It is theatre season, and on this day in 1986, the Andrew Lloyd Webber, Richard Stilgoe, Charles Hart stage musical adaptation of the 1910 novel by Gaston Leroux (primarily a writer of detective fiction of equal stature and influence to Arthur Conon Doyle) that relates the narrative of disfigured musical genius haunting the maze of passageways beneath the opera house of Paris and becomes obsessed with a beautiful soprano had its opening night at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London. One of the longest-running productions of all time, it has been performed by troupes all over the world.
After a significant delay following its debut showing in New York City (with some major revisions needed after a poor reception by audiences) until it was picked up by Walt Disney Studios for distribution and general release more than a year later, the supernatural thriller was shown in cinemas across the US first on this day in 1981. Targeting a young adult demographic and starring Bette Davis and David McCallum, it tells the story of an American family that move into a Buckinghamshire estate, whom are received warmly by the owner of the manor whose has since downsized and resides in the guest cottage—only the proprietoress comments how much the teenage daughter Jan looks so much like her own Karen who disappeared without a trace in the surrounding woods thirty years before. Settling in with the occasion blindfolded apparition haunting the many mirrors and eerie blue lights coming from the forest, the mother adopts a puppy to keep her company—inexplicably naming it Nerak. Catching a glimpse of the dog’s name inverted, Jan realises that it’s Karen spelled backwards. Growing emboldened by curiosity, Jan ventures further into the woods, accompanied by Nerak and encounters a hermit, who relates the story of a coven and how Karen, decades ago, was convinced to take part in a sรฉance and was spirited away, entranced, when lighting struck the chapel tower during a lunar eclipse. All tropes covered. Here’s a preview below with the full movie here.
Via Super Punch, we learn that in order to meet a federal mandate issued by the Trump administration in May that the US Fish and Wildlife Service make permanent the theme of “celebrating our waterfowl hunting heritage” and thus require the inclusion of hunting paraphernalia in the art works submitted for its popular annual “duck stamp” contest.
Purchased primarily by bird-watchers and conservationist, the yearly licensing image has generated revenues in excess of a billion dollars since the 1930s to purchase and protect habitat for wildlife by the service and many are afraid that the politicising, shift will alienate contributors. Submitting artists have found subtly cartoonish ways to insert spent gun shell casings, discarded duck-calls, etc. in their work.
Reminiscent of this project that examined how Western medieval scholars depicted the exotic elephant without a frame of reference, we rather enjoyed this growing dialogue, via Super Punch, of heroically bad portrayals of animals, started out by Danny Dutch presenting The Oyster. This round guy looks more like a birb to us. Scrolling through, we especially liked the owl, bees and bat with human features.
Formally opening at London’s Barbican Centre on this evening in 1985 after a week of preview performances to mixed critical reception, the stage musical collaboration of Victor Hugo’s Les Misรฉrables from Claude-Michel Schรถnberg, Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel—translated by Herbert Kretzmer is one of the West End’s and the world’s longest-running performance—in good company with Cats (previously) which coincidentally saw its Broadway premiere on the same day three years prior. Following the storyline of Hugo’s 1862 novel, informed and inspired by the Artful Dodger and company of street urchins’ song and dance routine in Oliver! (Twist), doggedly determined police inspector Javert (relatedly) pursues Jean Valjean for breaking parole (sentenced and having served nineteen years hard-labour for stealing a loaf of bread for his sister’s staving baby) and are carried away with a cast of characters to a Paris on the brink of revolt and revolution.
From the same source as our previous post, we are really enjoying exploring this extensive, exhaustive collection of historic maps and surveys and finding our little pocket of the world through the ages. Easy and intuitive, see if you can find yourself in this cartographic collection and how much things have changed and/or remained the same. Here we are annotated on two different catalogues of the Henneberger holdings in the seventeenth century.
