Monday, January 20, 2025
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...books, opera, Bollywood, and other indefensible obsessions
"...Italian opera, an exotick and irrational entertainment..."
"One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other."
"[Mozart's music] is as good an excuse for mankind’s existence as we shall ever encounter."
—Samuel Johnson
"One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other."
—Emma in Jane Austen's Emma
"[Mozart's music] is as good an excuse for mankind’s existence as we shall ever encounter."
—HC Robbins Landon
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About me
- Pessimisissimo
- I'm a librarian who spends way too much time thinking about this stuff.
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Blog archive
Labels
- art ( 6 )
- Bollywood and beyond ( 140 )
- Bollywood and beyond - Amrita Rao ( 6 )
- Bollywood and beyond - Deepika Padukone ( 17 )
- Bollywood and beyond - Hrishikesh Mukherjee ( 3 )
- Bollywood and beyond - Preity Zinta ( 11 )
- Bollywood and beyond - Satyajit Ray ( 10 )
- Bollywood and beyond - Shah Rukh Khan ( 21 )
- Bollywood and beyond - Shyam Benegal ( 3 )
- books ( 280 )
- books - Ada Leverson ( 6 )
- books - Alison Bechdel ( 4 )
- books - Angela Carter ( 6 )
- books - Anne Lister ( 7 )
- books - Anthony Trollope ( 12 )
- books - before Jane Austen ( 25 )
- books - Eleanor Marx and Madame Bovary ( 3 )
- books - Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning ( 6 )
- books - Emma Donoghue ( 5 )
- books - George Eliot ( 9 )
- books - George Sand ( 6 )
- books - Gustave Flaubert ( 3 )
- books - Haruki Murakami ( 10 )
- books - Jane Austen ( 45 )
- books - Lady Mary Wortley Montagu ( 7 )
- books - lists ( 4 )
- books - Machado de Assis ( 8 )
- books - Maria Edgeworth ( 4 )
- books - Samuel Richardson ( 9 )
- books - Six months with Austen ( 12 )
- books - The Bronte sisters ( 8 )
- books - Zadie Smith ( 9 )
- dance ( 26 )
- dance - Mark Morris ( 8 )
- favorites ( 55 )
- favorites - Bollywood and beyond ( 16 )
- favorites - books ( 19 )
- favorites - dance ( 3 )
- favorites - movies ( 17 )
- favorites - music ( 28 )
- favorites - opera ( 28 )
- favorites - television ( 11 )
- following a train of thought ( 6 )
- In memoriam ( 19 )
- journalism ( 51 )
- movies ( 115 )
- movies - Barbara Stanwyck ( 12 )
- movies - European ( 12 )
- movies - film noir ( 12 )
- movies - Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers ( 4 )
- movies - Hitchcock ( 7 )
- movies - Jean Arthur ( 4 )
- movies - Pre-Code ( 7 )
- movies - Preston Sturges ( 8 )
- movies - Rene Clair ( 6 )
- music ( 134 )
- music - Beethoven string quartets ( 7 )
- music - Berkeley Early Music Festival ( 7 )
- music - Boston Early Music Festival ( 13 )
- music - jazz ( 10 )
- music - lieder ( 15 )
- music - punk rock ( 24 )
- opera ( 150 )
- opera - Ars Minerva ( 14 )
- opera - Glyndebourne ( 12 )
- opera - Handel ( 41 )
- opera - Lorraine Hunt ( 5 )
- opera - Mozart ( 25 )
- opera - Mozart - Cosi fan tutte ( 4 )
- opera - Mozart - Marriage of Figaro ( 9 )
- opera - Purcell - Dido and Aeneas ( 9 )
- opera - Salieri ( 5 )
- opera - Strauss - Der Rosenkavalier ( 6 )
- opera - Vittoria Tesi ( 7 )
- opera guide ( 6 )
- personal ( 15 )
- Six Victorian marriages ( 6 )
- Suggested reading ( 17 )
- television ( 33 )
- theater ( 7 )
- web issues ( 17 )
Works discussed on E & I
E & I blog favorites
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Mrs Harris Goes to Paris (2022) - With the world going to hell in a handbasket, keeping one's spirits up feels more imperative than ever — and more difficult. Each new day brings headline...1 month ago
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Chupi Chupi Aashey (1960) - In 1947, as a birthday present for Queen Mary, Agatha Christie wrote a radio play called Three Blind Mice, about eight people snowed in, in a manor—one of ...2 days ago
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Building Our Future Together - In my first weeks as Executive Director of EFF, I’ve been reminded every day how consequential this moment is in determining what kind of future we will ...1 day ago
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Asian tour of Songplay - Joyce DiDonato’s Songplay, a Grammy Award-winning album, has already toured across the US and Europe to great acclaim. “DiDonato conjured a nightclub atmos...2 months ago
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Le Pen’s Hollow Revolution - The hollowness of the RN revolution became clear this week, when Marine Le Pen announced she would be standing again to become France’s head of...3 days ago
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Parwana (1971) - The tagline on the DVD cover caught my eye first: “A Murder Plan That Forced Indian Railways To Change Their Train Timing!” I am not sure that Indian Railw...9 years ago
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Other favorite sites
- American Bach Soloists
- Ars Minerva
- Boston Classical Review
- Chicago Classical Review
- Chicago Opera Theater
- Guardian UK | Classical music & opera
- Lieder Alive!
- London Review of Books
- New York Review of Books
- Notes on Indian popular cinema
- Open Magazine
- Opera News
- Opera Theater Unlimited
- Opera Today
- Paris Review
- Pocket Opera
- San Francisco Classical Voice
- Tehelka
- The Fantomas Website
- The Nation
- The New Yorker
- Washington Classical Review
- West Edge Opera