Hope you like the LEG autobiography if you get it. I'm really enjoying it although the bit where she can't sing is quite painful to read.

Re neglected operas, has anyone staged Holst's "Savitri"? I know there have been concert performances. I like the music but I suppose staging it might present certain Monty Python related difficulties these days ("I am death" etc ).

I went to see Lakmé at Holland Park last night.  It's always been a mystery to me why a work that contains one of the most famous excerpts in the repertoire - and, imho, much thoroughly enjoyable music besides - is so seldom staged.  Do they think nobody would come?  I think all performances of this run are sold out.  We had to go to the 'ticket exchange' on the operahollandpark website to get tickets and, despite the heavy rain, I didn't see a single empty seat last night. 

Ah Reiner.....

Yes:  The Medium is interesting, but my vote in Menotti would be for The Consol it is an amazingly powerful opera. It does not require complicated staging and it is a mystery to me that this is not staged....an ideal work for ENO I would have thought?

I would love to see The Parson of Reigi ( Eduard Tubin ). I have long admired this score, but I do not think it has ever appeared in the UK.

MK

Ho!  I have always thought that Wolf-Ferrari's "I Gioielli della Madonna" is an opera that should be taken up here in the U.K.   It is a fine, dramatic, exciting score with good choruses and powerful principal parts.

Blimey, Soundwave, that's a rare recording indeed!  I think it was done by Chelsea Opera Group - is that the recording you have?   Storace was still relatively young (in his early 20s) when he did COMEDY OF ERRORS,  so I'm not surprised if there are few longeurs in it    His works after returning to England from Vienna are a bit more substantial, and he correctly read the public taste for "grand spectacle" and plots we might term "romantic"...  "The Haunted Tower" (a ghostly thriller), "The Pirates" (swashbuckling stuff), "The Siege Of Belgrade" (heroic derring-do, based on the attempted Turkish invasion of Austria of 1784), "The Cherokee" (not quite the first operatic western, but the first successful one) and a lost work, "Dido, Queen Of Carthage" (claimed to have been his best, by his acquaintances - but apparently "too advanced" for the London public, and it failed).   There are also some occasional pieces which might have been assembled or rearranged for existing material or new-composed - "The Glorious First Of June", and the intriguing (but lost) "A View Of The English Fleet In 1394".  There are always extensive tenor & soprano showpiece arias in his pieces, written for his collaborators Mick Kelly and "Signora Storace" (his sister).  The "ghost encounter" aria from "Haunted Tower",  "Spirit Of My Sainted Sire!" became a warhorse favourite for parlour tenors, and was taken up by John Braham, who became expected to include it as an encore in all his concerts - it turns up in parlour music anthologies until the 1850s, long after the opera itself was forgotten.  Have you ever encountered the piece?  Braham was something of a heartthrob, and there are accounts of ladies fainting at the fortissimo (written) top-Bb at the centre of the piece

I don't know Wolf-Ferrari well at all - I was rather put-off by SCHOOL FOR FATHERS, which seemed a very laboured comedy when I saw it 2-3 years ago...  but the production and singing didn't help it much

There are whole clumps of Massenet and Gounod which have disappeared from sight, aren't there?  I found the aria "Nuit Resplendissante" from Gounod's CINQ-MARS as a single sheet, and it's great..  but you can't find either hide or hair of the rest of the opera, and it's not recorded.  To my shame I didn't even realise Massenet had written a CLEOPATRE

Well, thank Heavens for an exchange rate of $2=£1, then, IGI!   At least it makes the eyes smart slightly less when delving deep into the pockets for such laudable ephemera    Please let us know what you find once you finally place this exotic purchase in your player?

Why does this mental picture come to mind?   

Ho Reiner.  After an hours searching I found the Storace tapes this morning.  Fortunately my brother had cut a portion of the Radio Times programme and put it with the tapes.  Cast includes John Tomlinson, Colin Wheatley, Neil Jenkins, Kenneth Bowen, Alan Watt, Malcolm King, Lesley Fyson, Janet Price, Eiddwen Harrhy and Della Jones.  BBC Northern SO, cond. Steuart Bedford.  No other info on the cutting.  Pretty good cast, eh?  It must be pretty old as the number my brother put on the cassettes is 83.
Cheers