Anniversaries

As an eight-year-old schoolboy, what I recall about the death of King George VI, 60 years ago yesterday, was just one thing: all day long boring (so it then seemed) music, and music alone, poured out of the radio. Today, we celebrate another anniversary, 200 years since the birth of Charles Dickens. His recent biographer, the indefatigable Claire Tomalin, writes a Happy Birthday letter to him in the Guardian: she wishes she could summon up for lunch "in a cheerful restaurant" some of his friends - amongst whom she mentions my 4 greats-uncle Clarkson Stanfield, to whom Dickens dedicated Little Dorrit. I bought this photograph of him in old age a year or so ago on eBay.

Pura sicco me un angelo

I've been Listening Again to the Royal Opera House's La Traviata, broadcast on New Year's Eve (when I missed it). No performance by this particular cast seems to have been reviewed, but it does contain at least one outstanding interpretation, that of Ailyn Pérez in the title rôle. Nothing can quite erase the impression Ileana Cotrubas or Montserrat Caballé made on this impressionable listener in the Gods at Covent Garden decades ago; but Pérez sang with an intensity which I've not heard for a long time. Her vocal acting reminded me of Callas, which is saying a lot.

The words in the heading were not of course sung in reference to Violetta; and probably shouldn't be applied either to our granddaughter, who has been staying with us for a nice while; but she did look rather adorable, feeding the ducks by The Park's lake yesterday, in her "new" (eBay) coat. She's been enjoying Darcey Bussell's take on Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Debbie Reynolds and Cyd Charisse, sitting on my knee.

[I've since read of Hugh Canning's enthusiasm for Pérez's Violetta.]