hopeful managers and generous investors kept at least some of the theatres open year to year." (p.105)

Continuing along this line of Tolken themed books - has anyone dipped into Michael Ridpath's Where the Shadows Lie a thriller set in Iceland whose main plot centers around a lost Norse aaga - Gaukur's Saga - which relates a story about an evil ring (the ring of Andavari perhaps?) and has characters named Isildur and Gandalf.  This saga was "discovered" and sent to Tolkien in 1937-8 just as he was working on his new H

Resuming this exploration from our fav 6th century compiler!!!!