This is in today's edition of Scotland On Sunday: my article about the Opera de Tours's production of the musical comedy L'amour masque by Andre Messager & Sascha Guitry. (This is the reason I've been getting interested in Guitry & co recently...). It's at the Edinburgh Festival from 1 to 3 September and I think it sounds fabulous - wish I could be there to hear it. You may need to register at the Scotsman website to get into the article, but it is quick, free and harmless. More info about the show from the EIF website here.
It is extraordinary, the way that one artistic passion can turn out to relate to many others in unsuspected ways. When I set out to write Faure's biography, I had no idea that he would turn out to have connections to one of my favourite writers, Turgenev; or that a ballet of Alain-Fournier's wonderful novel Le Grand Meulnes would have been made to his music (Andrée Howard's La fete etrange - being staged at the Royal Opera House in October); or that his friend Messager would have dedicated to Faure's memory the music he wrote to Guitry's play Deburau which may well have helped to inspire my favourite film Les Enfants du Paradis. Weird, eh? Or simply a symptom of attraction on my part to a particular aesthetic that is shared, in one way or another, between them all? As they say in Russian, 'Bog zniyet...'
