DEVON Opera’s young singers will tackle one of the most popular – and vocally demanding – operas for their spring production – Puccini’s La Boheme, which will be staged at the Barnfield Theatre, Exeter, on 15th and 16th May. It is so well-known that it is easy to overlook just how vocally and emotionally demanding…
ANYONE who has followed the growing success of peregrine falcons finding lofty nest sites on our ancient cathedrals and other high buildings will probably know that Salisbury Cathedral now has a long-established peregrine roost on the tower. This year the peregrine pair had four eggs and for those who keep an eye on the peregrine-cam…
IF you were asked to identify a grave-digger in literature, chances are you would remember Hamlet, and that blackly comic scene by Ophelia’s grave when the prince picks up the skull of the clown he remembers from childhood and proceeds to ruminate on the fragility of life. This provides the inspiration for the new Ridiculusmus…
SINGERS from several Dorset choirs have been working with Anglo-Chilean band Quimantú on a project that ends on 15th, 2oth and 22nd June with concerts at Sturminster Newton and at London’s “Actors Church”. The collaboration, organised by rural touring charity, Artsreach, has brought Misa de los Mineros (The Miners’ Mass) to audiences across the county….
ONE of the few criticisms of the Roald Dahl and Ken Hughes 1968 screenplay of Ian Flemings children’s fantasy Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, with music added by the Sherman brothers, was that it was too long at, 2 hours 25 minutes. This new production, which draws a long tour to a close when, after leaving…
DORSET Opera Festival celebrates its 20th anniversary at Bryanston School’s Coade Hall this year, following its move to Blandford from its original home at Sherborne School. This year’s festival will run from 22nd to 26th July, and will include two formal dinners in Bryanston House. The opera programme is thrilling, with Verdi’s cruel but musically…
APRIL de Angelis’s play Playhouse Creatures, commissioned by Sphinx Theatre in Leicester in 1993, might have been a historical drama about the life of the famous Mary Betterton, known as the first actress of the English stage – or about Nell Gwynn, the orange seller who enraptured King Charles II. But it is much more…
REWILDING is quite a buzz word these days, but what does it actually mean? And did you know there is a thriving rewinding project in Dorset? Learn more about it at a Gillingham Action for Nature meeting, on Thursday 1st May, at 7pm at Gillingham Vicarage schoolrooms. Many people will have heard of, or even…
ALTHOUGH they were written one hundred years apart, in 1772 and 1888 with one throwing the spotlight on French nobility and the other on Swedish society, there are many parallels between Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ Les Liaisons Dangereuses and August Strindberg’s Miss Julie. Both feature debauched nobility corrupted by money and the absolute power that…
IT has been 12 years since the musical adaptation of The Witches of Eastwick, a show spawned by the 1987 film that followed hot on the heels of the publication of John Updike’s novel in 1984, was released for amateur performance. Now it arrives on stage in Milborne Port, providing a very different show for…