You speak an infinite deal of nothing. The Merchant is another oddity of a play. Like many Shakespeare plays, it has two parallel storylines – that of Portia and her marriage woes, and that of Shylock the Jew. One is a romantic comedy. The other is… an uneasy tragedy of horrifying proportions. The romantic comedy … More Shakespeare Saturday: The Merchant of Venice
What surety of the world, what hope, what stay, When this was now a king and now is clay? King John is something of an oddity among Shakespeare’s history plays. Like the much later Henry VIII, it is a standalone work rather than part of a cycle. It is written entirely in verse. The play … More Shakespeare Saturday: King John
Now, this is opera. Il Trovatore is one of the major works by Verdi, a smash hit from the get go – within the first three years of its 1853 premiere, it had been performed thousands of times, in over two hundred different productions. I have heard it being described as a hit parade in … More My mad summer of opera, Part 4: Il Trovatore
Lord, what fools these mortals be! Midsummer Night’s Dream is a strange beast of a play. While many Shakespeare plays have a secondary plot concerning a secondary set of characters, Midsummer Night’s Dream doesn’t really have a main story line or a main character – there are four pairs of lovers, and four plots that … More Shakespeare Saturday: Midsummer Night’s Dream
Here is Shakespeare. Juliet’s balcony is as instantly recognisable as Shakespearean as is Hamlet’s skull and dagger. It’s the greatest love story ever told – two feuding families, two young people determined to be together no matter what, an unhappy ending. Unlike Shakespeare in Love would have you believe, Shakespeare didn’t actually invent this tale. … More Shakespeare Saturday: Romeo and Juliet
Werther is, for me, a strange opera. It’s full of beautiful music, it’s all about tragic love, and yet if fails to thrill. It’s based on Goethe’s late 18th century novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, and simply tells the story of a young, comfortably off middle class man falling in love to for a … More My mad summer of opera, Part 3: Werther
You may my glories and my state depose, But not my griefs; still am I king of those. The contention was about the end of the War of the Roses and the Yorks; the second history tetralogy goes further back in time, exploring the history of the Lancaster branch of the House of Plantagenet. Richard … More Shakespeare Saturday: Richard II
Shakespeare for absolute beginners 