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Anna Bolena at WNO

Posted in History, Opera with tags , , , , on September 9, 2013 by telescoper

It was the Last Night of the Proms on Saturday, but I was otherwise engaged at the First Night of the new production by Welsh National Opera of Anna Bolena by Gaetano Donizetti at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff. This is one of three famous Donizetti operas set in the Tudor period (Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux) which I was slightly surprised to learn are collectively often described as the “Three Donizetti Queens”; I’m not sure what this implies about the erstwhile Earl of Essex. Anyway, as a fan of Italian bel canto I decided I just had to go to see Anna Bolena in Cardiff, even though it meant a trek back to Brighton yesterday. Hopefully I’ll be able to see the other two Queens in due course.

Anna Bolena is Donizetti’s imagining of the last days of the life of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII, so it’s basically the dark story of a young woman trapped in a web of intrigue and betrayal, a story made all the darker by the fact that it is based on real events. I wonder if such a plot would have ever have been considered plausible if it hadn’t actually happened?

The opera begins with Anna already having lost favour with her husband Enrico (Henry VIII), who is intent on ditching her in favour of  Jane (Giovanna) Seymour (who would shortly become Wife Number Three), but he first has to find a pretext to have her got rid of. Enrico lays a trap involving her brother, George Boleyn (the Lord Rocheford), the young musician Smeaton and Anna’s ex, Lord Percy, into which they and Anna duly fall. The hapless Smeaton confesses to having had an affair with Anna in the mistaken belief that she would be spared if he did so. Unfortunately, this amounts to an admission of treason. Despite Jane Seymour’s plea to Enrico to spare Anna’s life, she is condemned to die. The opera ends with all four people implicated in the plot walking off the stage to face execution, reconciled to their fate.

Of course the story is familiar from school history lessons, but what is especially compelling about it how it is told in this context is how the opera draws the audience into the character and innermost thoughs of the protagonists. For examples, Anna is more complex than you might imagine. It is true that she is naive, and out of her depth in a court so filled with plots and snares, but she is also at the same time ambitious and determined. Anna’s relationship with her rival Jane Seymour is also subtly nuanced, their deep fondness for each other demonstrated in a truly wonderful duet between soprano (Anna) and mezzo (Giovanna). The only real weak spot as far as characterization goes is Enrico, who comes across as little more than a pantomime villain (even to the extent that he received humorous boos on his curtain call). Of course Henry’s behaviour was tyrannical, but the drama would have worked more convincingly if there were at least something about him (other than his crown) that made Anna and Giovanna both adore him so much..

In typical bel canto style the voices of the singers are often extremely exposed, with the orchestra taking a back seat to a succession of dazzling coloratura passages with very little doubling of the vocal line to act as a safety net. At times, Donizetti’s music is little more than a basic backing track, but there is gorgeous orchestral writing in there too where the drama requires it. And that’s the point. Bel canto is not and never has been just about beautiful singing; the great operas in this genre also have great dramatic power and emotional intensity.

Serena Farnocchia’s Anna Bolena (soprano) was ably matched in beauty and clarity of voice by Katharine Goeldner as Giovanna Seymour (mezzo soprano). Faith Sherman (contralto) sang the part of the boy Smeaton with great sensitivity. Alastair Miles was also pretty good as Enrico, but I think the role suits someone with a more powerful bass voice. Robert McPherson as Lord Percy sang accurately enough but his lightish tenor voice has a rather nasal edge to it which took me quite a while to get used to.

The staging is stark and rather minimal, with just a few references to the Tudor period in items of furniture and in the style of the costumes (which are mainly black) but otherwise very little in terms of scenery. Very effective use was made of the revolving centre of the stage which provided movement without distracting from the most important aspect of the opera, namely the emotional turmoil of the characters on stage. The various elements of the staging and music came together in stunning fashion during Anna’s `Mad Scene’ near the end of Act II in which, delirious on the eve of her execution, she lapses into a trance-like state and relives happier moments while her friends gradually drift away into darkness. The lighting is sombre throughout the production, but in the Mad Scene Anna takes on a ghostly appearance. Musically speaking, this scene is quite famous – there’s an amazing version with Maria Callas as Anna here– but I found the cumulative effect of the elements of the life performance quite overwhelming. I’ll have to add this one to my list of pieces of music likely to make me fall to bits and thus to be avoided on trains…

A word too for the Orchestra of Welsh National Opera under conductor Daniele Rusitioni who played the gorgeous music impeccably. And another word for the Chorus of Welsh National Opera who were also excellent, not just in their singing but also in their wider contributions onstage.

All in all, a very fine night at the opera. The only real disappointment for me was that there were so many empty seats. It’s true that Anna Bolena isn’t one of the best known operas, but it is a gem. I hope this production gets the audience it deserves. And I also hope I can get to see the rest of the Tudors!

PS. I notice that the Guardian review has given it 4 stars. Bit stingy, possibly..

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The Lindisfarne Gospels

Posted in Art, History with tags , , , , on July 25, 2013 by telescoper

450px-Lindisfarne_Gospels_folio_209vOne of the interesting things going on in Durham during the week of this conference is an exhibition relating to the Lindisfarne Gospels. This extraordinary book was written around 715AD, just after the death of St Cuthbert. For those of you not familiar with Lindisfarne, or “Holy Island” as it is often called, it’s a small island off the Northumbrian coast, connected to the mainland by a causeway which is covered by the tide twice a day.

Although the Lindisfarne Gospels are about 1300 years old, the colours remain extremely vivid. It’s a remarkable thing to look at the pages on view in the exhibition to see the marks made by a human hand all that time ago; it’s difficult not to wonder about the life of the person who devoted what must have been a huge amount of time compiling this exquisite work.

Incidentally, St Cuthbert’s remains now lie in a tomb inside Durham’s magnificent cathedral, of which we have a fine view from the balcony of the Calman Learning  Centre during the coffee breaks:

IMG-20130724-00154

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The Joy of Pepys

Posted in Biographical, History with tags , , , , on May 3, 2013 by telescoper

Twitter is much maligned by those who don’t use it, and I’d be the first to admit that it has several million downsides, but every now and again you come across something truly wonderful which makes it worthwhile putting up with the dross. Here’s an example. Some time ago, a nameless genius came up with the idea of tweeting excerpts from the Diaries of Samuel Pepys.  Those of you on Twitter can follow Samuel Pepys by clicking here:

For those of you not familiar with Twitter, its main characteristic is that messages posted on it (“tweets”) are limited to 140 characters. To outsiders this seems to imply that all tweets are banal and pointless, but this is far from the case. The strict length limit forces a form of creativity that is both rare and wonderful. The stroke of genius in this case was to realize that the Pepys Diaries could be tweeted in chunks of the right size, in a manner that almost suggests they were designed for the purpose!

Pepys was a high-ranking naval administrator and Member of Parliament so he had detailed knowledge of the momentous political events of his period. He’s currently tweeting from May 1660 (near the start of the diaries), giving a vivid insight into the background to the Restoration of the Monarchy. Parliament should be recalled in a few days time, on May 8th…

Here is a selection of recent examples:
peps

But it’s not just the fascinating political context that makes these tweets so interesting. They also give glimpses of everyday life in the 17th Century. Pepys was in poor health for much of his life, for example, and there are frequent references to various physicians and their quack remedies. He also manages to conjure up in just a few words the extraordinary atmosphere and energy of the London of the period, along with some of its excesses (especially drinking and fornication).

Following Pepys’ Twitter feed opens a window into 17th Century England, and what comes through it is both refreshing and illuminating. The reason I find this particularly delightful is something that I’ve blogged about before, so won’t repeat at length. I was a very late developer from an education point of view until I was helped with my reading and arithmetic by a wonderful old lady who lived next door. She encouraged me to read and, after a big struggle, I eventually got the hang of it. After a time I had caught up with the rest of the class in School and eventually managed to read just about every book the School had to offer, including the Diaries of Samuel Pepys which were for some reason on the shelves in Class 2 and which I was allowed to borrow. I don’t think anyone had read them before so nobody, including the teachers, knew how rude they were in places. The Restoration period was generally rather bawdy, and Pepys’ Diaries reflect that.

I had no idea at that time, of course, that less than ten years later I would be studying at Magdalene College, Cambridge, site of the Pepys Library where the orignal diaries are kept as well as the rest of Pepys’ own collection of rare books and music.

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The UK’s first female professor

Posted in History, Uncategorized on March 9, 2013 by telescoper

admin's avatarWe Are Cardiff

Hello friends. Happy International Womens Day! To celebrate, our friend Kelly Page has written us a We Are Cardiff about the first female professor to be appointed to the (at the time) Cardiff University. Go! Go!

First Female Professor Appointed in the Largest Coal Port in the World

Imagine it is 1904.

You are living and working in Cardiff, the largest coal port in the world.
You are a woman, 40 years young, working as the head of women’s teacher training in the town’s new university.

The university, University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire (now Cardiff University) is only 20 years old. It was founded with 13 staff and 151 students, 15 of who were women (1883).

You are working at one of the first universities in Britain to open its doors to female students and with a residence specifically for women, Aberdare Hall (1885). A hall that is…

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Changing Times

Posted in History, Politics with tags , , on February 5, 2013 by telescoper

I couldn’t resist a quick comment about the news that today the House of Commons began a debate on the second reading of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill. The timing of this when I’ve just moved back to Brighton after an absence of 23 years or so made me think back to what things were like when I was previously here as a DPhil student.

In those days the dominant concern facing LBGT staff and students was the notorious Section 28, part of the Local Government Act of 1988, which, among other things, attacked promotion of “the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”. I remember very well the numerous demonstrations and other protests I went on as part of the campaign against that repugnant and obviously discriminatory piece of legislation, but it passed into law anyway. I know 25 years is a long time, 1988 was before today’s generation of undergraduates was even born, but it’s still amazing to me that attitudes have changed so much that there’s even a remote possibility that same sex marriage might be legalized. And from what I hear, the possibility isn’t remote at all…

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The canals of old Cardiff

Posted in Cardiff, History with tags , , , , on January 8, 2013 by telescoper

I came across this old map of Cardiff the other day and thought I’d post it to make up for the fact that I’ve not posted much about the local history of this fascinating city over the years.

Old_cardiff

I can’t find a date for the map, but I guess it is from the early 20th Century.

The most interesting thing about the map is the pretty extensive network of canals. The Dock Feeder Canal still runs down from the top of the map then turns East and past the North side of the Castle, and then South again towards Cardiff Bay. Some of its route is now underground, including the section that used to be Edward Terrace and Pembroke Terrace, which now form the two sides of Churchill Way  under which the canal still flows.

It’s worth mentioning in passing that most of the present Cardiff Castle is basically a late 19th Century folly, but it is the site of much older buildings, including a Norman Keep and a Roman fort. When the Romans occupied the location, the area from the Castle down to the sea was basically a swamp, flanked by the flood plain of the Taff to the West, with the salt marshes of Cardiff Bay to the South. Almost all of present-day Cardiff is reclaimed land.

The Dock Feeder Canal was constructed around 1840 in order to supply water to the Docks in Cardiff Bay so that they could be operated even when the tide was out. This gave  Cardiff one of the world’s first 24-hour docks and led to a rapid expansion of commerce and population in the city during the mid-19th Century.

Among the quite surprising facts about the City of Cardiff is its spectacular population growth. The first official census was held in 1801 and it  showed Cardiff to have a population of 1,870 – much smaller than other Welsh towns like Merthyr Tydfil (7,700) and Swansea (6,000). Every ten years another census was carried out, with the figures for Cardiff growing as follows:

1801 – 1,870
1811 – 2,457
1821 – 3,251
1831 – 6,187
1841 – 10,079
1851 – 18,351
1861 – no data
1871 – 57,363
1881 – no data
1891 – 128,915
1901 – 164,333
1911 – 182,259
1921 – 222,827
1931 – 226,937
1941 – no data
1951 – 243,632
1961 – 283,998
1971 – 293,220
1981 – 286,740
1991 – 296,900
2001 – 305,353

The expansion of the docks in Cardiff Bay, driven by the export of coal from the valleys, seems to have been the main factor in driving the population increase, and this accelerated markedly from the middle of the 19th century until the early 20th century.

Early on in the industrial revolution the South Wales valleys were primarily concerned with the production of iron. In February 1794, the 25-mile-long Glamorganshire Canal was opened between Cardiff and Merthyr Tydfil to bring iron products down to the coast and for nearly 50 years was unchallenged as the main transport link between the two towns.  It was later to become the primary route for carrying coal to the Bay. The Glamorganshire Canal can be seen on the map too, but has now virtually vanished, the route it used to follow now just being marked by new roads; for example, the route it used to take to the East of Bute Park is now covered by North Road.

Here is an old photograph of Mill Lane, now the site of a number of not-very-salubrious eating and drinking establishments. I suspect not many Cardiff residents know that less than half a century ago, these were canalside properties..

Mill_Lane

In October 1839, the Bute West Dock covering 19 acres with 9,400 feet of quays was opened, and the construction of the Dock Feeder to regulate the water supply to the dock from the River Taff was completed.  Entirely paid for by the second Marquis of Bute, this new dock set in motion Cardiff’s amazing growth to become the world’s biggest coal exporting port. The Taff Vale Railway was opened in 1841 between Cardiff and Abercynon and soon overtook the Glamorganshire Canal in economic importance. Coal shipments from Cardiff exceeded one million tons for the first time in 1851. In December 1855, the first historical trainload of Rhondda steam coal arrived at Cardiff, where the Bute East Dock was opened. By 1883 the docks handled six million tons of coal and by 1913 this figure had grown to a staggering 10.7 million tons.

Much of the labour needed to handle this volume of coal came from immigrants, including very large numbers of Irish but also lots of other people from all around the world. By 1850 there were no less than 20 foreign consulates in Cardiff and the city quickly established the cosmopolitan reputation it has kept to this day.

After the end of the First World War the coal trade suffered because the market was flooded with cheap German coal used for war reparations. That, and the subsequent depression, led to a decline in Cardiff as a port, although it was very busy during the Second World War. About 75 per cent of the supplies for the American forces in Europe were shipped out through Cardiff docks following the D-Day landings in June 1944.  This was a short-lived renaissance; the last ever shipment of coal left Bute Dock in 1950.

Other random but possibly interesting points about the map are:

  • The site of the modern Cardiff University School of Physics & Astronomy is near the top right of the map, marked “Univers. Coll.”
  • Taff Vale Railway Station is now named Queen Street Station, and Great Western Station is now Cardiff Central.
  • Note that Cardiff Arms Park was actually surrounded by parkland when this map was drawn, but now the area around is built up (and of course the Millennium Stadium is now there too).
  • Much of central Cardiff has been replaced by modern malls and the like, but the Central Market is still there.

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After the Storm…

Posted in Biographical, History with tags , , , on October 16, 2012 by telescoper

Twenty-five years ago I was living in Brighton as a graduate student at the University of Sussex. On October 16th 1987 (a Friday) I woke up to find the electricity had been cut off. Without breakfast I struggled out to find the street lined with fallen trees, smashed cars and houses with broken windows. This was the Great Storm of 1987 which, according to weather forecaster Michael Fish, was “not a hurricane” and I had slept through the whole thing…

Here’s the infamous weather forecast broadcast on the Thursday evening

and here is the BBC News from the following day:

I’m sure my readers (Sid and Doris Bonkers) will be anxious to share their recollections of that wild and windy night through the comments box!

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Origins of the Expanding Universe Conference – My Contribution

Posted in History, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , on September 19, 2012 by telescoper

For those of you interested in such things, here are the slides I used in my talk at the Origins of the Expanding Universe conference. I spoke about the events on and after 29th May 1919, when measurements were made during a total eclipse of the Sun that have gone down in history as vindicating Einstein’s (then) new general theory of relativity. I’ve written quite a lot about this in past years, including a little book and a slightly more technical paper. This was a relevant topic for the conference because it wasn’t until general theory of relativity was established as a viable theory of gravity that an explanation could be developed of Slipher’s measurements of galaxy redshifts in terms of an expanding Universe.

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The Lowell Observatory

Posted in History, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on September 17, 2012 by telescoper

Well, here I am back in Blighty after the  conference celebrating  Vesto M. Slipher. The return trip went remarkably smoothly – no hassles at the airport at either end, and all pretty well on time. When I arrived in Flagstaff last Thursday evening I missed the reception that took place in the Lowell Observatory, but fortunately had time on Sunday morning to have a look around the site, on “Mars Hill”, and take a few pictures.

First and foremost with regard to the topic of the conference, here is  a picture of the actual spectrograph used by Vesto Slipher to measure the radial velocity of the Andromeda Nebula (M31), which he actually did 100 years ago today, on 17th September 1912. I had a bit of a struggle with the reflection on the case, but you can see  it’s a beautiful piece of kit:

Here’s one of me standing outside the dome that houses the 24″ Clark Refractor that Slipher used for his spectrographic studies:

And just to remind you that the site isn’t famous only for Slipher’s work, here is the dome housing the 13″ astrographic telescope that was used in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh to discover Pluto.

Here’s my chauffeur for the day, Prof. Peacock, with the rusting remains of a 42″ telescope:

Of course the Lowell Observatory is named after Percival Lowell (known to his friends as “Percy”) a flamboyant character who founded it in 1894. Lowell did many great things for astronomy, but unfortunately he is mostly remembered these days for his erroneous observations of “canals” on Mars.

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Hubble versus Slipher

Posted in History, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , on September 15, 2012 by telescoper

Since I’m here at a conference celebrating the scientific achievements of Vesto M. Slipher, I thought I’d take the opportunity to make a few remarks about Slipher’s work and legacy.

I often use this picture in popular talks to illustrate the correlation between distance (x-axis) and apparent recession velocity (y-axis) that has become universally known as Hubble’s Law. This is an early version of such a plot published by Edwin Hubble in 1929.

In public talks I rarely have time to go into the details of this, but it is worth saying that only the results on the x-axis were Hubble’s own measurements. Hubble only contributed half of the above plot, i.e. the distance measurements, and these turned out to be wrong by a factor of about 10 owing to an incorrect identification of the stars used as standard candles. All the recession velocities on the y-axis – obtained by looking at the displacement of lines in the target galaxy’s spectrum – were in fact obtained by Vesto Slipher at the Lowell Observatory here in Flagstaff, Arizona. Hubble used these data from Slipher with permission, but gave no credit to Slipher in the references to his 1929 work. A later, and more convincing, version of this plot published in 1931 by Hubble and Humason, was accompanied by a generous acknowledgement to Slipher’s contribution. However, by then, Hubble’s name was firmly associated with the plot and Slipher’s contribution was largely forgotten for many years subsequently.

This episode isn’t at all atypical of Hubble’s behaviour. He was an extremely ambitious man who was an expert in the art of promoting himself and the Mount Wilson Observatory where he worked. Slipher was a very different type of man: quiet, self-effacing, and very much a team player, dedicated to scientific accuracy rather than his own reputation.

It’s worth saying further that the key observation that led to the understanding that the Universe is expanding is the fact that most of the spectra obtained by Slipher, over the years subsequent to his first measurement of the spectrum of the Andromeda Nebula (M31) celebrated by this conference, showed a redshift indicating velocity away from the observer. Even without distance measurements this leads directly an interpretation in terms of cosmic expansion. Ironically, the first spectrum he obtained, M31 shows a blue shift, as do a few others plotted with negative velocities in the above diagram, but the more distant sources exclusively show a redshift.

As a scientist should be, Slipher was very careful about the interpretation of this result. The more distant objects are fainter and thus more difficult to observe. Could it arise from some systematic artifact? Or could there be an unknown physical effect that produces a redshift dependent on the size of the source? These questions could only be answered when accurate distances to the nebulae were established, so Hubble’s contribution was by no means negligible. It’s completely untrue, however, to say that Hubble discovered the expansion of the Universe, so there’s yet another example of Stigler’s Law of Eponymy whenever anyone talks about the Hubble expansion.

One of the great things about coming to this meeting was the chance to meet Alan Slipher, grandson of Vesto Slipher. He and other members of his family refer to Vesto as “VM”, by the way, which I hadn’t realised before. VM lived a long life, dying in 1969 just short of his 94th birthday, so Alan knew him well until age 17 or so. He spoke most warmly and movingly after yesterday’s conference dinner about his memories of his grandfather, who he clearly looked up to. His words confirmed the impression I’d already formed, that Slipher was an extremely cautious and serious scientist as well as a kindly and humble man.

The contrasting personalities of Slipher and Hubble are further illustrated by correspondence between the two that is archived at the Lowell Observatory. Slipher comes across as kindly and cooperative, Hubble as pompous and self-regarding. I know which of the two I admire the best, both and scientist and human being.

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