MY VERSION OF EVENTS....

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Showing posts from January, 2020

New horizons

Today it was announced that on September 30 th , 2020, I will be taking early retirement from my role at Opera Holland Park. Ernest Hemingway once said that 'retirement is the ugliest word in the language' and in recent months, as I contemplated my own, I have come to know what he meant. Even though it is merely a word to describe my departure from Opera Holland Park after thirty-one years, it does 'catch' a bit. Which brings me onto George Burns who said that 'retirement at sixty-five is ridiculous. When I was sixty-five I still had pimples.' I still have metaphorical pimples and remain as childish as ever, so I'm sticking with George's philosophy. I'm not retiring in the conventional sense. I am retiring from Opera Holland Park, a formal, recognised conclusion of a life's work. It says 'my work here is done', not that my working life is. There are one or two big projects still in me. I am grateful to th

Audiences will decide the future of opera

I have news: the audience will decide the future of opera. When our season at Opera Holland Park comes to an end, I pore over spreadsheets trying to find reasons why our audience have behaved in the way that they have, and the most concentrated analysis tends to come after seasons during which our house has been full. The theory is this; if we have underperformed, we are programmed to find solutions, but if we have performed well, we are less likely to look for the gremlins that might lose us that ever-capricious audience in a trice – you are never more vulnerable than when you are successful. Sometimes, though, one can miss the obvious, or perhaps ignore it. In nearly three decades in opera, I have experienced one "boom" in the art form but an almost perpetual "crisis" of confidence, an alarmed perma-reflection on whether we remain relevant as an art form. This introspective brew is spiced by the occasional real crisis, like that recently at ENO, but we never real

Sometimes, facts really don't matter to people

Since the Brexit vote, and especially since the recent Autumn statement, there has been something familiar nagging at me; the remarkable refusal of Brexiters to accept or acknowledge the facts set out by the government and in the OBR's forecasts. It reminds me of something, a feeling I have had before. I know that the expression post-truth annoys a lot of people, but it is a thing, it really exists. People, for whatever reason can knowingly refuse to accept bare facts when it suits them. It isn't a new phenomenon at all. I am bound to say, moreover, that I have tended to experience it in a malign sense, when the things people want to believe are unconscionable or driven by prejudice of one kind or another. Last night I remembered where it was that I had last seen the phenomenon and it was an experience that left me astonished at the time, but which also provoked in me a genuine disgust for my fellow citizens. I am afraid it is an unpleasant parallel scenario, but it was pro

MY VERSION OF EVENTS....

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New horizons

Audiences will decide the future of opera

Journalists: keep it simple!

XTC -This is Pop (Documentary, Sky 1)

The Oxbridge divide

My name is Jose Mourinho, and I'm not Special (at the moment)

Gelb and The Met

Women in opera

Sometimes, facts really don't matter to people

New horizons