The "Author"

An Oxford-educated northerner, I live with my civil partner, three cats and 5,000+ CDs in East London, and together we keep the cheaper sections of the Royal Opera House populated with some really quite indulgent opera-going (obviously not including the cats in that: that would be silly, and frankly what with the price hikes and the Friends’ ticket limits, it would be extravagant).  But it makes all the other nonsense (principally the intrusive need to work every day) worthwhile, so there is no apology for indulgence…  A local government officer, I am far too gentle of disposition for the current place in which I work, and so tend to be constantly questioning myself and the world around me.  This tends to take a form less of philosophical enquiry than grumbling and bitching.

I don’t promise that the entries on this blog are the best prose you’ll ever read, but it’s a record of thoughts at the time and I think that immediacy has a merit nearly on a par with elegance.  Well, in this sphere, anyway…  Nor do I claim to have the most in-depth knowledge of the human voice and its capacities, but I have been attending opera – and reading about it – sufficiently frequently for sufficiently long to have a reasonably intelligent sense of what’s what.  When I started this, I was going to mix up work reflections (some of them are still in there somewhere) with potted reviews and other bits and pieces about opera.  The latter has taken over and, frankly, after long and heavy days at work I can’t really be bothered to write about work subjects for pleasure.  I’ll leave that to other forums.  So, opera it is…