Parsifal, Bayreuth Festival

Posted on August 20, 2016 by leslie

Amfortas (Ryan McKinny) photo: br-klassik.de

Parsifal, Bayreuth Festival

Parsifal, Bayreuth Festival, Germany, August 2016. Director Uwe Eric Laufenberg, conducted by Hartmut Haenchen, reviewed by TONY COOPER

Specifically written for the Festspielhaus, Parsifal was Wagner’s final work completed in January 1882 and was first seen in that year. This production by German director, Uwe Eric Laufenberg, marks its ninth outing at Bayreuth since its première.

The philosophical ideas of the libretto fuse Christianity and Buddhism but the trappings of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s 13th-century poem – focusing on the Arthurian hero Parzival and his long quest for the Holy Grail – are essentially Christian based.

The composer described Parsifal as ‘ein Bühnenweihfestspiel’ (A Festival Play for the Consecration of the Stage) not an opera thereby underlying the deeply-religious overtones of the work. Herr Laufenberg brought this issue to the fore, especially at the end of Act I, when Amfortas, wearing a crown of thorns and covered only by a loin-cloth, re-enacts the Crucifixion with members of the Brotherhood (now seen as a community of Christian monks) gathered around him receiving Holy Communion and partaking of the Blood of Christ. It was a powerful and moving scene. The Christ-like figure of Amfortas was magnificently portrayed by the gifted American bass-baritone, Ryan McKinny. Continue reading →

Posted in Cultural Matters, QR Home | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Reality “under siege”

Posted on August 18, 2016 by leslie

Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, killed in Benghazi attack

Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, killed in the Benghazi attack

Reality “under siege”

Ilana Mercer highlights left-liberal propaganda

The Clinton Media have gone from malfunctioning to mad, from “dishonest” to deranged. Their coverage of the 2016 election is no longer tinged by liberal bias, but is about moving viewers and readers into a parallel universe, an alternate reality of the media’s making.

The media monolith’s latest imbecility is to offer effusive plaudits for their candidate, Hillary, because this life-long politician whose ill-gotten gains have come via political means, not private productive means, has released her tax returns for 2015.

Something Donald Trump has yet to do. For the candidate is under audit and has been advised to refrain from doing anything that’ll give the most corrupt and dangerous of government agencies a lien on his assets—or liberty, for that matter. Continue reading →

Posted in Current Affairs and Comment, QR Home | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Late Summer Wine 2016

Posted on August 16, 2016 by leslie

Sheppy's Late Summer Wine and Cider 2016

Em Marshall-Luck’s selection

Such changeable summer weather calls for a variety of wine types, from warming reds for the cold days of drizzle and overcast skies, through to refreshing rosés and dry whites for those all-too-infrequent days when the sun deigns to grace us with its welcome presence. The beverages listed below cover all bases in terms of flavours and price ranges; all come highly recommended.

Let us commence with a cider. Award-winning craft cider maker, Sheppy’s, has brewed up yet another cidery concoction, this one ideal for summer drinking. Their new Cider with Elderflower is very probably my favourite Sheppy’s cider thus far, with its lovely golden colour, nose which combines crunchy apples and floral elderflower, with just a hint of grapefruit as well. Continue reading →

Posted in QR Home, Tippler | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Big Short

Posted on August 11, 2016 by leslie

 Capture5

The Big Short

Film review by Robert Henderson

Director: Adam McKay

Main cast

Christian Bale as Dr. Michael Burry, a fund manager running Scion Capital
Steve Carell as Mark Baum, the manager of Wall Street hedge fund, Front Point Capital
John Magaro as Charlie Geller, one of the founders and partners of a wannabe hedge fund, Brownfield Capital
Finn Wittrock as Jamie Shipley, Geller’s friend and partner at Brownfield Ryan Gosling as Jared Vennett, a bond salesman at Deutsche
Brad Pitt as Ben Rickert Charlie and Jamie Shipley’s trader and mentor, who previously worked at the JPMorgan Chase Bank in Singapore

******

The Big Short falls halfway between The Wolf of Wall Street and the documentary The Smartest Guys in the Room. Its subject matter is the biggest heist in history, the suckers being the US taxpayer and eventually the taxpayers of the developed world.

In 2005, Mike Burry (Christian Bale) concludes that the US mortgage market is built on sand because huge numbers of mortgages have been given to people who had no business being given mortgages as their financial situation is hopeless. He correctly predicts that the market will collapse in 2007 and when it does his fund makes a 489% profit. Continue reading →

Posted in Film Reviews, QR Home | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Bath Arms

Posted on August 9, 2016 by leslie

downloadThe Bath Arms

Reviewed by Em Marshall-Luck

The Bath Arms is tucked away in the sleepy village of Horningsham, near Warminster, in a handsome two-hundred year old stone building that commands a view of the village green, flanked by twelve 380 year-old lime trees and surrounded by thatched cottages, well-maintained hedges and flowering magnolias. Although a hub of the closely-knit local community, the pub is a hotel as well, with seventeen rooms split between the upstairs, and what was originally the stable block outside. All rooms are individually furnished, many of them with Eastern themes. Continue reading →

Posted in EpiQR, QR Home | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Of Human Bondage

Posted on August 9, 2016 by leslie

Slaves on the West Coast of Africa, c.1833 (oil on canvas) by Biard, Francois Auguste (1798-1882);  © Wilberforce House, Hull City Museums and Art Galleries, out of copyright

Of Human Bondage

ILANA MERCER puts slavery in historical perspective

First he exposed the History Channel’s miniseries “Roots” as root-and-branch fiction. Now, the courageous epistolary warrior Jack Kerwick has turned his attention to correcting lies about slavery, promulgated in media and scholarly circles.

A point forcefully made by Kerwick is that although a vibrant, indigenous slave trade was conducted well into the nineteenth century in the interior of West Africa, slavery has become the White Man’s cross to bear.

Also omitted, in the course of the “honest” conversation about race directed by our political masters, is that credit for the demise of the slave trade in Africa belongs to Europeans. In his compact study, The Slave Trade (London, 2006), British historian Jeremy Black highlights the “leading role Britain played in the abolition of slavery [as]… an example of an ethical foreign policy.” Britain agonized over this repugnant institution, failed to reconcile it with the Christian faith, and consequently abolished it. Continue reading →

Posted in QR Home | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Philip K Dick mocks Dawkins

Posted on August 7, 2016 by leslie

Richard Dawkins

Philip K Dick mocks Dawkins

Duke Maskell considers a passé discourse

The recently published The Divine Madness of Philip K Dick, by Kyle Arnold, proves, beyond question, that Dick was mad. But Dick, the science-fiction writer, wasn’t so mad that he couldn’t see better than the supposedly sane Richard Dawkins, scientist and would-be theologian, where science comes to a stop and religion begins. He wasn’t so mad that he confused the two. It would be stretching a point to call Dawkins insane. But faith in reason can take forms that are irrational and Dawkins’s faith in the scientific method—in evidence, experiment, verification, proof, probability—goes well beyond the rational, if not into madness, then deeply, into stupidity. And, unlikely as it might seem, Dick, the barmy science fiction writer, shows us how. Continue reading →

Posted in QR Home | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The Hateful 8

Posted on August 7, 2016 by leslie

The-Hateful-Eight-2015-Download-Free-Full-Movies1

The Hateful 8

Film review by Robert Henderson

Director and narrator, Quentin Tarantino

Main cast
Samuel L Jackson as Major Marquis Warren a.k.a. “The Bounty Hunter”
Kurt Russell as John Ruth a.k.a. “The Hangman”
Jennifer Jason Leigh as Daisy Domergue a.k.a. “The Prisoner”
Walton Goggins as Sheriff Chris Mannix a.k.a. “The Sheriff”
Demián Bichir as Bob (Marco the Mexican) a.k.a. “The Mexican”
Tim Roth as Oswaldo Mobray (English Pete Hicox) a.k.a. “The Little Man”
Michael Madsen as Joe Gage (Grouch Douglass) a.k.a. “The Cow Puncher”
Bruce Dern as General Sanford “Sandy” Smithers a.k.a. “The Confederate”

Tarantino is a very annoying director, not least because he is still playing the enfant terrible at an age when the thrill of provoking adults should be long past. The Hateful 8 contains all his filmic outraging stigmata: a great deal of bad and very un-pc language including numerous references to “nigger” from the white characters and a decent helping of “cracker” from the sole black character; much gory slaughter plus a new outraging element in the Tarantino canon, the frequent, brutal treatment of a woman including heavy punches to her face and her eventual death by hanging by suspension. If his works were classified as torture porn he could hardly complain. Continue reading →

Posted in Film Reviews, QR Home | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

ENDNOTES, 3rd August 2016

Posted on August 5, 2016 by leslie
Gustav Mahler, 1902 portrait by Emil Orlik

Gustav Mahler, 1902 portrait by Emil Orlik

ENDNOTES, 3rd August 2016

Endnotes, 3rd August 2016. In this edition, Bernard Haitink conducts the London Symphony Orchestra in the Proms performance of Mahler’s Third Symphony, with Soprano Sarah Connolly, the LSO Chorus & Tiffin Boys’ Choir

The symphonies of Gustav Mahler – and of Bruckner and Beethoven – have had an undisputed champion for the past 60 or so years: Bernard Haitink, conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam. Now in his 87th year, Haitink is a regular artist at the Proms – indeed, I first saw the maestro at the 1982 Proms, conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a programme of Debussy’s Jeux, Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder and Elgar’s First Symphony. On Friday 29th July, Haitink returned to the Royal Albert Hall for a work that is close to his heart: the six-movement, two-part, choral-orchestral Symphony No. 3 in D minor, which Mahler wrote in the early 1890s. Continue reading →

Posted in ENDNOTES:Music, QR Home | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Selective Amnesia

Posted on August 3, 2016 by leslie

 Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-S62600,_Adolf_Hitler

Selective Amnesia

FRANK ELLIS reviews the latest biography of Hitler

Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Ascent 1889-1939 (Adolf Hitler – Biographie. Band 1: Die Jahre des Aufstiegs 1889-1939, S. Fischer Verlag, 2013), translated by Jefferson Chase, The Bodley Head, London, 2016, pp. viii-x, 1-758. Notes, Photos, Bibliography, Index, ISBN 978-1-847-92285-4

Meticulous, thorough and as well documented as they generally are, too many German-language studies of Hitler and the National-Socialist period which have been published since the end of the 1970s suffer from an inability on the part of their authors, all too often a point-blank refusal, to consider that Hitler was not, in Ullrich’s words, ‘the most malevolent person in twentieth-century history’.[1] Nor was the National-Socialist revolution in Thomas Mann’s words, cited by Ullrich, ‘the most hateful and murderous revolution that has ever been’.[2] That honour belongs to the Lenin-Stalin regime. Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment