Sir john tomlinson biography of michael jackson

Opera. Radio 3. Glyndebourne.
Debate: does opera matter? What is the future for opera? Still there?

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The problem with the word “opera” is that even if you have never seen or heard one—and in fact have only come across it through the tatty realm of Simon Cowell and his camp, rich-man’s fascination with its sensual glamour and mystique—you will have a very definite opinion about what it is, and why it is not for you. Expensive, stuffy, kitsch, snobby, bloated, fancy. . . old. We’re fifty years after aesthetic autocrat Pierre Boulez proposed that the correct response to the perceived ossification of opera was to “blow the opera houses up,” but then he didn’t quite mean that, only that he too, with his usual irreverence, was trying to work out what to do with it, how to modernize it, keeping the usual repertoire, but developing new ways to present new forms. Nothing changes, including the des

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