Sculptures of Roman Theatre Masks
Reflections on Opera
What Opera Means: Categories and Case-Studies, Christopher Wintle, edited by Kate Hopkins, Boydell & Brewer, 2018, 288 pp, pb., £15.99, reviewed by STODDARD MARTIN
Books on opera abound. Books on Wagner, alone, are said to be as numerous as those on Napoleon, perhaps more so. Those on Mozart rank not far behind. Verdi joined Wagner in celebration of a bicentenary in 2013, and a plethora of publications to mark that occasion included the piquant Verdi and/or Wagner by Peter Conrad, reviewed on these pages. Both figures stride like colossi through Christopher Wintle’s What Opera Means, a collection of reviews, programme essays and lectures from his distinguished career as commentator on the genre, notably at The TLS, where for a period in the early 1980s this writer was his predecessor.
Recurrent appearance of the 2013 bi-centenarians in Wintle’s book reflects their ubiquity on the boards over subsequent decades. At Covent Garden, several cycles of The Ring of the Nibelungen have been mounted, as well as a ‘festival’ to stage all of Verdi. Wintle came to write programme notes in this epoch, and the programme note – a genre of its own – is key to his style: descriptive, informative, learned. Critic gives way to guide for most of his book, conducting audiences towards a work rather than rating or slating its execution. The approach is charming, veering toward the judgemental rarely, such as when flagging admonitions about Wagner made de rigueur after World War II by the likes of Auden and Adorno. Wintle’s accommodative tone shifts in an extended last section formed of critical pieces. Several reveal a caustic awareness of the contemporary problem of ‘dogmatic’ directors or, to a lesser degree, recent composers.
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Better Orbán than Corbyn
Better Orbán than Corbyn
by Ilana Mercer
It’s difficult to feel sorry for liberals when they reap the whirlwind that they sow.
A middle-aged woman, who campaigned against the deportation of migrants from her native Sweden, was raped by the very refugees she advocates for.
She met two Afghani teens on the street outside a bar and voluntarily accompanied them to their taxpayer-funded pad. The rest, as they say, is history.
Is the European obsession with importing Middle-Eastern men driven by horny, menopausal, Social Justice Warriors? “Bohemian witches” or “tie-dye hags”, as one risqué, Swedish, You Tube commentator calls this degenerate distaff. Continue reading →
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