Shakespeare and Saloons
Readers, are you a bit like me? Did you ever long to attend the premiere of a Shakespeare play? You know, the REAL premiere at the original Globe Theatre when the words were still wet from Shakespeare’s pen and nobody knew what would happen next? How would Macbeth and his wife end up – dead or alive? Would Prospero ever escape that island? Or how about the premiere of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, with the composer himself conducting it even though he was deaf? Or maybe the premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rites of Spring when an upper-crust 1910 Parisian audience rioted inside the theater over such a scandalous ballet? Or how about coming to London for The Season and visiting Vauxhaull Gardens in person? Oh, to actually see the mixture of high and low society, hear the popular dance tunes – and see the formal gardens with their dark corners for illicit assignations? Or perhaps you dream that a great author entrusted you to premiere his work – Shakespeare or Chekhov. I admit th...