Today sees the opening of the World's Biggest Music Festival
Between now and 10 September every evening (and some afternoons) there will be at least one concert in the Royal Albert Hall. Seats from as little as £6; top price £40. Standing for less. Some are totally sold out. Unless you want to spend all day queuing for a Promming ticket. All will be broadcast and webcast live on BBC Radio 3; many will be televised.
This is the first of an occasional series of Gert's Personal Proms recommendations.
Today is the First Night. I would be there with enthusiasm if I wasn't otherwise engaged: Berlioz
Overture - The Corsair (I don't know it);
Mendelssohn - Violin Concerto in E minor (my favourite Violin concerto, reviewed here and here.
Elgar - Overture - Cockaigne. It's a London thing.
And Tippett - A Child of Our Time, a piece I fell in love with here and revisited here. Tippett began writing A Child of Our Time in 1938 following the shooting of a German diplomat by a 17-year old Polish Jew - the retribution was the murder of Jews on Kristallnacht, and is poignantly fitting for an evening dedicated to the victims of last week's bombings. BBC1 7pm, BBC2 8pm. Big Screen in Trafalgar Square, and elsewhere. Pressing the red button will enhance your enjoyment...
Tomorrow is Gilbert and Sullivan. Having an inbuilt aversion to G&S, I shall be missing this with glee. But it's a good line-up of singers and an excellent conductor, so if you don't share my G&S allergy, it might be good. It will be shown on TV on 18 August.
Sunday is Purcell's Fairy queen, a lovely opera, based on A Midsummer Night's Dream. I would like to go, but I have a conflicting engagement.
Monday is the Prom that I am most looking forward to of all, Wagner's Die Walküre, delayed broadcast on BBC4 at 7.30pm. Absolutely top class cast, and if last Friday's performance at the Royal Opera House, and reports from Tuesday's are anything to go by, it will be a very special treat. I'm going again this afternoon, detailed review over the weekend.
The Times says
If the scenes at the Royal Opera House are anything to go by, Promenaders are in for a treat next week. Plácido Domingo, Waltraud Meier and Bryn Terfel are setting the place ablaze in Die Walküre. Domingo and Meier have to take curtain calls at the end of the first act as the audience applaud and stamp their feet. It was pandemonium, said one staffer. If that is what happens at the usually sedate Covent Garden, what will Promenaders do at the Walküre concert performance at the Albert Hall on Monday?
The music is lush and gorgeous - Wagner was surely the inspiration for the very best, most atmospheric film soundtracks. Oh, and did I mention there's a stellar cast? And UK Blogdom supplies one of the Valkyries, Gerhilde
Tuesday sees a pleasant-looking Prom, certainly Vaughan Williams' London Symphony (it's a London thing...). I would quite like to go, but I suspect that by Tuesday evening I might just need time to breathe in, breathe out. Perhaps I shall watch it on BBC4 from 7.30pm. Or see how I feel at about 6pm. I have a season Ticket, I can come and go as I please!
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