MY VERSION OF EVENTS....

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Showing posts from June, 2019

Portrait of Debbie Lamprell - read out at the Grenfell Inquiry

1. My name is Miriam Lamprell. I am 79 years of age and I lost my only child, Debbie, in the fire at Grenfell Tower. I have asked Mike Volpe to read this because it is impossibly hard for me to stand up and read this out, but I am here. And I will be coming to the Inquiry, as difficult as it will be to find out what happened to Debbie. 2. I had Debbie in the maternity hospital in Walthamstow in 1971 and brought her home to the flat in Hinds Park where I still live. Debbie and her father, my husband, Reg, lived there together right through her childhood and she stayed with us all through her early adulthood when she took her first jobs, until Debbie moved out when she was 31. We were an incredibly close and happy family. We loved Debbie and Debbie was devoted to us. We were blessed with Debbie in a way that is very special. 3. Because Debbie was an only child we encouraged her ...

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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Portrait of Debbie Lamprell - read out at the Grenfell Inquiry

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

Sometimes, facts really don't matter to people

Women in opera

New horizons