Ruth Elleson

I approached David McVicar's new Turandot for @scottishopera.bsky.social with great expectations… but hardly expected to see Miss Havisham herself on stage! Review 👇 bachtrack.com/review-turan...

It is wholly obvious that when the men on the populist right talk of “protecting” women and children they really mean “exclusively owning and using as chattels”. Why are mainstream politicians and media so scared of pointing this out?

Putting this on my syllabus

The Barbican doesn’t seem to be screening the Met Opera Live in HD series this year 🤔

It was lovely to see the church so full for Choral Evensong last night, but I’m not going to pretend it was because of our singing! (I stayed for the talk too - it was really interesting.)

Tonight’s history lecture at @stolavehartst.bsky.social sounds FASCINATING. I’d tell you to come (after Evensong) had it not been completely sold out for weeks.

As a regular 42 user I’m really torn about this. Sometimes it’s the perfect bus, but too often it involves being stuck in traffic at length on Tower Bridge Road. This could be a good thing 🤷🏻‍♀️

When "white sauce" in fish pie Contains cheese, it’s a lie. That’s a mornay.

It’s noticeable that, wherever Ed Milliband is involved, he seems to just get on with quitely and competently making things a little better than they were.

I want the Prime Minister to look into a TV camera and say the RNLI are heroes, that we do not change policy by street violence in this country, and that he expects any criminal action to face the full force of the law. That's it. That's all he has to do.

If you've felt strangely articulate and well-informed today, this could be why.

Watching this show isn’t going to get you cancelled, you won’t lose your job, you won’t be tied to a flagpole in your underwear. It just makes you a shitty person, contributing to the wealth of a bigoted monster, against the request of the people she’s harming.

You'd think "My parents didn't have government-run healthcare and I was orphaned at 12" would be an argument for more healthcare provision, not less.

God BLESS Elza van den Heever for completely forgetting the words of Zueignung (I do love a game of “which of the three ubiquitous Richard Strauss encores for soprano and orchestra will we get tonight”) in front of a full Royal Albert Hall and international broadcast audience. Well recovered 💖

My wish for today is that when I die, people who were aware of my existence are as upset as they all are at the death of Dolly Parton.

It’s my final country house opera trip of the summer - Die Entführung at Glyndebourne - and what a pleasantly temperate summer’s day on which to make it, even in spite of there still being no direct trains to Lewes. Planned as a solo trip, but fortuitously coinciding with friends 😎

Well, that’s new. There’s a man on my District Line train busking ‘Jerusalem’ on a harmonica. He’s missing some of the correct semitones so it’s a bit… modal. Also he’s getting the first and second verse rhythms confused.

Sang Choral Evensong in Westminster Abbey. Went to a ravishing Lied von der Erde at the Proms. Acquired all of tomorrow’s Glyndebourne picnic components heavily reduced to clear at Gloucester Road Waitrose. A successful day!

QED. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

In a The Producers-level slapstick physical comedy development, another alto has not quite “broken a leg” but is similarly indisposed… as a result of which I have a couple of TINY solos at Westminster Abbey in tomorrow’s Choral Evensong.

let's all take a moment to thank the EU for being the only slightly serious governing body in the west

Lest anyone think I’m one of those Brits who’s always moaning about the weather and is impossible to please: this. This weather is exactly my kind of summer weather. It properly rained earlier, and now it’s sunshine & clouds with a bit of a breeze. Lovely.

I just knew we'd get this bollocks. Farage - like the Telegraph- doesn't want progress or anything to improve he just wants Britain to sit in a miserable slump in which he can holler constantly about "migrants" and drink pints in slow motion videos with people who pine for WW2.

Even accepting the premise that AI produces useful writing (which no one should), using AI in education is like using a forklift at the gym. The weights do not actually need to be moved from place to place. That is not the work. The work is what happens within you.

Farage's by-election stunt wasted enough public money to pay for free dental care for every child in his constituency. Does he care? No. He just wanted to avoid legitimate parliamentary scrutiny of his dodgy bungs. Which he won't. It'll start again immediately. What a cock.

Read the Facebook comments written by Sandie Peggie, the transphobic & racist nurse currently being championed by TERFs. Then ask yourself: if you were a person with Pakistani heritage and you were in hospital, would you feel happy & confident being looked after by this woman?

One of the less appealing things about living within earshot of Central London is when you can hear Big Ben in the distance, counting the hours of your insomnia 🙉 (The wind must have been blowing exactly the right way, as I could even hear the quarter-chimes, which is unusual!)