Mary, you're right: I mixed up my dates. The Visconti film was 1971, but because I'd seen it with a teacher from school, I'd assumed it was 1969, my final year: I 've only just remembered that I was already at KCL, and that she brough a coach party up to London, which I joined at the cinema. So the film would have been released in the summer of 1971, by which time work - or at least planning - on Wingrave must have been well under way, since the premiere was the following year.

 Hello. again, old1.  Good to meet up so soon.

I, too, saw the ON production of "Gloriana" at Leeds in the early 90s, on a couple of occasions.   Perhaps it wasn't as strongly cast as the ENO production with Sarah Walker, several years earlier, but for me, Josephine Barstow has no equal.   Simply magnificent and her stage presence makes her a standout performer and I've seen her in a whole range of roles with ENO, from the 1970s and even, occasionally with Scottish Opera.   Delighted to read in the Sunday Times culture magazine that she recently performed at the Wigmore Hall - my favourite venue during my working years in London - and her debut there, ye gods!

However, you may recall that the Opera North "Gloriana" was recorded for BBC 2, perhaps a tad disappointingly, as the concept focussed on the staging of a performance from the moment Dame Josephine arrived at the stage door with only intermittent sequences from the opera.   Recently, I've seen advertising for this production on DVD and must find out whether it is, in fact a performance or a copy of the BBC 2 transmission which I already have as an off-air recording.

You will find yourself in the company of many Britten enthusiasts on these MBs with, indeed, a champion specialist on his work.    Janacek has also been aired recently, following last week's broadcast of "From The House of the Dead" and Puccini is always in the wings, so to speak.      Do keep posting and tell us about your outings or highlights.

  Thanks, Ron.    I'll save m'bawbees for another venture.

 Indeed, I've viewed the ENO 'Carmen', deliberately from a backstage point of view, as I still get a frisson when  I sense the pent-up anxieties in the wings.   And the lot out-front needn't have felt likewise as I am not a singer, although I understand  the technique of putting over a number.  The ENO venture - caper? - isn't intended for repeated  viewing.

The BBC Music magazine (Nov) have listed the ROH Zambello production of "Carmen" for BBC 2 (tbc) along with "The Magic of Carmen" a feature on the staging.    Anna Caterina Antonacci in the title role with Antonio Pappano in the pit.       Mettle more attractive methinks.

Just shows that it takes all sorts - I found this Covent Garden production a complete yawn whereas I couldn't take my eyes off the Potter one. It's worth catching for the singing though, esp Jonas Kaufmann.

I don't think the ENO Gloriana (which is available on DVD, by the way - I've got it) is at all dull. I find the other DVD (Opera North) rather irritating.

The Mackerras recording is excellent.

The McVicar production is being bought in from Scottish Opera, and is very good - I saw it in Edinburgh a year ago.

The end of Gloriana is surely more about the conflict of the myth against reality: Elizabeth considering her achievements and the sacrifices made in order to attain them: a slow-motion version of life flashing before her eyes before death: in some ways it's as much as Masque as that in the Norwich scene: it's a very stylised dramatic representation, which I'm pretty sure is meant to exist in some sort of Dream Time rather than in real time.

As for Turn of the Screw, poor little Flora is damaged goods from the start, isn't she? Somewhat unhinged? The lullaby for dolly, and the listing of seas in the scene by the lake are both suggestive of little Mad Scenes, though the main one is the very blatant instrumental interlude leading up to Mrs Grose's acceptance that the Governess has been right all along, and her departure for London with Flora. (If the ghosts are purely a figment of the Governess's imagination, though, that lays a very different slant on where the madness lies, and renders the whole of the last scene with Miles as an exposition of delusion: that being the case, what (or even more precisely, who) exactly causes the child's death?)