Actually quite a few birth Catholics popped up to call Francis a Protestant without any trace of irony.

Read Ed Lyon's feature in the current issue of Opera Magazine! www.opera.co.uk/current/

A spring sort of my clothes (esp trousers) is answering the question "where do all my pens go?"

HUGE round up this week. Nine new classical albums. Read on: theartsdesk.com/classical-mu... @bernardhughes.bsky.social @seb-scotney.bsky.social #bach #handel #elgar #nielsen @heloisewerner.bsky.social @delphianrecords.com #ivanagavric

Interesting piece from a performer I admire deeply. I generally reckon that allowing them in the curtain calls is the price to pay for not having them during the show.

Post-Easter question: Is there a film as positive about middle-aged Love (esp female) as Mamma Mia?

My PhD is on 18th-century theatre but I can nevertheless hazard a guess at this one….

Second-born’s revision going excellently….

Harold Wilson going up in my estimation. Handel; Sullivan; Tchaikovsky; Mendelssohn…

Starting to see some of the features on the far side of the Moon now in the latest Artemis II crew photos posted by NASA. South at the top and Orientale impact basin on right edge www.nasa.gov/image-detail...

Best ‘Et Ressurexits’: 1) Haydn: Nelson Mass 2) Bach: Mass in B minor. 3) The rest.

🚨 Christina Koch has officially become the farthest any woman has ever traveled from Earth

More terrifying developments from the Caliphate….

I tend to get dogpiled every time I say this but: as someone *who likes bluesky and benefits from being here* we have a problem. The network is shrinking, not growing. It's shrinking a lot: only about 1.1m people a day even like a post. This time last year it was 1.6m.

The most astonishing; mesmerising and shocking depiction of the Passion that I know in European art - banned by the Czars but now dominating the Musee d’Orsay: Nicolai Gay’s ‘Calvary’. (CW!)

Wrong question; Judas is the main character in that show.

This image of home just came down from the Artemis II crew. Taken after their translunar injection burn, there are aurorae at top right and lower left, and zodiacal light at lower right. Credit: NASA/Reid Wiseman

Setting aside Bach and Haydn for a moment; may I commended to you Schütz’s wonderful setting of the Seven Last Words:

Your annual reminder that it's pronounced "Sinjin" Passion.

Wishing a blessed day to all Christians in London and around the world observing Good Friday. We can all take inspiration from the life and lessons of Jesus. His spirit lives on in the millions of Christian Londoners who support and serve our city.

Also - we were continued to persecute for Catholics several centuries after any serious danger had passed. By the 18thC anti-Popery was largely a cover for anti-French prejudice; the Holy See often in fact on our side in most international conflicts….

This (DS) is a very peculiar take. We stopped Catholics from living in London, owning horses and arms, and punitively taxed them. Into the 19thC they - with Jews and dissenters - couldn’t enter university or hold civil/military posts. Mostly this should remind us how intolerance was once endemic.

Goodnight from the Artemis II crew as they head towards the Moon.

My old 6th form history teacher tried to persuade me to come over to Rome on the grounds that they’ll have anyone. It wasn’t the argument he thought it was.

So phone screen flickers alarmingly when I leave the house but is fine indoors. Anyone had similar issues fairly new iPhone)?

I'm not sorry that I paid full price for this (it's that good) 👍

25% off for Easter at @prestomusic.bsky.social if you don't already know this amazing music: www.prestomusic.com/classical/pr...

Can you name the film from the youths' commentary: "Bro, you can't do that" "Bro, not acceptable behaviour" "Bro, get the Freedom Pass holders into the Priest Hole NOW"

A fascinating shift that seems to have gone little-noticed.

I went the whole of the ^*%%# pandemic without making a single acceptable sourdough and lo today it suddenly happens:

Need a historian who's up for doing a podcast ep on the history of casio keyboards. Because i really want to do that one.

Quite an intense day today…

Music Theatre colleagues - how do we feel about this C# ?? (It’s not in any recording and printed editions seem to be split 50/50…)

Evening Fox…

Rather lovely to see excerpts form both of these broadcast on ABC Australia yesterday.

Always interesting to watch the privilege gap in microcosm as I enter the same building twice in a week, once in a suit and once in my cycling kit.

Similarly, if you voted for political party A, who're explicitly promising policy Y, then you have in fact voted for Y; you may not love it, it may not be your favourite, but you nevertheless did in fact vote for it.

Rewatching REV. with the firstborn. If there is better TV, or a finer central performance than Tom Hollander's, I don't know of it.

Are you awake yet?

Musicologists! I’m looking for someone willing to review The Cambridge Companion to Florence B. Price by Samantha Ege and Alexandra Kori Hill. For the Journal of Musicological Research!

Good Night.

Naming no names but I’m noticing a number of Labour MPs whose official posts seem to be opting for a green background all of a sudden.

Obviously this will be headline news.

A little waltz for your breakfast….

Embarrassing for all concerned, but also fascinating; Given the state of the world, I would have been entirely ready to believe that people were seeking the consolations and social support networks offered by faith.

The Welsh should be charged for visiting any of Edward I's castles in Wales imho, whereas they should be free for English tourists. We bloody forked out the money to build them ffs.

Pretty sure this headline is doing a lot of work....

A fantastic opportunity composers:

Sharing for obvious topicality. No book on this will ever have all the answers but Dederer does a fine job of laying out the questions and plotting a possible course through.

Splendid Papal behaviour. @emilydourish.bsky.social