Sarah Brightman – Pie Jesu

Ariadne’s thread

Thousands of literary texts are now available online, all submitted by volunteers. Is this the most enlightened initiative since English studies was invented?
It’s now possible to access 21,000 literary texts (50 more every week) from Project Gutenberg – arguably the most enlightened initiative in literary studies since University College London invented English as a departmental [...]

The women behind Mrs Woolf

For the first half of the 20th century, domestic service was the largest single occupation of British women.
Most middle-class households had one or more servants, many of whom had been sent across the country by families living in harsh rural or urban poverty.
Although the conditions in which they worked varied widely, the fundamental inequality of [...]

Winnie and Wolf

A DISAGREEMENT HAS broken out among the serially quarrelsome Wagner clan as to who should take over the running of the Bayreuth Festival – just in time for the publication of A. N. Wilson’s 20th novel, Winnie and Wolf. The “Winnie” of the title is Winifred Wagner, née Williams, the Welsh-born wife of the composer’s [...]

Michaelangelo Antonioni – Interview, 1969

Charles Thomas Samuels, Encountering Directors (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972), pp. 15-32
Rome, July 29,1969
Feature Films: 1950 Cronaca di un amore (Chronicle of a Love Affair); 1952 I vinti (The Vanquished); 1953 La signora senza camelie (The Lady Without Camellias); 1955 Le amiche (The Girl-Friends); 1957 Il grido (The Outcry); 1959 L’avventura (The Adventure); 1960 [...]

Italian visionary Antonioni dies at 94

Yet another great director!!!
Michelangelo Antonioni, one of the most innovative and distinctive film-makers of the 20th century, has died at the age of 94. The Italian director died at his home in Rome on Monday evening, less than 24 hours after the death of Ingmar Bergman – that other great giant of European art-house cinema.
Alongside [...]

Tradition, revolution and reaction in Bayreuth

The media coverage before the premiere was almost unprecedented, and even surpassed the hype around Christoph Schlingensief’s “Parsifal“. Because this new production of “The Mastersingers of Nuremberg” was not only a festival directing debut, it was also that of a potential festival director. The 29-year-old Katharina Wagner is the daughter and preferred candidate of Wolfgang [...]

20th-Century Literary Genres in a Nutshell: Part 3

Here is the third segment of a short list of literary schools and movements defining the content and styles of novelists, poets, and dramatists who have flourished in the past 100 years.

Ingmar Bergman – The Seventh Seal

George Cukor

b. July 7, 1899, New York City, USA
d. January 23, 1983, Los Angeles, USA
by Dan Callahan
That’s fun, dancing on the edge!
– Little Emily in David Copperfield (1934)
After Norman Maine (James Mason) listens to Esther Blodgett (Judy Garland) sing “The Man That Got Away” in George Cukor’s 1954 version of A Star is Born, he [...]