John Amis online

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Dog Bites Soprano

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New Glyndebourne Opera August 10 The premiere at Glyndebourne of a new, commissioned opera by Peter Eötvöșa, a Hungarian composer previously...
Friday, August 01, 2008

Aldeburgh Festival

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No.61, June 13 – 29 began with a stinker and ended with a bang. Things here are changing; some of the almost derelict buildings adjacent to ...
2 comments:
Monday, July 21, 2008

A Rake Without Progress

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Neither Stravinsky, Hogarth nor W.H Auden were best served by the new production at Covent Garden of The Rake’s Progress , first night of fi...

Candide/Candud

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Leonard Bernstein was the all-American Mr. Music. He adored applause, he courted it, he got it and he deserved it. On form he was the top co...

Fanciulla and Rusalka

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Grange Park Opera Triumphs Grange Park Opera in Hampshire near Basingstoke has come of age in the current season with its production of Pu...
Monday, July 07, 2008

Opera At Its Best

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Don Carlos at Covent Garden 12.10.58 From ’The Scotsman’ (n.b.date) “To mark the centenary of the opening of the present Royal Opera Hou...
Monday, June 02, 2008

An English Rosenkavalier

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"Too many notes", the Emperor famously rebuked Mozart; and maybe an Emperor could have said "too many words" after the 1...
Sunday, June 01, 2008

Eugene Onegin, Glyndebourne, May 21

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Eugene Onegin is notably superior to Tchaikovsky's other half dozen odd operas. Why? Probably because it was nearer to his private life ...
Thursday, May 15, 2008

Book Review

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THE REST IS NOISE Listening to the Twentieth Century Alex Ross Pp 624 Fourth Estate £20 This book is well worth the money – the best survey ...
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Monday, May 12, 2008

Viva la Diva

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Did you know that Darcey Bussell could speak lines? Or that Kathleen Jenkins could dance? Pop along to your local arena then, and find out f...
5 comments:
Sunday, April 06, 2008

New Rawsthorne for old

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March 30 in the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, had the first performance of Edward Harper’s re-orchestration of Alan Rawsthorne’s cantata Kub...
Thursday, April 03, 2008

Colin Davis celebrates with New Passion

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Sir Colin Davis has been celebrating his 80th birthday in style, conducting Berlioz with the French National Orchestra, Gerontius in Boston...
Thursday, March 27, 2008

Arabella hits Australia

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Which opera by Richard Strauss has a text by Hoffmannsthal, a big soprano monologue to end act one, an important transvestite role and waltz...
Wednesday, March 26, 2008

The wizard in Oz

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Enter a scruffy maestro, Nigel Kennedy himself, him wiv the bovver left boots, tassels a-dangling. He carries his violin in the left hand, ...
Monday, February 18, 2008

The Goon Show of Lammermoor (English National Opera, 16 February)

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It was probably Donizetti's librettist who made Lord Henry Ashton the villain who wrongs Lucia di Lammermoor, instead of Walter Scott...
Sunday, February 17, 2008

A trip to the ballet

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WHY do we call afternoon shows matinees ? Probably too late to change it now; but wouldn't apres-midiens be more accurate? Anyway I went...
1 comment:

Mikado times two

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Political correctness forced Robertsons to remove from their jams the charming gollywog logo. But The Mikado , the most successful of all th...
1 comment:
Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Book review

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Sandor Vegh in Cornwall: the Hungarian Virtuoso Violinist and the founding of the International Musicians Seminar Prussia Cove. By Hilary Tu...
1 comment:
Thursday, January 31, 2008

Remembering Rubinstein

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An evening with this title was given on January 22. It was a curate's egg affair. Good were the filmed tributes from Zubin Menta the con...
Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Billy Budd, The Barbican, 9 December 2007

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When Britten announced that he was going to write an all-male opera we thought he was barking mad (just as we did when he said he was writin...
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About Me

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John Amis
Six weeks in a bank was enough for him to decide to live by and with music. Selling records and writing about them for a high-class gramophone shop, working with London Philharmonic, Symphony and Royal Philharmonic, organising concerts for Myra Hess at the National Gallery and for Michael Tippett whose secretary-dogsbody and friend he was, concert manager for Beecham, music critic for The Scotsman, organiser of the Summer School of Music with William Glock at Bryanston and Dartington for 34 years, broadcaster on radio and TV for 40, during which time he interviewed some 500 of the most famous and interesting musicians, Hindemith to Bernstein, Cage to Swann, Stravinsky to Stockhausen. He has narrated parts in Façade, Peter and the Wolf, Enoch Arden and Babar the Elephant. For his 70th birthday made a CD with friends Leslie Howard, Steve Race, Malcolm Arnold, Donald Swann, Jeffrey Tate and Ian Wallace. His books include an autobiography Amiscellany, an anthology Words about Music and My Life in Music 1945 – 2000, A Photographer at the Aldeburgh Festival (Nigel Luckhurst) and Musicians on Camera (Lelia Goehr).
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