Will
Waspe How long, I wondered in this box two months ago, would it be before the Royal Opera announced that Franco Zeffirelli would not. after all, be directing Carmen at Covent Garden this summer and would be replaced by Michael Geliot? They announced it this week — without, however, mentioning that the frolicsome Franco had wanted to re-write the opera before he could contemplate staging it.
Oxford Blues
Lim* Lalandi has had some splendid press coverage for the English Bach Festival which she organises, but this ambitious lady does not always get her own way. She had hoped, for example, that the distinguished tenor Nigel Rogers would be singing for her this year and would, moreover, bring the Hamburg Monteverdi Choir with him. But Rogers, so I hear, was obliged to decline the engagement on the grounds that the fee offered for such an important occasion was derisory.
Oxford will hear him nonetheless. He is appearing in the opening concert (May 12) of the student-orgainised Festival of English Song which, by coincidence, clashes with the penultimate concert of the Bach Festival. Since the students' enterprising festival has also scooped the city's most desirable venue, University Church, 1 should not be surprised if Miss Lalandi were feeling more than a little miffed.
Burmng issue
I am sad to learn that costumes for some thirty operas went up in flames in the recent fire in Sadler's Wells Opera's costume store, an event, I gather, that has interested the police as well as the fire service. The origins of the blaze are mysterious, and are thought to be not unconnected with the fact that the wardrobe personnel were the only Sadler's Wells workers to accept the touring terms rejected by the rest of the backstage hands.
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