Anne Lister's first love: Learned by Heart

Cover of Emma Donoghue's Learned by Heart. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2023. Image source: BookPage

Anne Lister, a member of a landowning family in Yorkshire, was born in 1791 and died in 1840. She is known to history because she kept a diary, ultimately totalling 4 million words, that described her daily life. (For comparison's sake, four million words is roughly the combined length of Charles Dickens' 15 novels.)

'"I propose from this day to keep an exact journal of my actions and studies, both to assist my memory and to accustom me to set a due value on my time." Introduction to Mr. Gibbon's Journal. A. Lister.' Inscription to Anne Lister's diary preceding the entry for Friday 21 March 1817. Image source: West Yorkshire Archive Service

A substantial portion of the diary was written in a secret "crypt hand"; when decoded, these sections were discovered to detail her sexual relationships with the women in her Yorkshire social circle, as well as connections she'd made when travelling. Her diary has become a key document of 19th-century same-sex relationships. The story of the discovery of the hidden diary by a male relative nearly five decades after Anne's death, its decoding, and how it came into the possession of Halifax town library is told in the first post of my series on Anne Lister, "I only love the fairer sex." The diary is now held at the West Yorkshire Archive Service in Calderdale.

Anne Lister has been the subject of several nonfiction books and an excellent (though not entirely history-based) TV series, Gentleman Jack, starring Suranne Jones as Anne. Thanks to funding from Sally Wainwright, the writer and producer of Gentleman Jack, Anne Lister's diaries have been digitized, transcribed and decoded by an army of online volunteers.

Anne started keeping her diary in 1806. One of its motivations seems to have been to record her correspondence with her former schoolmate Eliza Raine. Between 1806 and 1810 Anne noted receiving more than 130 letters from Eliza, and 82 survive, along with Eliza's diary from 1809 to 1810.

"Sunday Feb[rua]ry – 1st [1807] – Wrote to ER [Eliza Raine] –
Tuesday – 3d – Had a Letter from ER
Sunday – 8th – Wrote to ER –
Monday 9th – Went again to Mr K[night, Anne's tutor] after having
Holidays since December Saturday 27th –
Tuesday Febry – 10th – Had a Letter from ER –"
Excerpt from Anne Lister's diary. Image source: West Yorkshire Archive Service

Eliza had been Anne's roommate at the Manor House School in York, a boarding school for the daughters of well-to-do Yorkshire families. Anne had been sent there from her parents' home in Market Weighton in 1805 at age 14. The school occupied King's Manor, originally built in the 13th century to house the abbots of St. Mary's Abbey. The abbey was suppressed and largely destroyed by King Henry VIII in 1539, but the Manor largely survived the destruction and was renovated during Elizabeth I's reign. In the first decades of the 1600s it hosted the Stuart monarchs James I and later his son Charles I when they travelled north to Scotland, and later was the residence of the Governor of York. But after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 it was leased out to a series of tenants until the Manor School took possession in the late 1700s. It is still standing, and is now part of the University of York.

King's Manor, University of York. Image credit: Emma Donoghue. Image source: Pan Macmillan

At Manor School Anne was assigned to an attic room, "The Slope," which she shared with 14-year-old Eliza. Eliza had been born in the British settlement of Madras (now Chennai), India, and was the daughter of East India Company surgeon William Raine and his Indian common-law wife. A 6-year-old Eliza and her elder sister Jane had accompanied Raine's surgeon colleague William Duffin and his (English) wife as their wards when the Duffins left India to return to York. William Raine died as he was travelling to back to England in 1800; it is not known what happened to their mother.

As is suggested by their attic room—attics were where servants were lodged—both young women must have been seen as outsiders. Eliza's mixed-race parentage would have set her apart, as would Anne's lack of conformity to conventional standards of feminine dress and demeanor. (As an adult she would regularly wear a black greatcoat and boots, would regularly walk long distances, travelled widely, and inherited and ran a family estate; she has been described as "gender non-conforming.")

But if their attic room separated them from the rest of their schoolmates at night, it also drew them together and gave them privacy. They fell in love and began a passionate sexual relationship, likely to have been the first for both of them.

"With this di[a]mond I cut this glass / With this face I kissed a lass." Graffito on a window in the Huntingdon Room in the King's Manor. Image credit: Emma Donoghue. Image source: Pan Macmillan

Although Anne left the school in 1806 while Eliza remained, they continued as a couple for another five years or so, sustaining their connection through frequent correspondence and visits. In Eliza's diary and letters, which used the same code as Anne's, Eliza referred to Anne as her husband. Anne later said that the two had planned to live together as life companions when they both came of age. But in 1810 at age 19 Anne began a relationship with 25-year-old Isabella Norcliffe, the eldest daughter of a family Anne had met through Eliza's guardians, the Duffins. This new relationship clearly distressed Eliza; in her own diary she recorded arguments with Anne during a visit in 1810 that "left me e[x]ceedingly ill."

"How can I refuse my darling husband's solicitude to hear the events of Isabella's visit? Nothing glaringly strange took place my love but what happened may amuse and please you as it may illustrate most clearly the near resemblance that dear creature has arrived at [?] to you." Transcription of a coded letter to Anne Lister from Eliza Raine in Anne Lister's diary, date unknown. Image source: West Yorkshire Archive Service

Eliza's unhappiness was only increased when in 1814 Anne pledged life companionship with another woman, Mariana Belcombe, whom she had met through Isabella. Around this time Eliza was committed to an asylum in York run by Dr. William Belcombe, Mariana's father. As I wrote in "It was all nature: Anne Lister, part 2," "It's not clear to what extent suspicions of Eliza's sexuality figured in her diagnosis, but women who were considered sexually disordered, emotionally unstable, or simply inconvenient could be diagnosed with 'hysteria' or 'lunacy' and confined." And, of course, Eliza's "black blood" (as described by Duffin's stepdaughter Mary Jane Marsh) may have been seen as giving her a propensity for "wildness." Eliza would remain institutionalized until her death 45 years later.

Emma Donoghue's Learned by Heart (2023) is a fictionalization of Anne and Eliza's real-life first love, from the point of view of Eliza. The first sentence of Learned by Heart is "My dear Lister, Last night I went to the Manor House again." The echo of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca—"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again"—is entirely intentional. Like Rebecca's unnamed narrator, Eliza returns to the site of her first love only in her imagination. By 1815, when this letter is written, Eliza is confined in Dr. Belcombe's asylum. [1]

Donoghue's novel fills in the largely blank historical record of Eliza and Anne's relationship with richly imagined incident. Some of its scenes are drawn from Anne's later diary. After their nightly sexual encounters begin,

A whole week passes before they broach the subject. (Eliza's been afraid to break the spell by speaking—burst the bubble of their bliss. And whenever they're alone together, it seems as if their lips are used most eloquently for kissing.) Finally, one mild afternoon, strolling along the Manor Shore and eyeing the pair of swans, she demands, "Who taught you?"

A half-laugh. "Nature, I suppose. Who taught you?" (219-220)

This dialogue is adapted from a passage in Anne's diary. The entry for Monday 8 October 1832 describes a day Anne spent with her neighbor Ann Walker kissing and "pressing" on Ann's sofa:

When dusk [fell] she asked (I had said I was at no time likely to marry—how far she understood me I could not quite make out), "If you never had any attachment who taught you to kiss?"

I laughed and said how nicely that was said, then answered that nature taught me. I could have replied, "And who taught you?"

Anne Lister's diary entry for Monday 8 October 1832 (excerpt). Image source: West Yorkshire Archive Service

Later in the novel, Anne and Eliza are in their room recovering from scarlet fever:

Lister goes on at length about a pair of Irish cousins she's read about in a magazine. Refusing to be married off or put in a convent, the ladies ran away together twenty-seven years ago, and have been sharing a cottage in Wales ever since.

Eliza's surprised to hear that they didn't get dragged back and locked up; instead, their escapade made them famous. (233)

This allusion to the Ladies of Llangollen is also derived from Anne's diary. Both Mariana Belcombe (in 1817, after her marriage to Charles Lawton) and Anne (in 1822) travelled to Wales and visited the home of the Ladies, Sarah Ponsonby and Eleanor Butler. In her diary entry of Tuesday 23 July 1822, Anne wrote: "I am interested about these 2 ladies very much. There is something in their story & in all I have heard about them here that, added to other circumstances, makes a deep impression. Sat musing on the sopha, wotting what to do, inconsolate & moody, thinking of M—. Low about her." By 1822 the Ladies had lived openly as a couple for more than four decades, and were a model of the kind of life to which Anne aspired, first with Eliza, then with Isabella, and finally with Mariana. By 1822, however, Anne had begun to despair of ever being able to realize her dream. [4]

Eliza and Anne's time together at the Manor School culminates in a ritual that sacralizes their love:

A sort of wedding, then? A private one, like Juliet and Romeo's. To make good on all that Lister and Eliza have said in the dark; to make their union right, and settled, in the eyes of heaven.

The next Saturday the two of them ask permission to take a walk on their own. They huddle on the porch of St. Olave's until they're quite sure it's empty. In they venture, down the nave that's so chilly all year round, with its grubby hangings. They kneel together in a pew, gripping each other's icy fingers. They're not wearing any special clothes, and of course there's no music, nor any minister or witnesses. But the church feels so old and holy, Eliza's almost sick with excitement.

What would Dr. Duffin think of her (not yet fifteen) taking such a solemn step as this marriage—vowing herself, for life, without his permission, without even his knowledge?. . .This is something beyond the reach of her guardian's comprehension. He'd call it playacting, absurd, sacrilegious. Little he knows. (254)

Their private ceremony echoes Anne's actions with at least two later lovers, Mariana Belcombe and Ann Walker. In her diary entry of Sunday 7 May 1826, Anne wrote,

We went to the old church. Got there just after the service had begun. . .Mariana & I staid the sacrament—the first time we ever received it together in our lives.

Taking communion together had deep symbolic meaning for Anne. With Ann Walker she exchanged rings, and three weeks later shared communion. From her diary entry of Sunday 30 March 1834:

At Goodramgate Church at 10 35/"; Miss W— and I and [Anne's servant] Thomas staid the sacrament. . .The first time I ever joined Miss W— in my prayers—I had prayed that our union might be happy. . .

Donoghue is very knowledgeable about Anne and her world, and that understanding infuses Learned by Heart. Perhaps she is almost too close to the material; in 2010 Donoghue published an article in The Guardian entitled "My hero: Anne Lister." [2] Unfortunately in a few instances she allows her characters to become over-explanatory, with the too-obvious purpose of conveying information to the reader rather than to each other. Some examples, mainly from the early part of the novel:

• Anne describing to her schoolmates her family's place in the social hierarchy of Yorkshire: "'Mine is the Halifax branch of the ancient county lineage. Shibden Hall's been in the family for two centuries—a timber-framed manor house, built five years after Agincourt,' she says fondly. 'The Listers were once the greatest landowners in the district.'" (20) Although Anne was inordinately proud of her family estate, this speech seems improbable coming from anyone but a modern-day Shibden Hall tour guide.
• Eliza asking about Anne's family, and Anne's response: "'Both your parents are still living, are they?' A nod. 'And two brothers, Sam and John, at school near Pickering. Also a sister of eight, Marian, a great annoyance. That makes four of us still standing, out of six—our first John was before my time,' Lister adds, 'and little Jeremy died when I was eleven, though I barely knew him, as he was put out to nurse ten miles away'" (35). Almost everyone in Anne's acquaintance would have had siblings who died in infancy or childhood; it seems unlikely that in introducing herself Anne would go into such detail about brothers now deceased that she had never or hardly known. [3]
• Eliza talking to Anne about her father, William Raine: "'My father was a prisoner for four years, in India'. . .'Four years!' Lister marvels. 'Which war was this?'. . .'Our Company's, against Mysore, a southern kingdom whose ruler was in league with the French.' 'The East India Company, this is?' 'Those of us born into it simply call it the Company. The most powerful firm the world's ever known,' Eliza boasts, 'with its own coinage and taxes.' According to Dr. Duffin, the Company's composed of two hundred clerks in a small office in London, backed by a hundred and fifty thousand soldiers abroad: We hold two-thirds of India already, and rule her better than her princelings ever have. But she's meant to be telling the story of Father's captivity" (84–85). Which she goes on to do, at a level of historical, military, and gruesome physical detail that it seems unlikely would have been conveyed to a child by the adults around her. And could anyone approaching adulthood in Britain while belonging to Anne's social class need an explanation of the East India Company?

There's also the occasional dash of orientalism. Here's Eliza recalling memories of her home in India:

• "Walls flecked in places with red from spat paan, and the warm scent of joss sticks. In her mind's eye she conjures the shimmer of lacquered brass lamps. Low hum of conversation and snores at night, tom-toms in the distance." (28) This sounds like a description taken from the screenplay of Black Narcissus rather than the memories of a young child growing up in an English doctor's house in India during the British Raj (walls flecked with spat paan?). Despite his taking an Indian wife, William Raine seems hardly to have been a "White Mughal"; he was returning to England when he died.

But these are rare instances of clunkiness in Learned by Heart, which in the main succeeds admirably in creating a credible and engaging picture of the young Anne Lister and Eliza Raine; the confusing, overwhelming and thrilling sensations of first love and first sex; and the pain of learning that life and love rarely conform to our passionate wishes and ideals.

---

1. No letters from Eliza to Anne after 1814 have survived; Eliza's letters in Learned by Heart are Donoghue's convincing inventions.
2. Women's history scholar Jill Liddington writes that "Many readers—coming to the Anne Lister writings hoping for a heroine, an empowerer of other women, an inspirational feminist icon—will be disappointed." See "No historical interest whatever: Anne Lister, part 6"
3. By 1815, when the novel ends, Anne's real-life brothers had both died, and she (rather her still-living father) became the heiress of Shibden Hall.
4. A dozen years later Anne would finally manage to have her lover Ann Walker move in with her at Shibden Hall. Although the couple had to face both the fierce opposition of Ann's relatives and Ann's own deep feelings of sexual guilt, they lived together at Shibden for five years, until their extended trip to Russia that resulted in Anne's death. For more, see "Captain Tom: Anne Lister, part 5"

In memoriam: Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare

Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, 1980s. Image credit: David Corio. Image source: The Guardian

On Tuesday The Guardian carried an obituary for the drummer Sly Dunbar, who together with his bassist partner Robbie Shakespeare made up the rhythm section Sly & Robbie. Both men had been mentored by members of Bob Marley's Wailers: Sly by drummer Carlton Barrett, and Robbie by Carlton's brother, bassist Aston "Family Man" Barrett, who gave him his first bass, a Hofner. Aston also helped Robbie get gigs. That's a 19-year-old Robbie playing bass on "Concrete Jungle," the first track on the Wailers' 1973 breakthrough album Catch A Fire.

Sly & Robbie were a key element in the dark, spare sound of Black Uhuru's hugely influential Showcase album, released in 1979; over the solid kick-drum and bass foundation, Dunbar added distinctive accents on the off-beat. The songs were released in various versions; the extended dub mixes put the rhythm section at the forefront. Which was a good thing: some of Michael Rose and Duckie Simpson's lyrics were misogynistic ("Shine eye gal is a trouble to a man") or anti-abortion (in "Abortion" they call the procedure "first-degree murder"). But "General Penitentiary" was their masterpiece ("Cause the food that you take to save your life can let you lose it the same. . .General Penitentiary, it's a warehouse of human slavery"):

https://youtu.be/80H4RoU-u80

Lyrics aside, sonically Showcase felt somewhat like the reggae equivalent of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures (particularly tracks like "Candidate"). The spareness of Showcase also clearly influenced the sound of Gang of Four ("Paralysed") and the Au Pairs ("Headache (for Michelle)," which has never felt more relevant). But Sly & Robbie's music wasn't only dark and dread. They also backed the duo Althea & Donna's cheeky 1978 dancehall hit "Uptown Top Ranking," name-checked on the Psychedelic Furs' "We Love You" from their debut album just a few months later. (The Furs lyric had been a mystery to me until my girlfriend pulled the Althea & Donna album out of her collection and gave it a spin to dispel my ignorance. Dispelling my ignorance is a task my girlfriend and now life partner continues to this day.)

https://youtu.be/VE-A5JULvRM

A few "Uptown Top Ranking" lyrics (written by Althea Forrest & Donna Reid):

See me in mi heels an' ting Them check so we hip an' ting True them no know anyting We have them going an' ting Nah pop no style I strictly roots Nah pop no style I strictly roots See me 'pon the road, and you no call out to me True you see me in mi pants an' ting See me in mi halter back Say me give you heart attack Give me little bass, make me wind up mi waist Uptown top ranking Love is all I bring Inna mi khaki suit an' ting

Sly & Robbie quickly became in-demand session musicians and producers. Working at Island Records' Compass Point Studios, they provided the rhythm section for Grace Jones' Warm Leatherette (1980) and Nightclubbing (1981), her re-imaginings of songs by The Normal, Roxy Music, Tom Petty, Iggy Pop, Marianne Faithfull, and The Police, among others. Jones' version of The Pretenders' "Private Life" is definitive:

https://youtu.be/yvLn_qC7QAs

I'm clearly not the only person to hear a Joy Division connection in Sly & Robbie's sound; the B-side of the "Private Life" single was a non-album cover of "She's Lost Control." (That cover, though, deliberately subverts Unknown Pleasures' original. I find the arrangement to be too busy and the vocals too declamatory. A rare misfire.)

Sly & Robbie continued performing and recording together for decades, backing musicians as disparate as Gwen Guthrie ("Padlock"), Gwen Stefani ("Underneath It All"), and Bob Dylan (Infidels). Their collaboration ended only with Robbie Shakespeare's death from kidney failure in 2021 at age 68. Now Sly Dunbar has followed him at age 73. Not to take anything away from their later work, but it is the indelible music they created as the late 1970s shaded into the early 1980s for which they will always be remembered.

Let's give Althea & Donna the last word. "No More Fighting":

https://youtu.be/drY8NndCsGE

No more fussing and fighting We want no more, we want no more No more stealing and back-biting We want no more, we want no more Alone I sit in deep meditation Wondering why the wicked still survive Killing and stealing is part of their daily life I wanna know, I wanna know, I wanna know When it's all gonna end

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. Starring Barbara Stanwyck (Martha Ivers), Van Heflin (Sam Masterson), Lizabeth Scott (Toni Marachek), and Kirk Douglas (Walter O'Neil). Screenplay by Robert Rossen, after the short story "Love Lies Bleeding" by John Patrick; directed by Lewis Milestone. Produced by Hal Wallis, distributed by Paramount Pictures, 1946.

Poster for The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. Image source: imdb.com

Film noir is often portrayed as an urban genre: the noir classics The Maltese Falcon and The Lady from Shanghai are set in San Francisco; The Big Sleep and Double Indemnity are set in Los Angeles; Call Northside 777 and Undertow are set in Chicago; and Phantom Lady and Laura are set in New York, to mention just a few examples of many. There was even a post-WWII trend of noir films that announced their urban locations in the title, such as The Naked City, Cry of the City, Dark City, and Night and the City.

But in the world of noir, evil is not confined to cities—it saturates the whole of American society. In movies such as Shadow of a Doubt, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Out of the Past, and The Big Heat, suburbs and small towns are not havens of tranquility and safety, but sites of corruption, murder, blackmail, and betrayal.

Which brings us to The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. In 1928 in Iverstown, a Pennsylvania steel town, a teenaged Martha Ivers (Janis Wilson) is being raised as the ward of her strict aunt (Judith Anderson, the domineering housekeeper Mrs. Danvers in Hitchcock's Rebecca). The aunt owns the town's mill, which she runs with an iron fist with the aid of her fawning factotum O'Neil (Roman Bohnen). Martha hates her aunt and tries to run away with bad boy Sam Masterson (Darryl Hickman), but she is caught and brought back (for what we learn is the fourth time).

Janis Wilson (young Martha), Judith Anderson (Mrs. Ivers) and Roman Bohnen (Mr. O'Neil) in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. Image source: listal.com

When later that same night Martha tries running away with Sam again, her aunt hears a noise and comes to investigate. Their encounter ends with Martha wresting her aunt's walking stick from her hand and striking her in the head, causing a fatal fall down the stairs.

When O'Neil bursts in, Martha blames the assault on a nonexistent intruder. O'Neil's son Walter (Mickey Kuhn) has witnessed it all, but under the questioning of his father corroborates Martha's story. O'Neil immediately suspects the truth, and under the guise of solicitous concern for Martha's welfare seizes the opportunity for blackmail: "You poor child; you'll be all alone in the world now. . .But you needn't be afraid. We'll always be with you, Walter and I. We'll never leave you." Indeed. An alcoholic ex-millworker who'd been fired by Mrs. Ivers is picked up, and—thanks to the testimony of Martha, supported by Walter—is swiftly convicted of the murder and hanged.

Flash forward 18 years to 1946. On her aunt's death Martha inherited the mill, which over time she has hugely expanded, from 3,000 workers to 30,000. "I did it all by myself," the adult Martha (Barbara Stanwyck) says. (We don't doubt that Martha is a supremely competent corporate executive—she's Barbara Stanwyck, after all—but wartime demand for steel may have played a part.) Her money was used by Walter's father to send his son to Harvard; although Martha despises Walter, their shared guilt binds them together, and they are now married. The adult Walter (Kirk Douglas, in his first film role) tries to quiet his conscience and soothe the miseries of his unreciprocated love for Martha with drink.

Kirk Douglas (Walter) and Barbara Stanwyck (Martha) in a publicity still from The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. Image source: Crooked Marquee

Sam left Iverstown the night of the murder and has grown up as a drifter and a gambler, but he's his own man and lives by his own moral code. Discharged from the army and driving west, the adult Sam (Van Heflin) has an accident on the road outside of Iverstown (paging Dr. Freud!) and is stuck in town until the car is repaired.

When he stops by his childhood home, now a women's rooming house, he meets Toni Marachek (Lizabeth Scott), who has "been away for awhile"—in jail for theft. She's out on parole and is supposed to catch a bus back to her hometown, but sees a chance for a fresh start out west with Sam.

Lizabeth Scott (Toni Marachek) in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. Image source: Wikipedia.com

She's not the only woman in Iverstown imagining a future with Sam; when he inevitably encounters Martha, her teenaged feelings for him are reawakened. The stage is set for a love quadrangle, with both women vying for Sam, and Walter justly perceiving Sam as a rival for Martha. He also recognizes Sam as a threat to reveal the truth about that fatal night almost two decades ago, a threat that must be dealt with. Revelations about the past, betrayal, and death will soon follow.

At times The Strange Love of Martha Ivers feels almost as claustrophic as Luis Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel. All the characters are trapped. Most obviously, Martha and Walter are inextricably tied to one another by their mutual guilt. But neither Sam nor Toni can escape Iverstown: the bus somehow always leaves without Toni, while Martha makes sure that the repairs on Sam's car make no progress. 

There's also no escape for Sam and Toni from the power of Martha and Walter. When Martha surprises Toni and Sam together in their connecting hotel rooms, Sam snaps, "Even a crummy hotel like this has a switchboard." "I have special privileges this hotel, Sam," Martha replies. "I own it." But Martha, rich and alluring as she is, represents the past for Sam; Toni is the future.

Van Heflin (Sam Masterson), Lizabeth Scott (Toni Marachek), and Barbara Stanwyck (Martha Ivers) in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. Image source: Feminéma

Even when Walter orders some goons to beat up Sam and dump him 25 miles out of town, Sam must return to settle the score. Only when the past has been confronted and everything is out in the open can any fresh starts be made. But Martha and Walter are trapped together in a web of lies from which there is no escape.

Director Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on the Western Front, Ocean's 11) heightens the sense of confinement through the tight framing of the characters in medium shots and close-ups or isolating them against dark backgrounds, while cinematographer Victor Milner (who worked extensively with both Ernst Lubitsch and Preston Sturges) effectively employs silhouettes and shadows to create sense of mystery. (It always seems to be night in Iverstown, and raining more often than not.) The one misstep is the sometimes overwrought score by composer Miklós Rózsa (Double Indemnity, Spellbound), which can seem mis-matched to the gritty mise-en-scène.

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers is full of surprises. For me the first was Van Heflin's standout performance as the morally ambiguous but sympathetic Sam. Until I saw this movie Van Heflin's name in the credits was not an inducement to watch, but I'll have to explore more of his filmography.

Barbara Stanwyck (Martha Ivers) and Van Heflin (Sam) in a publicity still from The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. Image source: The Cinematheque

This is even more true of Lizabeth Scott. During filming she was just 23, and The Strange Love of Martha Ivers was only her third film. But she completely inhabits the character of Toni, a woman who has been crushed by circumstances. Although she looks and sounds like Lauren Bacall, Toni doesn't share her strength: any bravado she might once have possessed has been beaten out of her by life. Lizabeth Scott made a specialty of roles in noir films, and beyond this movie so far I've only seen Dark City. I definitely want to see more.

John Kellogg (Joe), Lizabeth Scott (Toni), and Van Heflin (Sam) in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. Image source: Heart of Noir

Kirk Douglas is totally convincing as the conscience-ridden, alcoholic Walter. Just a year later he played the suave mobster Whit Sterling in Out of the Past, and soon thereafter became a top-billed star. But in his first role he shows that he is not only a movie star, but an actor of surprising range.

And what is there to say about Barbara Stanwyck that hasn't already been said? Martha Ivers is amoral, selfish, willful, ruthless and brutal, but also indomitable, independent, and smart: she knows what she wants and goes after it. She recognizes that Sam represents her last chance of happiness, but ultimately that it's impossible for them to be together—a realization that has tragic consequences, and not only for her.

Kirk Douglas (Walter), Van Heflin (Sam), and Barbara Stanwyck (Martha) in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. Image source: Daily Motion

Many thanks to the dear friends who invited us to see The Strange Love of Martha Ivers on the big screen (at Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive), as it and all films should be seen.

Favorites of 2025: Movies and television

Television

For us this was an especially rich year for television series, beginning in May with PBS's Miss Austen, which also rounded out the Austen 250th anniversary year with its rebroadcast in November. In between we caught up on three series we'd missed the first go-round.

Miss Austen. Written by Andrea Gibb, based on the novel by Gill Hornby; directed by Aisling Walsh. Produced by BBC Studios and PBS Masterpiece, 4 episodes, 2025.

Keeley Hawes (Cassandra Austen) in Miss Austen. Image credit: BBC. Image source: RadioTimes.com

Miss Austen is a wonderful, complex, historically-informed series that rewards repeated viewings. E&I favorite Keeley Hawes (featured in previous favorites Wives & Daughters (1999) and Tipping the Velvet (2002)) is the Miss Austen of the title, Jane Austen's older sister Cassandra. It's 1840, 23 years after Jane's premature death, and Cassandra's co-sister-in-law Eliza Lloyd Fowle (Madeline Walker) has died in possession of dozens of letters from Jane. Both Cassandra and her overbearing sister-in-law Mary Lloyd Austen (a wonderfully awful Jessica Hynes), Eliza's sister and the widow of Cassandra's brother James, arrive at the Fowle home to support Eliza's bereaved daughter Isabella (Rose Leslie)—but also in desperate competition to find the letters. Mary wants them as part of her research for a biography she's planning to write about James, while Cassandra dreads the prospect of Jane's witty and indiscreet private letters being published. [1]

Rose Leslie (Isabella Fowle), Keeley Hawes (Cassandra Austen), Mirren Mack (the servant Dinah), and Jessica Hynes (Mary Lloyd Austen) in Miss Austen. Image credit: Robert Viglasky/BBC. Image source: RadioTimes.com

Spoiler alert, but not really: it's Cassandra who finds the letters and manages (despite several close calls) to conceal their discovery from the insistently inquisitive Mary. Re-reading them inspires in Cassandra memories of her engagement to Eliza's brother-in-law Tom Fowle (Calam Lynch), and his untimely death on a voyage to the West Indies (a real-life occurrence). It also brings back memories of Cassandra's life with Jane. A word has to be said about Patsy Ferran's vibrant embodiment of Jane: both the actress and the writing in these scenes are absolutely brilliant. Hers is by far the best portrayal of Jane we've seen, far surpassing those of Olivia Williams in the sour Miss Austen Regrets (BBC, 2007) and Anne Hathaway in the glamorized and falsified Becoming Jane (2007).

Patsy Ferran (Jane Austen), Madeleine Walker (Eliza Fowle), Synnøve Karlsen (young Cassandra Austen), and Liv Hill (young Mary Lloyd) in Miss Austen. Image credit: Robert Viglasky/Bonnie Productions and PBS Masterpiece. Image source: TVinsider.com

Together, Hawes and the well-cast Synnøve Karlsen as her younger self give an immensely sympathetic portrayal of Cassandra, whose emotional wounds from the death of her fiancé and of Jane, and her sorrow at feeling unable to accept the love of the (fictional) suitor Henry Hobday (Max Irons), are freshly reopened by Jane's letters. The depiction of Cassandra is so touching, in fact, that we are lured into hoping that the wrong character will find the letters—because Cassandra's purpose in seeking them is to ensure that they can never be brought to light. Miss Austen enables us to see that act as one of love, as well as of destruction.

A sequel, Miss Austen Returns, based on Gill Hornby's novel The Elopement, has been announced from the same creative team, with Keeley Hawes reprising her role as Cassandra. We're very much looking forward to it—especially if Patsy Ferran also returns as Jane.

Fingersmith. Written by Peter Ransley, based on the novel by Sarah Waters; directed by Aisling Walsh. Produced by BBC Television, 3 episodes, 2005.

Elaine Cassidy (Maude Lily) and Sally Hawkins (Sue Trinker) in Fingersmith. Image credit: Aisling Walsh.

A con man nicknamed "Gentleman" (Rupert Evans) plots to cheat the sheltered heiress Maud Lily (Elaine Cassidy) out of her inheritance by marrying her, getting control of her money, and then committing her to an insane asylum. To further his scheme he recruits Sue Trinker (Sally Hawkins), an orphan raised as a thief in the slums of London, to go to work under a false identity as the heiress's maid. Sue is tasked with becoming Maud's confidante and advisor, and urging her to elope with Gentleman. Contrary to plan, she falls in love with the intended victim. But in Sarah Waters' twist-filled story, who will wind up betraying whom?

Everyone is perfectly suited to their roles. The locations evoke almost too viscerally the crowded slums of Victorian London and the decaying grandeur of the country estate of Maud's creepy guardian Uncle Christopher (Charles Dance). And Aisling Walsh's direction brings out many fleeting subtleties and nuances in the interactions among the characters. (A word of caution: the series, like the book, features some disturbing and violent scenes.) Brilliant work all around—but I recommend seeing it after you've read the book. For more on Waters' novel, please see the full-length review of Fingersmith, which was also one of my favorite books of 2025.

Hornblower. Written by Russell Lewis ("The Even Chance"), Mike Cullen ("The Examination for Lieutenant"), Patrick Harbinson ("The Duchess and the Devil"), Chris Ould ("The Frogs and the Lobsters"), T.R. Bowen ("Mutiny"), Ben Rostul ("Retribution"), Niall Leonard ("Loyalty"), and Stephen Churchett ("Duty"), based on the novels Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, Lieutenant Hornblower, and Hornblower and the Hotspur by C.S. Forester; directed by Andrew Grieve. Produced by ITV, 8 episodes, 1998–2003.

Ioan Gruffudd as Horatio Hornblower. Image source: Into the Woods

While I gravitate to period literary dramas full of rustling muslin and subtle social and emotional nuance, my loving partner loves manly swashbuckling tales from the era of tall ships. (I'll leave it to the amateur psychologists among my readership to speculate about the reasons for our complementary tastes.) Hornblower stars Ioan Gruffudd (William Wilberforce in Amazing Grace) as Horatio Hornblower, who at the start of the first episode is a raw midshipman and by the end of the series has been promoted to post-captain. [2]

Gruffudd is surprisingly convincing as young midshipman (at 17 Hornblower is getting a late start—some of his peers would have already served onboard for five years), whom we gradually see mature and gain confidence as battle succeeds battle. He manages the action scenes with panache, although Hornblower is not your typical action hero: when ordered the climb the rigging on the heaving ship Hornblower's fear of heights and tendency to seasickness come to the fore. A regular presence is Hornblower's sometime commanding officer and mentor Captain Edward Pellew (Robert Lindsay), an all-too-rare example of both competence and decency in the hierarchy of the Royal Navy.

Still from Hornblower: Loyalty (2003), showing the realism of the series' sailing ships and armaments. Image source: Internet Movie Firearms Database.

The episodes feature Hornblower in action against the French during the Napoleonic wars. But the films don't only show us broadsides and boardings, the brutality of naval close combat in the early 19th century. They also portray the daily indignities of life on board crowded ships with no privacy, the constant jockeying for position and testing of authority among the men, and the sheer difficulties of navigating and maneuvering ships entirely dependent on the power of the wind. The sailing and battle scenes are generally well-filmed, detailed and vividly realistic.

Still from Hornblower: Loyalty (2003): Greg Wise as loyalist Major Andre Côtard in the foreground. Image source: Internet Movie Firearms Database.

If you liked the movie Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003, based on two Patrick O'Brien novels), the Hornblower series is 13+ hours of similarly perilous situations, hair-breadth escapes, and pitched ship-to-ship battles whose outcomes depend as much on wit and skill as on sheer firepower.

Agatha Christie's Poirot. Written by Clive Exton ("The Mysterious Affair at Styles," S3.E1, "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd," S7.E1, and "Murder in Mesopotamia," S8.E2), Anthony Horowitz ("Hickory Dickory Dock," S6.E2, "Lord Edgeware Dies," S7.E2, and "Evil Under the Sun," S8.E1), Kevin Elyot ("Death on the Nile," S9.E1), and others, based on the novels of Agatha Christie. Directed by Edward Bennett (10 episodes), Renny Rye (9 episodes), Andrew Grieve (9 episodes), Brian Farnham (6 episodes), and others. Produced by ITV, 1989–2013.

David Suchet as Hercule Poirot. Image source: Virtual-History.com

There are 70 (!) episodes of Agatha Christie's Poirot, starring David Suchet as the eponymous Belgian detective hero of Christie's first novel, the locked-room country house mystery The Mysterious Affair at Styles, and many subsequent novels and stories. My loving partner and I must have been among the last people on the planet who hadn't yet seen an episode. And so far we've only managed to see seven episodes scattered over five seasons; clearly we have some catching up to do. But we've been struck by the attention to period detail in the costumes and settings—every episode we've seen has been gorgeous to look at—and by how skillfully David Suchet renders Poirot as a multidimensional character, not just a collection of impeccable suits, behavioral quirks and catchphrases.

Honorable mention, Jane Austen division

Death Comes to Pemberley. Written by Juliette Towhidi, based on the novel by P.D. James after characters from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice; directed by Daniel Percival. Produced by BBC Drama Productions and PBS Masterpiece, 3 episodes, 2013.

Anna Maxwell Martin as Elizabeth Darcy in Death Comes to Pemberley. Image credit: Daniel Percival.

Jane Austen famously has little to say about what happens to her heroines and heroes after they marry in the final pages of her novels. In Pride and Prejudice we hear about many other characters' reactions, but of Elizabeth and Darcy very little. Elizabeth does write to her aunt Mrs. Gardiner after her engagement and before her marriage, "I am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but no one with such justice" (Ch. LX).

Faced with only vague accounts of the couple's post-wedding felicity, multiple authors have been unable to resist the temptation to carry the story forward. In her 2011 novel which is the basis of this three-episode 2013 BBC series, P.D. James concocts a murder mystery that takes place roughly six years after the events of Pride and Prejudice. The scoundrel George Wickham is the prime suspect (of course!), but as we might guess from time-honored mystery conventions, the character found kneeling next to the still-warm corpse crying out "I killed him, I killed him!" is rarely the true culprit.

Jenna Coleman as Lydia Bennet Wickham.

On the plus side, Jenna Coleman, who plays the young Queen Victoria in the excellent ITV series Victoria (2016-19), is delightful in the role of the pleasure-loving flirt Lydia Wickham. Matthew Goode nicely suggests Wickham's highly mixed character, nine parts blackguard to one part brave soldier with his own peculiar sense of honor (which evidently does not extend to women). And of course the costumes, sets and locations provide copious eye-candy, along with visual allusions to the brilliant 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice starring Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth and Colin Firth as Darcy. As Darcy in Death Comes to Pemberley, Matthew Rhys is directed to assume the taciturn, glowering, haughty character of Darcy's first appearance in Pride and Prejudice, rather than the kinder, gentler Darcy that six years of marital bliss with Elizabeth would surely have produced.

Juliette Towhidi's script is filled with un-Austenesque language, and the story involves multiple implausibilities and incongruities. So the series satisfies neither as a continuation of Pride and Prejudice nor as a mystery. The main reason to watch is E&I favorite Anna Maxwell Martin's excellent performance as Elizabeth Bennet Darcy; whether her performance will outweigh the series' many annoyances will depend on the viewer. For more, please see the full-length review of Death Comes to Pemberley.

Mansfield Park. Written by Ken Taylor, based on the novel by Jane Austen; directed by David Giles. Produced by BBC Television, 6 episodes, 1983.

Sylvestra Le Touzel as Fanny Price in Mansfield Park. Image source: Jane Austen Reviews

From the update to Six months with Jane Austen: Favorite adaptations and final thoughts:

This adaptation is far from perfect. The annoying music by composer Derek Bourgeois that plays during the opening and closing titles is far out of period—it sounds like it dates from eight or nine decades after the time in which the novel is set. As with other BBC series of the era it was shot on video, and so the image is soft-grained and flattened. And despite the five-hour running time, the conclusion feels rushed: we cut too quickly from Edmund Bertram's revelation of Mary Crawford's worldly principles to his wondering "whether a very different type of woman might not do just as well—or a great deal better." The delicious comedy of Austen's final chapter—"I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion, that every one may be at liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as to time in different people"—is, alas, missing.

But otherwise the dramatization by Ken Taylor is very faithful to the novel, with large chunks of the dialogue coming straight from Austen. Sylvestra Le Touzel, familiar from many later roles (including Amazing Grace and my favorite adaptation of Northanger Abbey), plausibly looks Fanny Price's age (18 at the end of the novel), and credibly expresses her mix of social timidity and moral strength—although perhaps she is directed to convey wide-eyed panic once or twice too often. Nicholas Farrell is an ideal Edmund; we can believe him principled, and yet subject to temptation against his better judgment. The other actors' performances are good across the board. Special honors from this viewer go to Anna Massey as a wonderfully horrible Mrs. Norris, and to Jackie Smith-Wood as the flirtatious and harp-playing Mary Crawford.

Movies

This was a year when we spent most of our viewing time with television series or streamed operas and concerts. Of the few movies we saw for the first time (as opposed to rewatching), none quite rose to the status of a favorite, and only one merited an honorable mention (see below). But there was one memorable film rewatch event that surprised and delighted in equal measure:

Clueless. Written and directed by Amy Heckerling, based on Emma by Jane Austen, 1995.

Brittany Murphy as Tai (Harriet Smith), Alicia Silverstone as Cher (Emma), and Stacy Dash as Dionne in Clueless. Image source: TVinsider.com

This July marked the 30th anniversary of the release of Amy Heckerling's high school comedy Clueless, an occasion that inspired a Jane Austen Society of North America watch party at which Heckerling was an honored guest.

In the film Cher (Alicia Silverstone) is the glamorous queen bee of Bronson Alcott High School. She spends her time organizing the social lives of her friends, and her special project is the new girl Tai (Brittany Murphy). Although Cher generally keeps boys at a distance, when a handsome and stylish new guy appears, Christian (Justin Walker), she finds herself unexpectedly becoming attracted to him. Meanwhile, Cher's sardonic stepbrother Josh (Paul Rudd) finds fault with everything she does. Any resemblance to Emma Woodhouse, Harriet Smith, Frank Churchill, and Mr. Knightley in Austen's Emma is purely intentional.

I confess that the first time I saw Clueless, about two decades after its release and more than three decades after I'd graduated from high school, I felt I'd waited too long to see it; I later wrote that "I liked this movie less than I was expecting to." I found some of the humor crude or slapsticky (it is, of course, a high school comedy), and felt like I'd long ago aged out of its target audience.

But the watch party, with running chat commentary by hundreds of JASNA members attuned to every Emma allusion, was thoroughly (or "Totally!", as Cher might say) enjoyable and enabled me to see the film with renewed appreciation. I updated Six months with Jane Austen: Favorite adaptations and final thoughts, "After a Jane Austen Society of North America Clueless watch party today, I find I have to upgrade my estimation of this movie. Cher is a wonderful comic creation, delightfully portrayed by Alicia Silverstone. She's not exactly Emma, but there are many clever parallels to scenes from the book. (And some equally clever divergences: Christian is concealing a different sort of romantic secret than Frank Churchill.) Heckerling's script includes some priceless, laugh-out-loud lines, and the film just glows thanks to her direction and Bill Pope's cinematography. I'm glad I gave it a second chance."

Honorable mention

Amazing Grace. Written by Steven Knight; directed by Michael Apted, 2006.

Ioan Gruffudd as William Wilberforce in Amazing Grace. Image credit: Michael Apted.

This film is a well-intentioned portrayal of the role of William Wilberforce (Ioan Gruffudd of Hornblower) in the struggle to end the British slave trade in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It has an amazing cast, with costume designs and hair or wig styles often directly modelled on paintings of the historical figures they are portraying.

But as I wrote in my full-length review of Amazing Grace, "despite the excellence signalled by the director [Michael Apted of the Up documentary series] and cast, as well as the evident care taken with many of the costumes and settings, the screenplay by Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things (2002)) undermines the entire enterprise. It simplifies, and at times falsifies, the complex history of abolition in Britain. . .[The] social background to Wilberforce's actions is largely absent, and several important figures, such as the advocate Granville Sharp, the poet William Cowper, and the former slave Ignatius Sancho, are missing entirely. Other major abolitionists such as Thomas Clarkson [Rufus Sewell] and Olaudah Equiano [Youssou N'Dour] are given merely supporting roles. . .Perhaps only someone such as Ken Loach or Mike Leigh (writer and director of Peterloo (2018)) could do greater justice to the complexity of the movement for abolition and the failings, inconsistencies, and conflicts, as well as the courage and rectitude, of those who ultimately brought an end to British slavery."

Other favorites of 2025:

• Books
• Live and streamed performances
• Recordings

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1. The family trees in Deirdre Le Faye's Jane Austen: A Family Record, Second Edition (Cambridge, 2004, "Family pedigrees," [pp. 345–355]), were of immense help in figuring out all the characters and their relation(s) to one another. "Family pedigrees," though, makes the Austens and their relatives sound like dogs or horses.
2. C.S. Forester wrote a dozen or so Hornblower titles, which follow Hornblower up the command chain to admiral. Hornblower's career is modelled loosely on that of Lord Horatio Nelson, hero of Trafalgar. 

Favorites of 2025: Recordings

As with the other posts in this series, the recordings listed below are my favorites of those first experienced in 2025. I've listed them below by musical category in chronological order by period.

Renaissance polyphony

Two all-male choirs made my list for 2025. Although in this music we also very much enjoy mixed ensembles such as the Huelgas Ensemble, Stile Antico, and Tallis Scholars, during the Renaissance sacred polyphony was probably most often sung by single-sex choirs. (Although the repeated edicts barring women from church choirs does make one wonder why the ban had to be so often reissued.) I confess as well that I simply like the sound of all-male (and all-female) choirs. Both of these groups are exceptional, and their programs were of music mainly unfamiliar to me.

Queen of Hearts. The Gesualdo Six, Owain Park, director. Hyperion CDA68453; recorded 2023.

This album features songs of praise for the Virgin Mary and "regretz chansons" (songs of lamenting and despair) from the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Much of the music is associated with four queens: Anne of Brittany, Margaret of Austria, Anne Boleyn and Mary Tudor. Three of the queens died relatively young from ill health, sudden or chronic; one, Anne Boleyn, was executed by her husband, King Henry VIII, after unsubstantiated accusations of adultery, incest and treason. The music is exquisite, and includes two contemporary works (one by the group's leader Owain Park) that fit into the program almost seamlessly.

"Sub tuum praesidium" by Antoine Brumel, c. 1500:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAvNucEv1Qk

Sub tuum praesidium confugimus, sancta Dei genetrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta.

To thy protection we fly, O Holy Mother of God; Do not spurn our prayers in our time of need, but from all dangers deliver us always, O Glorious and Blessed Virgin.

Jacobus Vaet: Missa Ego flos campi. Cinquecento. Hyperion CDA67733; recorded 2008.

Vaet, a composer new to me, died in 1567 at age 37. His music does not sound as dark or melancholy to my ears as that of the Franco-Flemish composers of the "regretz chansons" from a generation or two before him, although perhaps that is because most of the music on this disc is devotional and laudatory. It is beautifully performed by the voices of Cinquecento, with the floating countertenor of Terry Wey of particular note.

Vaet's "Miserere mei, Deus," c. 1562:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAEWIH4PgEI

Miserere mei, Deus: secundum magnam misericordiam tuam. Et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum, dele iniquitatem meam. Ecce enim in iniquitatibus conceptus sum: et in peccatis concepit me mater mea. Miserere mei, Deus.

Have mercy upon me, O God: according to thy lovingkindness. and according to the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity; And in sin did my mother conceive me. Have mercy upon me, O God.

Baroque opera and oratorio

Johann Adolf Hasse: Piramo e Tisbe. Barbara Schlick (Piramo), Ann Monoyios (Tisbe), Wilfred Jochens (Padre). La Stagione, Michael Schneider, conductor. Capriccio 60 043-2; recorded 1993.

In October 1763 the 64-year-old Johann Adolf Hasse, Kapellmeister of the Dresden court of the Elector of Saxony August II, lost his position when his patron died. It was the latest in a series of catastrophes: earlier that year on returning to Dresden after several years, Hasse had discovered that his house and all of his musical manuscripts had been destroyed during the Prussian bombardment of the city in 1760. After August's death, the new Elector instituted economies and ended large-scale musical activity at the court. Hasse and his wife Faustina Bordoni were given two years' salary, but no pension for their 30 years of service. They departed for Vienna early in 1764.

In Vienna Hasse found himself enmeshed in controversy. He was upheld as an exemplar of Metastasian opera seria against the reformers Christoph Willibald Gluck and his librettist Ranieri de' Calzabigi. Gluck and Calzabigi meant to do away with what they considered the old-fashioned and static conventions of opera seria, such as the da capo exit aria intended to showcase virtuoso vocalism. Instead, they wanted to push the dramatic action forward more swiftly. Two years before they had produced an opera following these principles, Orfeo ed Euridice (1762).

Johann Adolf Hasse, engraved by Friedrich Johann Kauke after a painting by Pietro Rotari, ca. 1763. Image source: Museum-Digital Sachsen-Anhalt

Hasse must have seen the false position in which he'd been placed as something of a challenge. When an opera was privately commissioned from him in 1768, he responded by producing a Gluck-like work with just three characters, featuring short arias with few repeats that emerged out of accompanied recitative and flowed back into recitative without a break, and that reaches its conclusion in a swift two hours—very much like Orfeo ed Euridice.

Piramo e Tisbe is based on Book IV of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Prefiguring Romeo and Juliet, Pyramus and Thisbe have fallen in love, but their families are at odds. In the face of a parental ban on their union, they plan to elope. But their plan goes awry, and disaster ensues. Hasse and his librettist Marco Coltellini went further even than the reformers: their intermezzo tragico is a true tragedy. Unlike in Orfeo ed Euridice, no gods intervene to ensure a happy ending and reunite the couple. Instead, this is the very rarest and darkest of 18th-century operas: at the end, all the characters in the opera—the two lovers along with Tisbe's father, who had forbidden their union—are dead, and all have died by suicide.

Pyrame et Thisbé. Line engraving by Vicenzo Vangelisti after Guido Reni, 18th century. Wellcome Collection 42992i

This recording was one of the first ever made of this work, and has stood the test of time. As Tisbe, Ann Monoyios displays a pretty soprano with an appropriate touch of plaintiveness. The opera was commissioned by the singer who played the original Tisbe, and Hasse lavished his gift for beautiful melodies on the character. Barbara Schlick's Piramo offers a slightly harder-edged voice, not as appealing but well-suited to her male role. Tisbe's father was written for the librettist Coltellini himself, a tenor. Wilfred Jochens' voice is sufficiently ringing to provide a sense of authority, even if to my ears his music doesn't sound particularly threatening. 

Piramo e Tisbe has received a new recording this year on Harmonia Mundi featuring Roberta Mameli as Tisbe, Anett Frisch as Piramo, and Jeremy Ovenden as the father, accompanied by Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin conducted by Bernhard Forck. The two leads on the Harmonia Mundi recording are perhaps stronger than those on the Capriccio recording, although I prefer Jochens to Ovenden as the father. On Harmonia Mundi, Forck employs somewhat swifter tempi and has the singers emphasize the drama, while on the earlier recording Schneider takes a more measured and stately approach. Forck also cuts the ballet music that concludes each act, and which may not have been composed by Hasse. If you don't already own a copy of this work, the new recording might be the preferred one. But this earlier recording is a very satisfying discovery, and I'm not rushing out to replace it.

Tisbe's Act I aria "Perduto l'amato bene," in which she begs her father not to force her to marry another man against her will:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w92tQqXCxjM

Perdero l'amato bene rompero quel dolce laccio; ma que ad altro amate in braccio per tua man mi guidi amor! Ah non posso, ah non sia vero adorato genitor. Tanta forza al cor non sento. Mi sgomento il sol pensiero. Basterebbe in quel momento ad uccidermi il dolor.

Should I renounce my love and sever that sweet bond? Should my love for you guide me into the arms of another lover? Oh, I couldn't! It could not be true my dearest father. It is not in my heart's power. I am dismayed by the thought alone. It would be enough at that moment to kill me with pain.

Hasse: Serpentes ignei in deserto. Philippe Jaroussky (Moses), Julia Lezhneva (The Angel), Bruno de Sá (Josue), Carlo Vistoli (Eleazar), Jakub Józef Orliński (Nathanael), David Hansen (Eliab). Les Accents, Thibault Noally, conductor. Erato 2173239904; recorded 2023.

There are fireworks aplenty in Hasse's oratorio Fiery Serpents in the Desert. The work depicts an Old Testament incident during the 40 years Moses and the Israelites wandered in the desert after Exodus: God sends venomous snakes to punish the restive Israelites, who can only be saved by reaffirming their faith. The oratorio was written around 1735 for the all-female instrumentalists and vocalists of the Ospedale degli Incurabili orphanage in Venice. Judging from the music in Serpentes ignei in deserto, they must have been extraordinary virtuosi.

In this recording five of the six roles originally sung by women are taken by an all-star lineup of countertenors. Although the presence of perennial favorite Philippe Jaroussky is the reason I bought this for my partner, it is the male sopranist Bruno de Sá who provides the most astonishment.

There is another, older recording on Harmonia Mundi that features a gender-reversed group of soloists in the male roles, including the wonderful mezzo-soprano Stéphanie d'Oustrac along with contralto Annette Markert and sopranos Isabelle Poulenard and Valérie Gabail; countertenor Robert Expert is the Angel. In this live recording the singers are accompanied by Les Paladins conducted by Jérôme Correas. I'm very curious, as the Harmonia Mundi recording matches more closely the historical forces that first performed this work. However, if you are a fan of countertenor singing there is every reason to experience this new recording.

Josue's "Spera, o cor" sung  by Bruno de Sá, accompanied by Les Accents conducted by Thibault Noally:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THeA4aWbld0

Spera, o cor, spera, laetare, consolare, veniet lux, veniet laetitia; in moestitia sic afflictum non plorabis. Surge laeta aura splendoris, aura amoris, infelici sede optata cor tranquillum habitatis.

Hope, my heart, hope and rejoice, be comforted: your light will come, your joy will come; you will not weep thus amid affliction and sadness. Arise, joyful breath of splendor, breath of love; though in a place of unhappiness you will live with a peaceful heart.

Invocazioni Mariane. Andreas Scholl (countertenor), Accademia Bizantina, Alessandro Tampieri, conductor. Naïve V5474; recorded 2022.

Andreas Scholl turned 58 this year, and so it's unclear how many more recordings we can expect from him. However, his voice on this album of Marian music of the early and mid-18th century still retains much of its fullness and purity; on this evidence he could continue to perform and record for years to come.

Most of the composers represented are Neapolitan, including Nicola Porpora, Leonardo Vinci, Giovanni Pergolesi, and Pasquale Anfossi, and most of the pieces included are vocal or instrumental excerpts from Easter oratorios. All of the works on the disc by these composers were unfamiliar to me, which just emphasizes how much high-quality music of this era remains to be discovered.

The one work that seems out of place is Antonio Vivaldi's Stabat Mater. It's a curious choice for this album because Vivaldi was not from Naples (he was born in Venice and spent most of his professional life in Northern Italy) and Stabat Mater is not an oratorio (although neither is Anfossi's Salve Regina). Also, Scholl has recorded it at least twice before, in 1995 with Ensemble 415 conducted by Chiara Banchini, and in 2017 with Bach Consort Wien conducted by Rubén Dubrovsky. Beautiful as Vivaldi's work is, I wish that Scholl had sought out more under-performed Marian music by other Naples-based composers such as Leonardo Leo or Francesco Durante. 

Finally, a word about the cover showing a furtive-looking and unshaven Scholl in a hoodie and overcoat, looking like he's about to do a smash-and-grab at a jewelry store: not sure what the thought was there, but perhaps there should have been a second one. A curious cover for an otherwise lovely album.

From Anfossi's Salve Regina, "Ad te suspiram":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmKqjf3d60s

Ad te suspiramus, gementes et flentes in hac lacrimarum valle.

To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears.

Music after 1800

Schubert: Lieder. Elly Ameling, soprano, with Rudolf Jansen, piano. Philips 416 294-2; recorded 1984.

This is the second year in a row the Dutch soprano Elly Ameling has appeared on my favorites list (see Favorites of 2024: Recorded music). She had a four-decade-long career, primarily as an exponent of art song; in a different era for the dissemination and reception of classical music, she recorded over a hundred albums. I'm still in the process of discovering her many recordings, which reveal her lovely soprano and her thoughtful approach to each song.

Although over the course of her career she sang music by many 18th- and 19th-century composers, she is known especially as a supreme interpreter of Schubert. This was her second album of Schubert songs with accompanist Rudolf Jansen, her third long-time partner after Jörg Demus and Dalton Baldwin. I look forward to many more years of exploring her extensive discography.

Schubert's "Am Bach im Frühling" (By the brook in springtime), D. 361; the poem is by Franz von Schober:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d9PNtx_FX0

Du brachst sie nun, die kalte Rinde, Und rieselst froh und frei dahin, Die Lüfte wehen wieder linde, Und Moos und Gras wird neu und grün. Allein, mit traurigem Gemüte Tret ich wie sonst zu deiner Flut. Der Erde allgemeine Blüte Kommt meinem Herzen nicht zu gut. Hier treiben immer gleiche Winde, Kein Hoffen kommt in meinen Sinn, Als dass ich hier ein Blümchen finde, Blau, wie sie der Erinnrung blühn.

You have broken now the frozen crust, and ripple along, joyful and free; the breezes blow mild again, moss and grass are fresh and green. Alone, with sorrowful thoughts, I come as before to your waters; the blossoming of the whole earth does not gladden my heart. Here the same winds forever blow, no hope cheers my spirit, save that I find a flower here, blue, like the blossoms of remembrance.

Other favorites of 2025:

• Books
• Live and streamed performances
• Movies and television