I believe in letting an invader in and then setting a good example. That is the reply Benjamin Britten gave to a tribunal for the registration of conscientious objectors in 1942 when asked "What would you do if Britain was invaded?" I was reminded of it when researching my recent article on Marco Pallis , who was an authority on both Tibetan Buddhism and early music, and, together with Britten, a champion of Purcell . In his best-selling book Peaks and Lamas , which was written in 1939, Pallis tells this story about the Sakyas , the ethnic group of which Gautama Buddha was a member which inhabited the foothills of the Himalayas. News was brought to them of an impending attack by a hostile tribe and it was debated anxiously whether resistance should be offered or not. Eventually they decided that, as followers of [Buddhist] Doctrine, they were debarred from offering armed resistance, but must welcome the invaders as friends, so they threw down their arms... The Tibetans, how...
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By the way, Gergiev is partly responsible for the staging as well, not just for the music, so he bears some of the blame that the reviewer puts on the credited director and designer.
But I know lots of women who are Wagner fans, including one friend who did her Ph.D on him. And when I go I leave my fiancé at home.
I am not sure how he can possibly justify such a conclusion from Camilla Windsor, his wife and "I was told". This isn't serious researched journalism. This is just impressionistic feelings. Which is what I do on my blog, for my own amusement, but I'm amateur. I assume he's getting paid for that piece of fluff.
I think the guardian has decided that their target readership is a sneering superficial 25 year old with a pretend degree and working in meejah, and they gear most of their non hard news articles to that person, ignoring people who have been reading The Guardian for 25 years - or longer.
Gert
Other than that, I agree with the commentator above, the review on "The Guardian" is a rather silly article. And Chancellor manages also to insult the Welsh in a strange display of English supremacist belief, something that might have worked in Queen Victoria's times.
(Not being English, Welsh, nor British in general, I may be missing something in my criticism.)
Beethoven (not any great fan either) was one of the lamest persons of renown of his age. Misogynist, mean, a perfect scrooge, tyrannic with his nephew (he sued his own sister to wrestle the kid from her), that does'nt make his music less interesting.
And if GW Bush has some liking for some music, whatever it is, should we deem it automatically despicable?