For a moment I thought we were finally going to see the full show here but no. I suspect this won't be quite the immersive experience (a rare occasion that approach convinced me) that the first 3hrs had when done at the Barbican, but still recommended: www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/tay...
Fingers crossed Blomstedt makes it for his scheduled date to conduct Bruckner 5 with the Philharmonia (his last Bruckner concert in London was magnificent).
The only snag is it's a Tuesday during term time so I fear I'll be unlikely to be able to revisit it.
Really interesting to see works that first reached these shores via the EIF finally making it to London next season. Only just catching up with Southbank announcement - I highly highly recommend Julia Wolfe's Fire in my mouth (22nd Sept) - a really powerful EIF experience a couple of yrs back.
Very good news that ENO is going to bring Mazzoli's Breaking the Waves to London - thought it was enormously powerful when I saw it at the EIF a few years back. Very strong casting for the Gluck.
Finding it quite blackly funny to see my own Lab MP & his counterpart for Southend complaining about uni developments in their constituencies as if the govt (of wch they are part) has nothing to do with it & can do nothing about it.
NT The Authenticator: More to it than I’d feared from the advance description but ultimately authorial points trumped character, other plays have got more out of playing with the historical record & I just did not believe the fraud would not have been detected.
Correction: I obviously meant the US war with Iran not with Iraq in post 9/36. Apologies.
Will Congress reach a deal on Homeland Security funding? Some of these questions may be answered in next week’s thread. Meanwhile, thanks as ever for reading and have a great weekend. (36/36)
And so we reach the end of this week’s thread, with apologies for it being not quite up to our usual standards. Will Trump manage to negotiate his way out of the Iran war? Will the Dems solve their CA-Gov problems? (35/36)
And this looks at the annual challenge which is filing a tax return in the States made worse since lobbying, or possibly just his general dislike of the agency, led Trump to shut down Direct File wch had simplified the process for many: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0... (34/36)
And finally two more recent Atlantic pieces. The Kennedy Center’s visual arts curator provides another grim report on the damage being done to the Center by Trump (& where have those removed art works gone??): www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026... (33/36)
The courts have continued to halt above ground construction of the Trump ballroom (to replace the demolished East Wing of the White House). The Admin is trying to claim that security considerations justify all the construction going ahead: www.npr.org/2026/04/17/n... (32/36)
Also in personnel news Trump fired a second member of the Cabinet, this time Attorney General Bondi, leaving a seriously compromised department: www.motherjones.com/politics/202... (31/36)
We’ll end with a handful of other recent stories, hoping to get back to our usual fuller survey in next week’s thread. The Admin finally appointed a new Head of the Centers for Disease Control, on paper more supportive of vaccines: edition.cnn.com/2026/04/16/h... (30/36)
This has more on the state of the Democratic field post the Swalwell departure: www.politico.com/news/2026/04... (29/36)
This doesn’t end Dems problems in the race where they still have 7 candidates none of whom have built a substantial lead & whose fragmentation of the vote could mean 2 GOPers advance in the run-off: calmatters.org/politics/202... (28/36)
However the Dems have ongoing problems in the CA-Gov open seat race where frontrunner Rep Eric Swalwell quit the campaign and resigned from Congress after allegations of serious sexual misconduct: edition.cnn.com/2026/04/14/p... (27/36)
In another worrying sign for the GOP, although they held on to Rep Greene’s former seat (GA-14) it was by a 12 point margin (Trump carried it in 2024 by 37 points): www.nbcnews.com/politics/ele... (26/36)
We’ve touched on the midterm elections implications of the war in passing already. While we were away the Cook Political Report shifted several US Senate races in the Dems favour: www.npr.org/2026/04/13/n... (25/36)
Before we leave the war this week, we haven’t finished reading this long piece on the meanings of McMaster’s study of the joint chiefs and Vietnam for the present conflict, but so far it’s proving worth reading: secretaryrofdefenserock.substack.com/p/the-myths-... (24/36)
In Congress the Dems have continued efforts to try and restrain the President in his Iran war but the latest resolution failed to get out of committee despite support from Paul (R-KY), partly because Fetterman (D-PA) again voted against his party: www.cbsnews.com/news/senate-... (23/36)
It’s worth noting in the context of all this that too many news outlets are still simply reporting on the ever shifting contradictory statements of the president (whether on Iran or the economy) & not making clear enough the often glaring contradictions. (22/36)
Trump’s associated row with the Pope (also covered in Nichols’s piece) has also drawn in VP Vance (apparently his slight distancing of himself over the Iran War has been abandoned) & he accused the Pope of not knowing theology: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0... (21/36)
This rounds up reactions from evangelical Christians (often strong Trump supporters) to his posting of an image of himself as Jesus Christ (discussed in the Nichols piece): www.nbcnews.com/politics/don... (20/36)
The previous link also touches on Trump’s concerning state of mind, and this from The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols is a good summary of last weekend’s particularly extreme round of Truth Social posts: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0... (19/36)
This report from an Arizona district is more useful than many vox pop type pieces on what the possible impacts of all this might be on the Nov elections (the points about impacts on GOP fundraising stand out): www.theatlantic.com/politics/202... (18/36)
As with gas prices the impacts of this vary by region (& it’s just one of several things which are impacting on farmers): www.wsj.com/finance/comm... (17/36)
