Hints and tips:
...When he was a kid, Christy’s family lived in the UK for a bit and he sometimes puts on an English accent. He’s also acquired some expensive tastes: sports cars, nice clothes and luxury apartments....
...“You made it, you must be exhausted,” she exclaims, as though I’ve undertaken a tremendous voyage. She has that no-nonsense bravura one associates with English country dames....
...Coincidentally, this week is also the anniversary the 1707 Act of Union coming into force, when the English and Scottish kingdoms first united....
...It is now being translated into English for the first time....
...Isabel Leonard of New York made the indulgent misery of his beloved sympathetic, neatly seconded by Anna Christy of Pasadena as her twittery friend....
...In a cave beneath those cliffs Robert the Bruce allegedly saw the spider whose web-weaving labours inspired him to resume battle with the English....
...An unlikely memorial runs across the middle of the marketplace in Kettering — an otherwise unremarkable English market town....
...Anna Christy sang a glittering Morgana, her bright soprano enhanced with tasteful vibrato, and Anna Devin was impressive as Oberto....
...For those who want to be in the thick of the film festival action, a contemporary five-bedroom penthouse on the Croisette with a huge seaview terrace is available through Christies at €14.5m....
...Highlights from the period include the sale of a rare Edward VIII coin in May for £516,000, which set an auction record for an English coin....
...Christy says hats – both classic, such as the fedora, as well as more whimsical headpieces – are back as a chic and affordable accessory after the recent downturn....
...That is the aspect of the story that Christopher Alden’s production, new to English National Opera, makes an obsession....
...Tim Mead’s uncaricatured Ptolemy shows promise but Anna Christy is a lightweight Cleopatra, and it’s one more symptom of the show’s wrong-headedness that Sesto (Daniela Mack) is played as a woman....
...Between these, the meandering moderato sections need a more charismatic baritone than Hanno Müller-Brachmann, the soprano lines a more substantial voice than Anna Christy’s....
...Who knows which generation of Christies was responsible for the ruined wine? The family bought the house in 1833....
...Nor is this a matter of an English theatrical sensibility approaching such folksy material with too much reverence....
...“No point paddling around in the shallow end, you know,” he observes, with a grin. “Get straight in.” “Christy’s a spectacular part,” he adds....
...Anna Christy, erupting in a barrage of coloratura at the slightest pretext, is a delight as Kitty, and Daniel Okulitch gives a he-man performance as Abdul....
...Iestyn Davies’s Oberon fell victim to a virus but bravely mimed the part with William Towers as his voluptuous vocal shadow. Anna Christy made a sparkling Tytania, Willard White a majestic Bottom....
...But the activity of guerrilla gardeners has existed for decades – even centuries, with some claiming legacy from the Diggers, a radical squatting movement that emerged at the end of the English civil war...
...It helps that Anna Christy is back in the title role....
...Along with the other supermodels of the 1980s, Naomi, Christy, Claudia and Cindy, she was one of the first human beings to be a brand....
...The Christies were all for it, as Britten had promised Audrey there would be a part in it for her pug. What a Glyndebourne premiere that could have been....
...To an extent, an English audience will still watch this play with an air of patronising colonialism....
...Toby Spence is wide-eyed boyishness personified as Candide and Anna Christy a sparkling, if small-voiced Cunégonde....
International Edition