dirac

Thanks for that. I was out and about today and had to miss it.

The chair and table in Le Jeune Homme et la Mort come to mind and the rope, natch. Suzanne Farrell says in her book that she and Paul Mejia had a private joke about Bejart's choreography: "Have chair, will travel."

Yes, thanks so much, rg. Great picture.

Kempson's career took a back seat to family very early, but whenever I saw her in later years her performances stood out. It's been a long time since I saw the series but I still remember her scene as Lady Manners listening to the interrogation of Hari Kumar.

This broadcast is tomorrow. I hope anyone who hears/sees it will report back here.

I understand what you mean, stinger784. It's been a very long time since I saw it and I've been content to respect it from afar. I was reminded of it again when Tarantino quoted from it, visually, in Inglourious Basterds. Curious to see this new version, though.

Well, not completely, it seems. Still, this is good news.

Raising and addressing questions are valuable skills, of course. Unfortunately, answering questions accurately is not so easy. My original point, bart, is that saying the Earl of Oxford was such a meanie that he could not have produced great plays, which was the gist of the reviewer's quote, is not the strongest argument to muster, and I still think so. Surely there is enough empirical evidence to marshal. The Oxfordians do and have relied on exactly such ad hominem arguments. Depp did play an aristocratic literary figure of distinction recently and wasn't quite up to it, but it could have been the material. (He's a perfectly good actor.) He does bear a slight resemblance to Cortot, oddly enough. Hello, Drew. Good to hear from you in this forum.

All true, of course. But the layers of empathy and sensitivity in Shakespeare are so extensive and so deep. There's also the matter of Shakespeare's knowledge of and caring about a wide range of social classes, as Quiggin says. "Human flaws" are compatible with these qualities and no doubt enrich them. But only to a point, I think. Hard to say where the point is, though. It was a very different era. The questions about knowledge of classes and the nature of personality and biography have all been raised by the Oxfordians, so you're playing on their field....

There are strong arguments against Oxford, but surely the "character issue" isn't one of them. Many great writers have been men of unsavory reputation. And Tudor courts were malicious places. Haven't read the book, of course.

That point has been raised by Shakespeare's defenders over the years, in response to the Oxfordians' contention that only an aristocrat would be able to write about the nobility as Shakespeare did. That knife cuts both ways.

Rhys Ifans is already cast. He's a versatile actor and should do fine.

Thanks for chiming in, Ed and Jayne. Ah, the hazards involved in leaving the house.

I should note the item to which I linked has a minor boo-boo - it's Robert Cecil's father Lord Burghley who is thought by some to have inspired some aspects of the character of Polonius, not Robert, who was quite a different sort. Quite a cast, so far. And Oxfordians Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance are lined up for it.

I see what you mean, Simon, but. We know now that Fonteyn was in some ways quite the bohemian there have been great ballerinas who were not such, in fact rather the reverse, and to say their art suffered for it would be to venture into very chancy territory, or so it seems to me. The recharging of her career in her early forties was due mainly to the advent of Nureyev (and I refer to what happened in the rehearsal hall, not the hotly debated bedroom question) and also, I suspect, because she had never really been pushed to her limits on the technical side. I have the impression that Giselle is the role of choice for many older ballerinas as they drift toward the exit and if you compare it to some of the other classics that makes a certain amount of sense. Thank you for the clips, Cristian. Not ideal, but we must be grateful for what's still out there.

A new movie, "Anonymous" takes up the cause of the Earl of Oxford as the true author of Shakespeare's plays. The writer of the script responds to an op-ed in The Los Angeles Times. With Emmerich as the director, this film sounds dangerously entertaining, although Orloff shows signs of seriousness. Thoughts?

I hear the series is good, although I've never seen it. (Political incorrectness I tend to evaluate on a case-by-case basis.) It's certainly encouraging that a show with a musical performing theme is doing so well.

Yes, that's the name. Times have certainly changed.

Thanks for posting, Mashinka. It may be that some of the critics didn't think it was a big deal - as the article notes, it's happened before. (The aria does come rather early in the evening. There's an old story about a famous tenor whose name escapes me who cut it entirely for that reason, which is going a bit far. ) But it's nice that Loomis noted the change and so informed his readers.

RIP. I tend to think of her voice as lighter than Stignani's, which I suppose it was, but still it's really very powerful. Simionato and the One and Only tearing the house down in 1957.

Thanks, Ray.

Goodbye to Lynn, the funny Redgrave. She did a great turn as the Queen in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask. Her career had its ups and downs but latterly she was doing some fine serious work for Bill Condon in Gods and Monsters and Kinsey. She was good in Spider, too. So sad we lost her even as she was demonstrating different aspects of her talent.

I hope Vanessa is going in for her checkups. Very hard, losing brother, sister, and daughter in so short a time.

More bad news for the Redgrave family. RIP: Corin Redgrave Lynn Redgrave

I haven't seen the movie yet but that's certainly what it sounds like. Ignoring the role Bass played in Sar's story (and that story's making it to the screen) would be ignoring the proverbial elephant in the room. (It's off topic, but that did happen at least once, in a high profile feature film, 'The Insider' with Russell Crowe and Al Pacino. Pacino, the producer, is very clearly the man behind the story while the correspondent (Mike Wallace, played by Christopher Plummer) parachutes in after everything's been set up for him. Wallace wasn't pleased. Broadcast News, too. Of course, those were a long time ago. )