news that Dame Felicity (Flott) Lott had just died. The edition of[]
It's been an uncommonly tearful weekend here in Lake Wobegone this
week - especially uncommon because everything is fine with me and
those around me and those I love. It's just that some things trigger
me to well up inside and this weekend there have been more than a few
of them. A couple, three at least.
The repeat of "This Cultural Life" on Saturday was preceded by the
news that Dame Felicity (Flott) Lott had just died. The edition of
This Cultural Life being broadcast was John Wilson's interview with
Dame Felicity but it hadn't been slipped into the schedule in
memoriam; it was a repeat of the programme originally broadcast on
Thursday when she was still very much alive.
Somehow that made it even more poignant. To hear the joy and
enthusiasm with which she was speaking, only a short while earlier,
just made me well up.
I might not have been quite so sensitised if I hadn't already listened
to David Morrissey's Desert Island Discs the day before. If his
childhood experiences were not enough to bring one to tears, his
choice of music was. The first four notes of Keith Jarrett's K||ln '75
are always enough to trigger me. Just the first four sodding notes! I suppose, even on their own, they are enough to speak of what came
before and what happened after they were played.
Morrissey's choice of discs was a double-tap because he then went on
to pick another item which did it to me all over again. It is left as
an exercise for the reader to pore over the list of recordings played
in that edition of DID and guess which one that might have been.
And tonight, I'm going out to see Simon Armitage at our local. Lake
Wobegone, theatre. I wonder what he is going to perform? Will I be
able to stay dry-eyed?
Nick
[1] My first and probably only Frederich Nietzsche pun in umra[2]
[2] To give you some measure of the standing of the academic institute
I attended, many, many years ago, in one of the cubicles in one of the
men's lavatories, somebody had scrawled on the wall:
God is Dead - Nietzsche
and in a different coloured crayon-
Nietzsche is dead - God.
Oh well, please yourselves.
On 17/05/2026 13:08, Nick Odell wrote:
It's been an uncommonly tearful weekend here in Lake Wobegone this
week - especially uncommon because everything is fine with me and
those around me and those I love. It's just that some things trigger
me to well up inside and this weekend there have been more than a few
of them. A couple, three at least.
The repeat of "This Cultural Life" on Saturday was preceded by the
news that Dame Felicity (Flott) Lott had just died. The edition of
This Cultural Life being broadcast was John Wilson's interview with
Dame Felicity but it hadn't been slipped into the schedule in
memoriam; it was a repeat of the programme originally broadcast on
Thursday when she was still very much alive.
Somehow that made it even more poignant. To hear the joy and
enthusiasm with which she was speaking, only a short while earlier,
just made me well up.
I might not have been quite so sensitised if I hadn't already listened
to David Morrissey's Desert Island Discs the day before. If his
childhood experiences were not enough to bring one to tears, his
choice of music was. The first four notes of Keith Jarrett's K%ln '75
are always enough to trigger me. Just the first four sodding notes! I
suppose, even on their own, they are enough to speak of what came
before and what happened after they were played.
Morrissey's choice of discs was a double-tap because he then went on
to pick another item which did it to me all over again. It is left as
an exercise for the reader to pore over the list of recordings played
in that edition of DID and guess which one that might have been.
And tonight, I'm going out to see Simon Armitage at our local. Lake
Wobegone, theatre. I wonder what he is going to perform? Will I be
able to stay dry-eyed?
Nick
[1] My first and probably only Frederich Nietzsche pun in umra[2]
[2] To give you some measure of the standing of the academic institute
I attended, many, many years ago, in one of the cubicles in one of the
men's lavatories, somebody had scrawled on the wall:
God is Dead - Nietzsche
and in a different coloured crayon-
Nietzsche is dead - God.
Oh well, please yourselves.
I worked with her at the Royal Opera House and at Glyndebourne in the >eighties. She was the nicest person there and a voice to bring down
heaven to earth. One of my best memories ever is rehearsing
Rosenkavalier in the London Welsh Rugby hall in the middle of a
snowstorm. It was absolutely freezing and the divas all had their fur
coats on. They sang the Trio about ten feet from me and gave it their
best because we all wanted to stop and go somewhere warmer. Felicity
Lott as the Marschallin, Agnes Baltsa as Octavian, Barbara Bonney as
Sophie. Somewhere in my heart they are all still singing it.
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