Summer reading...

I've just heard that the redoubtable A.N. Wilson has written a novel about Winifred Wagner's relationship with Hitler. Entitled Winnie and Wolf, it's due for release on 16 August. Here's the synopsis from Amazon:

"Winnie and Wolf" is the story of the extraordinary relationship between Winifred Wagner and Adolf Hitler that took place during the years 1925-40, as seen through the eyes of the secretary at the Wagner house in Bayreuth. Winifred, an English girl, brought up in an orphanage in East Grinstead, married at the age of eighteen to the son of Germany's most controversial genius, is a passionate Germanophile, a Wagnerian dreamer, a Teutonic patriot. In the debacle of the post-Versailles world, the Wagner family hope for the coming, not of a warrior, a fearless Siegfried, but of a Parsifal, a mystic idealist, a redeemer-figure. In 1925, they meet their Parsifal - a wild-eyed Viennese opera-fanatic in a trilby hat, a mac and a badly fitting suit. Hitler has already made a name for himself in some sections of German society through rabble-rousing and street corner speeches. It is Winifred, though, who believes she can really see his poetry. Almost at once they drop formalities and call one another 'Du' rather than 'Sie'. She is Winnie and he is Wolf. Like Winnie, Hitler was an outsider. Like her, he was haunted by the impossibility of reconciling the pursuit of love and the pursuit of power; the ultimate inevitability, if you pursued power, of destruction. Both had known the humiliations of poverty. Both felt angry and excluded by society. Both found each other in an unusual kinship that expressed itself through a love of opera. In A.N. Wilson's most bold and ambitious novel yet, the world of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany is brilliantly recreated, and forms the backdrop to this incredible bond, which ultimately reveals the remarkable capacity of human beings to deceive themselves.

That should keep us busy on the beach - there's no way I'm waiting for the paperback. Order your copy now...

Wilson has recently reviewed Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for The Times and makes it sound positively Wagnerian. Dumbledore as Wotan, perhaps???

More about the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra

Thanks to 'Pamos' for the alert to this fascinating article by Ed Vuilliamy that appeared in The Observer last weekend. He's been to Venezuela to see the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra in action and meet some of its young players, whose aspirations and whole lives have been transformed by their involvement with music-making.

Thomas and Isolde

We had a very wonderful evening celebrating Tom's birthday at a gorgeous venue close to Glyndebourne yesterday, kindly lent by the dear friend who lives there...highlights of a heady occasion included the presence of many friends from far-flung places, champagne with which our cup overflowed, our neighbour the fabulous jazz pianist who used to play on the Queen Mary, a lot of potato salad and a chocolate cake with sparklers on top that set off our generous host's fire alarm & produced a fire engine in the drive within minutes. The hunky Sussex fireman was then accused of being a strippergram, though Tom might have been mystified by that choice.

And Nina Stemme was there too, having wandered in unsuspecting with her family to explore the house as tourists during the afternoon, fresh from the Tristan dress rehearsal the day before; we rushed to add them to our guest list. Beg, borrow or steal a return for this production - it is one of the greats - and Nina towers at the top of it, surely one of most glorious Isoldes around. Above, the birthday boy with his Isoldegram.

Of course, Wagner's first draft was called Thomas and Isolde, but his publisher said that the sales and marketing department advised changing the hero's name to something not associated with tank engines. :-)

Talking about...

...the latest singing sensation to be signed up by Universal - baroque singer Elin Manahan Thomas's first solo CD 'Eternal Light' went straight into the classical charts at no.2. She can really sing, but isn't she in danger of being marketed as the thinking person's Kathryn Jenkins? She says not, but do the pictures say otherwise? Here's my interview with her from today's Independent (under the occasional Talking Classical column). And here's her website, so have a listen to her rather lovely voice.

It's Tom's half century today!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TOM!

We are off for a day of celebration, to include a posh lunch and the purchasing of rather a lot of cheese.

The pic was us in Argentina last year. We haven't changed too much since then, though are currently less tanned.