August 2018

The weather has been cool in Cumbria. I was intrigued by how comparatively cool and green everything was compared with Being in Norfolk last month. i had an interesting ride on the Carlisle-Settle line (see Review-Railways).

Jonas Kaufmann

Towards th end of the month, we went to a film at Cineworld purporting to be a live broadcast from Berlin’s Waldbühne. What it was in fact was a compendium of his appearance there to promote his latest disc ‘La Dolce Vita’ which features Italian songs, many of which Beniomino Gigli in particualar made his own. In the past, while admiring his magnificent voice, i was not enamoured of his singing these Italian songs. He veered between a lovely soft  mezzo voce and stentorian upper register tenor, without caressing or altering the volume of quality of his voice. He was quite unsmiling while singing also. His guest artist was Georgian  singing artist Anita Rachvelishvili who had a ravishing mezzo-soprano of quite outstanding evenness of production throughout her not inconsiderable range. She embraced the music warmly,  obviously not only understood what she was singing , but displayed the  range of tone required and so enjoyed performing so generously. She is was my star of the show.