Just a quick 'heads up' that, following tonight's Prom, there's a repeat broadcast of the Sheffield Theatre production of Don Carlos, in a translation by Mike Poulton, which was a great success and had a run in the West End. Derek Jacobi was quite superb as Philip II, with Richard Coyle as Carlos.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/dramaon3/pip/l80lx/

Reiner, I saw the production when it was at the Gielgud Theatre in 2005 (same cast) and it was terrific. I seem to recall that Hytner did Schiller's DC some years ago, so I look forward to his take on the Verdi next year.

I've recorded it as I do Drama on 3 most weeks so I hope to listen to it soon, especially as it gets such a ringing endorsement from MJ & IGI.

A fine performance, especially from Derek Jacobi. The ending comes quickly after the Philip/ Inquisitor scene, with Philip handing his son over with the line "Cardinal. I've played my part. Now you must play yours." Chilling.

Mike Poulton's translation has been published:

OK, Andy:
 Sitting on and beside my desk are a Mac and a PC, both of which are connected to off-board FireWire soundcards (one's a Behringer F-control Audio, about £50's worth, the other an M-Audio 410, a little more pricey). I'm using two tuners in conjunction with these, and they get swapped about for various reasons. There's a Cambridge T100 FM and a PURE 701 ES DAB, which are connected by high quality audio cable to the soundcards, and are fed by good external aerials.

The sound from the FM (and also from the DAB when I'm using its analogue output) goes straight into the A/D converter on whichever soundcard, and unless it's something very special, will be recorded at 16/44.1 - the same standard as CD. On both the PC and the Mac using my normal software, this gives just over 3 hours 22 minutes of stereo sound per 2GB file, which will be backed up onto DVD at the end of the day: two full files (plus oddments) onto a DVD which costs about 30p nowadays - rather less than 5p an hour for very high quality material. If I'm taking the digital feed from the DAB, then it will be at 16/48, which means slightly less running time per file, plus the need for standards coversion should I want to make a CD. Added backup comes from satellite radio feeding an HDD/DVD recorder, and a clever satellite system called elgato eye-tv as an alternative feed for the Mac, which has very flexible timing arrangements and stores satellite radio at the same rate at which it's received, allowing just over 40 hours' worth of still fairly decent quality sound on one DVD. Anything I wish to extract can be edited from the hard drives or DVDs onto CDR , or other DVDs, for intensive use. It's a tad more fussy than using MD, but the results are even finer, and the running costs low for such wonderful sound. (What I was paying for reel-to-reel tape in the 70s and 80s before switching to PCM onto videotape in the 90s hardly bears thinking about. And this takes far less space, too: Archive DVDs sit in those big CD albums, just one of which can contain more music than a whole wall of tape shelves.)

That's the short version, but I'll happily answer further questions....

Errm...

It's just like having a big library, Andy; it's all there when I want it, but it's true that some of what I've hoarded may never be heard again. On the other hand, the Dough Archive could prove a useful resource for the future and there are more than a handful on this board who have already been able to hear (or see) performances which they'd assumed were lost forever.

I'm finding it very hard to cull humble old cassette recordings of live relays of operas from the ROH way back in the 70s and 80s. These were made with the microphone placed in front of the radio so the sound quality isn't exactly perfect but I can't resist keeping them - there's something very special about a live opera recording, especially if the ensemble singing's slightly out with the orchestra or a top note's fluffed...no, I can't throw these out!