First recording of it I ever bought, and I've always loved it.

If you're English and my age you won't have been able to avoid it. As canned soup goes, it's better than many. I used to love it as a kid, in fact..... 🍲

Well, you can certainly still get Campbell's soup here, lol ..... 🥫

It's a great review, Mark.

That's all good by the sound of it, David.

Grace Poole is Billie Whitelaw in the Zeffirelli, doing the full Samuel Beckett. A most curious film. I hope that things have sorted themselves a bit after the fire in your study, though. A dreadful thing to happen, I know, and a terrible loss of so much.

That is one I haven't seen, though I've heard fine things about it. I remember Ruth Wilson and Toby Stephens on TV, and on film an underrated 70s version with Susanna York and George C Scott. And Charlotte Gainsbourg and William Hurt directed by Zeffirelli (with Maria Schneider as Rochester's wife)

It's always a horror! But it's also a new beginning, and so, so worth it when it's done. Good luck, Antonio. 👍😊

Good ........

Today's list (tomorrow's may well be very different ......)

Beethoven 6
Berlioz Fantastique
Liszt Dante
Brahms 4
Tchaikovsky 3
Sibelius 1
Prokofiev 2
Shostakovich 6

Glorious. And actually I'm not all that surprised about her perfection of line.

Thanks so much, Mark!

I'd love to see it, if so. To my knowledge it's not been shown yet. Didn't get to it in the end, as I wasn't well on the day I had a ticket. Only heard it on the radio.

Ouch ........

👍

Yes, I agree. And it's Vigny's omission of Shakespeare's Act I, as well, that makes me think he was Boito's source - everywhere Vigny leaves something out, Boito follows. We crucially lose "She has deceived her father and may thee," (spoken in fact by her father), which is where the rot starts.

No worries, Mathieu. I understood what you meant. She's very much a sexual being in both play and opera. It's just that her language in Boito is toned down in comparison to the play.

He may be right. She certainly enjoys double entendres when talking with Emilia. That worried the 19th century, which wanted her to be some sort of pre-Raphaelite icon. My theory is that Boito's actual source is not Shakespeare but Vigny's Maure de Venise. Both men get rid of all that, of course....