Can Reality TV Bring More People Into Opera?

“Anything that introduces anyone to something they haven’t encountered before and then decide to take further is a great thing. Popstar to Operastar does that. Art forms like opera are shrouded in mystery and mystique and these programmes explain what the life of an opera star is like. There is an appetite for opera and now it can be seen in cinemas, people are going.”

It’s Time To Rehabilitate Uncle Tom (The Character And The Book)

When it was first published, Uncle Tom’s Cabin “became the most influential novel in American history and a catalyst for radical change both at home and abroad. Today, of course, the book has a decidedly different reputation.” The title character “has become a byword for a spineless sellout … [and] we tend to think of the novel itself as an old-fashioned, rather lachrymose affair … But this view is egregiously inaccurate.”